Chapter Four

16th November 1988

"This is a bloody waste of time," Frank moaned, throwing the newspaper down onto the coffee table. "I've got better things to do with my time than be sitting around here waiting to give evidence in some poxy trial that should have been a guilty plea all day long! I mean, what are the defence playing at? How can they possibly think that they're going to get Nelson off? Especially with Metcalfe and Fisher turning Queen's evidence against him. Lunacy, that's what it is. Sheer bloody lunacy!"

"Have you finished?" Jim asked. "Only I am stuck here too you know."

"I wouldn't worry about it, Jim. Perhaps the CPS will decide your evidence is irrelevant."

"Well that would just be brilliant, wouldn't it? After me being sat here all morning with jobs piled in my tray a foot high."

"What is taking so long?" Frank got to his feet and started pacing up and down the witness room. "How long can it possibly take to tell the court what happened?"

"She's got to give evidence about the assault too."

"Oh, well maybe she's embellishing it."

"I doubt it." Jim lifted the discarded paper and scanned the headlines. "Did she seem all right to you this morning?"

"How do you mean?"

"I mean, did she seem all right?"

"No different than her usual self, why?"

"No reason."

Frank sat back down. "Is there something I should know?"

"No."

"Then why are you asking me if she seemed all right?"

"I dunno...it was just...an observation," Jim said. "I thought she just seemed a bit...off this morning."

"Huh..." Frank lifted his by now cold coffee cup and tossed it into the nearest bin. "PMT no doubt. Pretty Miserable Tart."

XXXX

"So what you're saying, Detective Constable Lewis, is that my client might have had no understanding or knowledge that you were, in fact, a police officer when he unfortunately struck you."

Christina ran her hand over her eyes and took a deep breath before answering the defence lawyer's question. She wasn't sure how many times she needed to answer the same point before they got the message. "No, that's not what I'm saying. When we exited our vehicles we identified ourselves as police officers."

"Perhaps in all the kerfuffle, Mr Nelson didn't hear you."

"He heard us. That's why he started to run away."

"And that's when you claim that he punched you in the face."

"It's not a claim, it's a fact."

"Yes, quite." The lawyer paused and consulted the papers on the table in front of her. "Were you aware at the time of your operation that the area drugs squad had an interest in Mr Nelson?"

Christina glanced at Nelson in the dock, his expression impassive but his gaze level with her own. "Not at the time, no."

"When did you become aware of it?"

"After we had arrested Mr Nelson and taken him back to Sun Hill station for processing."

"And how did you become aware of it?"

"Detective Sergeant Church of the drugs squad attended at the station and advised us."

"Yes..." the lawyer smiled. "DS Church hadn't thought to advise you earlier? Over breakfast perhaps? Or in bed the night before?"

"Objection!" the prosecution lawyer got to his feet. "There is no relevance to this."

"It'll become relevant," Nelson's lawyer assured the judge who waved for her to continue. "Constable?"

"If you're referring to the fact that DS Church and I are married then no, he didn't tell me anything about his interest in Mr Nelson at any time prior to Mr Nelson's arrest." She tried to keep her irritation hidden, but could tell by the tone of her own voice that she had failed.

"I imagine he wasn't too pleased at you disrupting his investigation."

Christina shuffled slightly in the box. It was a bloody understatement to say the least. Mr Conway had held fast in the face of pressure from both Stewart and his own boss at the squad and refused to release Nelson to allow him to complete his business. It had been a source of great annoyance for Stewart and one that he had brought up often in the three months since. "No he wasn't."

"But I'm sure all was forgiven later on in the course of marital relations."

Christina opened her mouth to protest but the prosecution lawyer beat her to it and the judge upheld the objection.

"Constable..." the lawyer smiled at her. "Were you aware that Mr Nelson had previously lodged a complaint against your husband for harassment?"

XXXX

"He what?!"

"You heard me the first time."

"Well I want to hear you say it again so I know my hearing isn't going in my old age!"

Christina sighed, "Apparently, David Nelson had made an official complaint against Stewart accusing him of harassing him."

"When?"

"Twice over the summer. Before we nicked him."

"Oh well that's just brilliant!" Frank snapped. "And what exactly are the defence trying to make out of that?"

"That the entire operation has been some sort of set up... I don't know..." she ran a hand through her hair. "I did my best to deflect it, push the point that we had no knowledge of the squad's involvement but...I looked at the jury and I know they didn't buy it."

"No doubt the minute it was mentioned that he was your husband they were thinking all sorts of lurid things, you stupid bint!"

"And what exactly was I supposed to do?" she squared up to him angrily. "Lie about the fact we're married?"

"No, but maybe I should just keep you out of any drug investigations in the future just in case it comes back to bite me on the behind!"

"You can't do that and you know you can't! You can't use my husband's position in the squad as an excuse to..."

"Oh belt up!" Frank shook his head and turned his back on her dismissively. "You've given me one headache after another ever since I arrived at Sun Hill and this is just the bloody icing on hte cake! You'd be far better off getting yourself onto the squad so that you and hubby can work together and then we wouldn't have these potential problems!"

