Every Deadly Sin by D M Greenwood

Author:D M Greenwood [Greenwood, D M]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Ostara Publishing
Published: 2012-10-11T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

Let Him in Constancy

Frederika Bottomley, driving along the same road which Bishop Peake had traversed eight hours previously, likewise reviewed her career. She was finished. She’d decided that. This accident, manslaughter, murder, whatever it was, would be her last case. She had written her resignation and 1 September would see her free or on the scrapheap or whatever. She’d done thirty years in the force. As she watched the road unwind in front of her and remarked the pleasure of driving, she thought, I owe the force all the skills I’ve got. It’s taught me everything I know: how to drive, how to write, how to speak, how to think. Was she grateful or not? At any event, the mark of the force was upon her. It would be interesting to see if there was anything more to her than what the force had issued her with. She’d need to discover that.

She’d given herself utterly, ardently to the work. It’d been a hell of a struggle to stop being a WPC. She’d had to batter and push all the way. Nobody wanted her to succeed. Her family had been appalled at her choice of career. Her dad, a sergeant in the West Riding force for forty-one years, had told her, ‘They won’t want you, love. Just like you don’t get men nursing, so you won’t find women getting on in the force. You’ll get hurt and not just by the villains.’ Well, he’d been wrong, had Dad. Or partly. She had a friend who was a male nurse and people had stopped being surprised at him a decade ago. But the force was different, more resistant to change.

The radio-telephone on the dashboard showed signs of interrupting her thinking. She put a large heavy hand on it and it ceased to wheeze. She’d made Detective Inspector and she’d done it by being very persistent, and very loud and very thorough. She’d done her prep. on the clerical folks for example, as far as she could anyway. About the place itself, she’d have to do some finding out. She’d had to be quicker off the mark than her male colleagues and she’d been better at passing exams. But it had been a struggle. The top brass had resented it. They’d used every weapon to marginalise or patronise or downright bully her out of her rights. Scope for talent, that was all she’d ever wanted. If she’d been no good, she’d have left earlier or, more like, never started. But she was good, she knew that. They couldn’t destroy her deep certainty that she knew what she was about. Why were they so bloody frightened all the time? She’d never got used to how scared they were. Anything new that they couldn’t control or predict and the courage ebbed from them – and they reacted accordingly.

Why had she wanted to spend her life dipping into other people’s when they were at their lowest, their worst point? Matt the nurse had asked her when she first met him ‘I can do something to help.

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