Death of a Murderer by Rupert Thomson Page B

now Billy thought about it. There always had been.
    Phil put both hands flat on the table, on either side of the scene log, and studied the recent entries. “I heard Sue was here.”
    Billy swore under his breath. He’d been hoping to keep that from Phil. “She stopped in about an hour ago,” he said. “There was a problem with Emma.”
    “It’s sorted now, though?”
    “Yes.”
    Still bent over the scene log, Phil looked at Billy across one shoulder, and Billy saw a question form:
Is everything all right at home?
He also knew this was a question that Phil probably wouldn’t ask. The last time he’d had Phil over to the house, they had got drunk in the garden, and when Sue went to bed, Phil had started talking about his life—his wife had walked out, no children luckily—and there had been no bitterness in him, just a wistful quality, a kind of disbelief: that it should happen to him…On that occasion Billy hadn’t pried, or pressed for details; he had simply waited until Phil had finished, then murmured,
Fuck
and poured Phil another drink. There was nothing else to say. If you were in the police, you rarely asked about each other’s marriages because you knew what the answer was going to be. All right? It was almost never all right. Police officers worked anti-social hours. They drank too much and slept too little. They ate junk. They were society’s dustmen, always cleaning up, dealing with the rubbish that no one else wanted to deal with. Most of them had gone into the job with good intentions, thinking they could be of use, but they soon realised that the task was well nigh impossible. If you closed one crack house down, a new one sprang up somewhere else. Book one prostitute, and three more would be doing business round the corner. As for burglary, forget it. Recently, a constable in his fifties had told Billy that he was now arresting the sons and grandsons of people he had arrested when he first started out. The crime figures might go up or down, but nothing changed, not really. The pressure on police officers was immense, and their home lives suffered. Phil knew that better than anyone.
    “You need a break, Billy?” Phil said. “You want to go outside and stretch your legs?”
    With those words, Billy understood that, as far as Phil was concerned, the matter was closed.
    “I’ll wait till midnight, sarge,” he said. “It’s not long now.” He watched Phil yawn, then rub his eyes. “You’re probably the one who needs a break.”
    “When this is over, I’m going to sleep for a week.”
    “A week? They’ll never give you a week.”
    “Right.” Jaw clenched tight, Phil smiled another of his grim smiles.
    When Phil had gone, Billy returned to his chair. Yes, the pressures were immense. It wasn’t just the long hours, the bad food and the lack of sleep. It was all the temptations that came your way as well. Women often threw themselves at police officers. Was it because police officers were confident, decisive characters who knew how to handle themselves? Or was it because they were supposed to represent the straight and narrow, and there was a kind of thrill in leading them astray? Or was it just the uniform? He didn’t know. It definitely happened, though. On Saturday nights, when he parked outside a club like Pals at closing time, women would dance in front of the police van, taking off half their clothes. The previous summer, a dark-haired girl in a short skirt had leaned over the bonnet and given the windscreen a long, slow kiss. Tongue and everything. Sooner or later, most policemen weakened. They had one-night stands, quick flings—full-blown affairs. They would bring their lovers to parties in the police station and leave their girlfriends or their wives at home. They would claim to be on a training course and all the while they’d be on holiday with another woman. If you met a bobby who told you he’d never been over the side you didn’t entirely trust him. Nobody could be that