Capital Punishment by Robert Wilson Page B

died in childbirth when Mercy was only seven, and the insanely strict regime that her Ghanaian police officer father had imposed on her and her four siblings. Maybe she was just repelled by parenthood because, as the eldest, a lot of mothering had fallen in her lap. She’d never intended to have a child so early herself. Amy hadn’t been planned, arriving, as she had, soon after she and Boxer had split up. She’d found herself with little to offer Amy, reluctant to impose her father’s type of discipline, but with no alternative up her sleeve. Then again, she was dealing with somebody harbouring the suspect genes of Charles Boxer, and that was never going to be easy—a runaway boy with a ‘missing’ dad, a war veteran, a lone professional, a man who, as far as she’d known, had never loved passionately, and had now become someone, since leaving his job at GRM, worryingly detached.
    The double doors opened and Amy came through alone, her blonde highlighted ringlets framing her wide face with its caramel complexion and her dark, full lips. Her light green eyes scanned the crowd confidently. She had a small rucksack on her shoulder and was dragging a very large sky blue suitcase, which Mercy didn’t recognise and seemed far too big for a weekend away.
    Mercy hung back, waited. As Amy reached the end of the channel, a black man stepped out of the crowd. He was around thirty, short dreadlocks, long black leather coat, white scarf. Not, to Mercy’s practiced eye, a criminal. He kissed Amy once on the cheek and took over the suitcase. He gave her a quick hug around the shoulders and let her go. Mercy held up her mobile phone and took a photo of them. They walked together, chatting. It was like seeing an older brother meeting his sister.
    They passed Mercy, who gave them twenty yards and fell in behind them. They headed off towards the short term car park and railway station. A surge of people from the station came between Mercy and Amy just at the moment when Amy peeled away from her partner and went down the escalators to the platforms. The guy continued with the suitcase. Mercy stuck with Amy. She already had a return ticket and went down the escalators to see her daughter sitting in the lighted waiting room.
    She loitered on the gloomy platform, watching Amy through the window, intrigued to see her daughter as a person out of her normal sphere. Amy was chatting to a couple in their forties. She was at ease. The couple were laughing. It could have been ... it should have been Charlie and Mercy, but it wasn’t. That rush of failure swept over her once again. She felt drawn to the window as if to a screen she couldn’t stop watching. She came closer and closer until her face was up to the glass. Her daughter continued, oblivious. She was telling a story, making faces, being entertaining. Then she looked up.
    The first thing Mercy saw was fear, then anger.
    ‘Oh fuuuuck,’ said a voice behind her.
    Mercy turned to see Karen approaching the waiting room. There was fear in her face, too. Was this all she inspired? Fear? No, no, there was always anger, too.
    ‘What ... what ... are you doing here, Mrs Danquah?’
    ‘I thought I’d meet you off the plane.’
    The waiting room door slammed shut.
    ‘That’s typical, that’s fucking typical of you,’ said Amy, throwing her fingers out at her mother. ‘You can’t stop playing cops, can you? You have to play the fucking cop with your own daughter now.’
    Mercy was momentarily shattered by the change in her daughter. The instant ferocity. And yet, seconds ago, she’d been so dazzling. Where’s the dazzle? Let’s have the dazzle back, girl.
    But it was true what Amy had said. There was nothing she could do about it. Detective Inspector Mercy Danquah reasserted herself in moments. You don’t do thirteen years in the Met and let a seventeen-year-old girl put one over on you.
    ‘If I’d been “playing cops”, I’d have organised a reception committee for you and