Christina bit her tongue, desperate to lash out again yet knowing that it wasn't going to do her any good in the long run. Not to mention the fact that she would like to see Stewart's face if she did somehow manage to end up working alongside him. Something told her that he wouldn't be best pleased about it, even less so than he currently was.

"So what do you want me to do now?" she asked instead.

"Well I don't want you hanging around here like a bad omen," he turned to face her again. "Jim and I have got to give evidence believing that the crown can still win this trial. So why don't you sod off back to the nick and get something productive done for the rest of the afternoon. Do you think you can manage that?"

"Yes."

"Yes what?"

"Yes Guv," she replied through gritted teeth.

"Good." He pointed to the door. "Off you go then."

Despising him even more than she had thought she possibly could, she left quickly, jamming her car key into the lock and slamming the door behind her. She drove angrily through the streets from the court back to the nick, shouting at other drivers and almost colliding with Brownlow as he drove out of the yard as she drove in. Her anger continued all the way back inside and up the stairs to CID where she banged the door behind her, almost knocking out Pete as he came in at her back.

"Watch what you're doing!" he complained, pushing it open. "You're not the only person around here you know."

"Sorry," she said, throwing her bag down onto her desk. "It's been a bit of a shit morning so far, that's all."

"How did it go at court?"

"You're better not asking."

"Suit yourself." He dropped some papers on her desk. "Burnside was looking for this information earlier. Can you pass it onto him when he gets back?"

She glanced at it and then moved it to the side of her desk. "Don't you want to do it yourself? I know how much you crave his good opinion."

He made a face at her sarcasm. "No thanks. Something tells me that your bad mood is down to his bad mood which is probably down to you anyway, so I'll stay clear. Just make sure he gets it." Turning, he left the room before she had a chance to respond.

"Prick," she muttered under her breath unkindly. Pete was a typical frustrated uniform bobby, desperate for any chance to get into CID, desperate for any chance to impress the man he so badly wanted to emulate. As if there was anything worth emulating. "Well..." she said aloud, looking through the window into Frank's empty office. "You're welcome to him."

XXXX

The rest of the afternoon passed quickly. With Frank at court, and therefore not breathing down her neck, she managed to get through a fair bit of work, most of which she had been deliberately avoiding. Her mood seemed to give her the ability to power through the mundane tasks and, by four o'clock, she was actually quite happy with what she had achieved.

Glancing across the room, she looked at Ted who was buried in paperwork of his own, having returned an hour earlier from a mysterious meeting with a snout.

"Ted...can I ask your advice?"

"Oh, that's dangerous. Depends on what you're asking."

She got up and moved over to sit down at the desk opposite. "Do you think I should try for Sergeant?" He raised his eyebrows. "The application procedure's just been announced and the exam's in January. I think I'm ready but I don't want to make a prat of myself."

"If you think you're ready then it's got sod all to do with me," Ted replied.

"So you don't think I'm ready then?"

"That's not what I said."

"So?"

He leaned back in his seat. "I think the question you should be asking yourself is not whether or not you're ready, but rather why you want it."

Christina frowned. "Isn't it obvious? Promotion, pay rise, advancement..."

"And a way out of Sun Hill?" She said nothing. "You know that if you do get promotion, chances are you'd be moved on somewhere else. Stafford Row, Barton Street, maybe further afield. You have to ask yourself if that's what you want."

She looked down at the desktop, "Maybe it is."

"Look..." he sat forward again. "If you want to get away from a certain person, I don't blame you. Half the time I'm looking for a way out myself. But if you get it, and you do go, then he'll probably think he's won."

"I don't know what..."

"Oh come on, I'm not blind. Or deaf. He gives you a hard time, harder than you deserve because you're a woman. And he's just waiting for you to give up and go so it can be all boys together. What he doesn't realise, is that the force is changing, whether we like it or not. One day, you'll outnumber us in CID." Ted lit up a cigarette. "You're more than capable of becoming Sergeant, Chris, if you want it for the right reasons."

"But if I did go for it..."

"Right then!" Frank suddenly stalked into the room, bringing an end to the conversation and clapping his hands together. "Ted, I think it's time you and I had a little chat, don't you?"

"About what?" Ted asked, frowning.

"About your loan repayments. Conway's had National Trust on the blower again and he's not too happy about it. So he wants me to talk to you about how you're going to sort it. So, let's go." He headed over to his office door. "Chris, make yourself useful and bring us two coffees will you? Three sugars in mine. There's a good girl."

"Well, hang on..."

He turned to look at her, "Yes?"

"What happened in court?"

"Jim and I gave our evidence. Court's down until tomorrow for the defence to open its case. Any more questions or do I have to ask twice for the coffee?"

