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Detective Sergeant Aaron Fowler massaged the base of his skull. It didn’t relieve the pain in his neck, because that was sitting opposite him in an expensive suit.
“But there are bad people. You can’t deny that. The prisons are full of them.” “And the rest,” Wildsmith said, with unexpected feeling. “The average gaol will offer you bad people, people who made lots of bad decisions, people who made one bad decision, and people who were just very unlucky on one particular day.”
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.’”
He didn’t want to give Detective Sergeant Fowler tea. He wanted to have told him to sod off and shut the door. But he’d let the man in now, and that meant some things had to be done. He hadn’t served in a war for people to go around not offering other people tea.
“You can’t solve a crime before it’s been discovered, I suppose,” Joel said, and then wondered how the blazes he had found himself offering comfort to a rozzer.
“But he didn’t know that!” Paul protested. “You said yourself it wasn’t possible for him to know. So he was making it up, and making things up about people is slander.” “Not if you hit on the truth, it isn’t. Your complaint is that he accurately described something you did, and I really can’t help you with that.” “Then what use is it having a policeman in the family?” “I couldn’t say.”
I have to say, my experience suggests that if you decide to believe me, you’ll see proof where it doesn’t exist, and if you’re determined not to, no proof will ever be enough.”
Policing is a contract. The public agrees to give people like me the power to ask impertinent questions, give orders, or even deprive people of their liberty, under a strict set of laws and circumstances and restrictions that govern our behaviour. If we don’t respect our part of the contract, the public can’t be expected to respect theirs.
It was absurd. You couldn’t get hot for handwriting. And yet he had, a response deep in the flesh, squeezing his lungs and tightening his groin. He’d sunk into the hand and felt all that discomfort and self-control to the point of pain and those bottled-up longings, and he’d wanted nothing more than to pop the writer’s cork.
“I don’t know. I’ve done things because they feel like they might solve a problem, and then realised the problem is too big for any one thing to fix. You think it’s the solution until you get there and it turns out it’s just a plaster on a gaping wound.” He grimaced. “But sometimes you simply need to know you’ve tried, and now and again, things work. I hope you get your hand, and I hope it gives you everything you want from it.”
“Supporting our wounded heroes is one of many things that people feel passionately must be done, by somebody else.”
Aaron shut his eyes. He’d found Wildsmith by turn bewildering, provocative, alarming, infuriating, arousing. He thought this kindness might be the most devastating facet yet.
“Well,” he said, after a second. “I’m afraid that is an unquestionable offence of indecent behaviour. It’s a shame I just destroyed the evidence.”
May I say I’m grateful?” “No. I don’t want your gratitude, your thanks, or your obligation,” Joel said. “I simply want wholehearted admiration of my courage, integrity, and intelligence, which can be demonstrated by a good shagging at any time.”