Christina narrowed her eyes as he winked at her before disappearing into his office. Ted got to his feet, shrugged and then followed him, closing the door behind him. Through the glass she could see them talking, could see that her boss had no compunction, no thought whatsoever for the way he had just spoken to her. Scraping her chair back, she got to her feet and moved over to the kettle, flicking the switch angrily. Ted was right. Getting away from Frank would be a big bonus to becoming sergeant and yet he was also right that, deep down, it was one of her biggest motivating factors for going for the promotion in the first place.

As she waited for the kettle to boil, she lifted a spoon and reached for what she thought was the sugar, recognising just in time that it was in fact salt, left over from the last load of fish and chips they had had one night after an obbo. For a brief moment, she considered putting it in his coffee anyway, then she thought about the inevitable bollocking and realised that, as with so many things, it just wasn't worth it.

XXXX

"Sergeant? Why on earth would you want to go for Sergeant?"

"Why wouldn't I?" Christina replied, lying on her back looking at the ceiling. "More money, better prospects..."

"Don't you like it at Sun Hill, Burnside notwithstanding?" Stewart asked, rolling over to look at her.

"Yes..."

"So why would you want to leave? You'd be moved on you know."

"I know that," she turned to face him. "It might not be a bad thing in the long run."

"I thought you wanted to have a baby," he reminded her, reaching out to push some of her hair behind her ear. "Isn't that why we just had unprotected sex? You wouldn't be able to do both."

"I'm sure there are plenty female sergeants who are also mothers," she replied tetchily.

"Oh come on, you know the force is no job for a woman with kids. What if something were to happen to you?"

"What if something were to happen to you? Why should it be any different for me?"

He shook his head, "I don't think you understand how gruelling the job can be, Chris. You're always complaining that I'm working so much overtime and that's because of my rank. My DCs can usually go home at a normal hour but us DS's have to put a bit more in. There's no way that you could do that and look after our kids and there's no way I'm having them raised by nannies."

"God, you're such a chauvinist!" She rolled over onto her other side away from him.

"No, I'm a realist." He flicked off the bedside light, plunging the room into darkness before dropping a kiss on her shoulder and rolling away again. Within moments, like every other time, his breathing became even, a slight snore escaping every so often.

She lay in the dark, her mind and body jangling. She knew he wasn't entirely enamoured at the idea of having children, he had only agreed they should try because he thought it was what she wanted and it was...sometimes. Other times she couldn't help but wonder what kind of mother she would make and whether or not he was right about how difficult it would be to juggle that and any elevation to her career. She had known him long enough to know, however, that his opposition was less about what childcare problems a promotion might present and more about her potentially reaching an equal rank.

She knew that, deep down, he wouldn't like that. He wouldn't like it one bit.

XXXX

If there was one thing she had learned since Frank had taken charge at Sun Hill, it was that very little ever got past him. Either it was because he had a very keen sense of when someone was thinking about something and enough savvy to be able to work out what it was...or someone in the department had a very big mouth. She wasn't altogether sure which it was, but her money definitely had to rest on the latter when he called her into his office first thing and looked her up and down as though sizing up her potential for something.

"Ted tells me that you're thinking of putting in for Sergeant."

Christina paused then looked over her shoulder back out into the room where Ted seemed to visibly shrink at his desk.

"Don't blame him. There might have been a bit of whisky involved in the run up to the revelation." Frank sat back and surveyed her thoughtfully. "Are you serious about it?"

She turned back to face him. "I..."

"What does hubby think?"

"I haven't discussed it with him," she lied.

"Really? I would have thought a decision like that would be something you would at least run by him."

"Why?" she snapped. "Do I need his permission?"

Frank raised his eyebrows. "No. Did I say that?"

"No. Sorry it's...it's been a bit of a morning, that's all."

"It's only just gone nine."

"Yeah well he's still angry about the whole Nelson thing," she said, thinking back to the argument they had had before she had left.

"Well I suppose we can hardly blame him. We did piss all over his operation." He paused. "If you do want to apply for the boards, then of course you'd have my full support."

Ted's words from the previous afternoon rang in her ears. "Really?"

"I think you'd make a very good Sergeant. Perhaps better than some of those already holding that rank, and I don't just mean Ted." He held her gaze. "Do you want to apply?"

Christina paused. There were so many reasons why she should do it. All the thing she had mentioned to Ted; promotion, pay rise, advancement...even were she never to go any higher than sergeant it would be some sort of achievement.

Leaving Sun Hill, leaving Frank...perhaps the biggest inducement of all.

Or the biggest pitfall.

"I'm not sure yet," she replied as honestly as she could. "There's a lot to think about."

"I'm sure there is. Your husband doesn't strike me as a man who'd like to share rank with his wife, at least not going by his previous performance in here anyway."

"Yeah well..." she looked at the floor. "Like I said I don't need his permission." When he didn't reply, she looked up again and met his gaze. "Is there anything else, or can I get on with some work?"

"Of course you can Constable."

Without waiting for any further jibes, she turned and left his office, being careful not to bang the door behind her. "Thanks a lot Ted," she hissed, stomping back over to her desk.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I really didn't think it was a big secret."

"No..." she glanced back towards the office to where Frank was still watching her. "Well it isn't now, is it?"