Page 8 of The Other Side

He brought in everything from the car, then opened the French doors again and began putting the shopping away. The fridge-freezer was new and working. There was still tape on the shelves. That was a pleasant surprise. Not so much the dead mouse hiding behind a fire extinguisher under the sink. But it was desiccated, long dead, and he threw it in the bin outside.

The cookware was new too. Not good quality but okay for now. Did he need to buy a car? A motorbike? A cycle? Were there Ubers out here? He didn’t like the idea of being trapped with no transport of his own.

By the time he’d finished unpacking, and hung up his few items of clothing and his uniform, he made the bed and the cottage felt marginally less hostile. He changed into a T-shirt and shorts, and was immediately cooler. The bedroom window looked down onto the lawn which rolled almost seamlessly onto moorland scattered with sheep, hills and crags beyond. The view was fantastic. It was enough to lift his spirits. Waking up to that every day would be something special.

When he found a kettle and toaster, tucked away in a cupboard, it felt like a small victory. Ten minutes later he sat at the tiny kitchen table with a mug of coffee, a fig biscuit and the folders he’d been given.

A map covering his area had been included and he spread it out. Drum’s beat had been outlined and the settlements highlighted in blue. It looked as if somebody had emptied a handful of villages onto a map and hoped for the best. Fifty square miles covering Hathersage, Taplow, Hayden, Eyam, Sparlow, Grindleford, Hopewell, Tideswell, Stoney Middleton, Calver… The breath caught in his throat at that. It had to be a coincidence that Calver was inside his beat. Calver was the name of the village on his birth certificate.

The next pages contained local information. Known offenders. Addresses. Repeat callers. Community groups. Care homes. Pubs. Parks. Places where youngsters hung around. Tourist destinations. Old lead mines. Limestone caverns. Parish council meeting times. Problem addresses. Drum stopped when he recognised one heading. Vulnerable Persons. There were a lot more names underneath than he expected. Many were senior citizens, some were teenagers. Had he once been on a list like this? Probably. He swallowed hard.

He read everything carefully. A note beside one address caught his eye. Frequent reports of lights in woodland near Sparlow. Believed to be youths. No offences disclosed, so no one had been questioned or maybe not even caught. There were a number of livestock disturbances. Trespass reports at an abandoned tin mine. Lights on the moors. Drunken behaviour. Livestock attacks. Illegal dumping…

Drum rubbed his chin. It seemed a lot but there was nothing too unusual and there’d been significantly less noted for the last four months. That was odd because rural crime generally increased during the summer. Longer daylight hours, warmer weather and accessible remote properties created more opportunities for thieves and antisocial behaviour. His eyes drifted to the final page with a paperclip at the top. He turned the sheet over to see a handwritten note had been clipped onto the back.

Don’t spend time in Sparlow after dark.

Drum looked for an explanation. There wasn’t one. He turned the note over and it was blank. Was this just for him? The sort of thing bored officers did when a newcomer arrived? Some rite of passage? He fastened the note back in place with shaking fingers. He’d be stupid if he let it get to him. Now if it had said Calver… That would have really worried him.

He took another sip of coffee and shut that door in his mind. Paint. He wasn’t going to ask about painting the walls, he’d just do it. Hopefully make the place look less like temporary accommodation. And he’d stick down that strip of wallpaper. He went online and ordered everything he needed, signing up for a free trial of Amazon Prime to get delivery tomorrow. He assumed the rental agreement for this place would run until he left. He didn’t have a good credit rating because he’d been tied up for so long in operational stuff. He and his real name had been off-grid for almost two years.

Drum checked out the garage, locking the door to the cottage before he walked over, and it was useable. There were light bulbs, a few hand tools including a screwdriver, and a lawnmower. He drove the Defender inside and locked up. When he was sure everywhere was secure, all the windows of the house closed and the French doors too, all locks triple checked, he walked into Hayden. He was hoping he could buy an ice cream.

He’d not really taken much notice as he’d driven through, but he walked the length of the village and found no pub, no shop, no church, no doctor’s surgery. A butcher’s had clearly closed some years ago and nothing had replaced it. A dusty plastic pig still sat in the window. Smiling. Ugh. Drum saw no one and walked back again with no ice cream. Well, that was fun. Not.

He made himself a sandwich and took it and a bottle of water outside, along with a book and the blanket from the couch. The August sun was warm and he stripped to his boxers. First time in a long while he’d sat in the sun. He could have at Clover House but he hadn’t wanted anyone to see his scars. He didn’t want to see his scars. Lying in the sun made him forget for a while.

Drum went to bed early, feeling exhausted. It was weird having a bathroom downstairs, but he’d get used to it. As he settled under his new blue checked duvet, he realised he had no bedside light. He’d left the curtains open, but he wanted more than the light from his phone when it was dark. I need to make a list. He tapped in light, TV, bike, helmet and a lock for the bike if he bought one.

He couldn’t help but wonder if he’d done the right thing staying in the police. No one would have thought any the less of him if he hadn’t. Not that there was anyone to think any the less of him. He had no family. No friends either, not yet anyway. If he went to a gym, he might meet someone, but he’d have to bike there. That didn’t seem feasible. High Burton was too far away. Any exercise he did would have to be done here.

A gay club seemed optimistic. He’d need to go to Manchester or Sheffield for that and he had no means of getting there. There could be a bus… Maybe when he had a weekend off, he could go and stay overnight and see what one of those cities had to offer.

He already knew he wouldn’t. He was probably the only gay guy of his age in the entire area. Even if that was untrue, it wasn’t as if he could start a relationship with anyone. He wasn’t sure he was in the right head space for that. Not yet. Trust was an issue he was still struggling with.

Of course, that was not what he’d told the psychologist at Clover House. I’m looking forward to moving on with my life. Making friends. Finding a partner. Settling down. Well, that wasn’t untrue. He was looking forward to all of that, but he knew none of it was going to happen any time soon.

As he lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, unable to sleep—what a surprise—he found himself thinking about the handwritten note. Not because he necessarily thought it was serious. But somebody had gone to the trouble of writing it.

Was he in danger? There was nobody close enough to hear him if something went wrong. Once upon a time, that wouldn’t have worried him. Now it did. His phones were on the bedside table next to him. Both on charge. He was fine. Then he thought about the knives downstairs and he didn’t feel fine. Should he bring one up here? Would it help him sleep knowing it was at hand?

Fucking manage without it!

He didn’t go downstairs. He rubbed his thumb over the bracelet and closed his eyes.

Drum woke to the sound of birds calling to each other and saw he’d slept through until seven. He sat up in bed and looked out of the window. He couldn’t see much so he got up and crossed the room. Wow. Early morning sun made the view even better. Sweeping valleys and lush green farmlands lay below the heather-draped gritstone edges and limestone peaks. The place was worth living in for this alone. Drum wasn’t into climbing but he liked walking. Maybe there was a group of walkers he could join. He’d look online.

He was eating toast and drinking coffee when there was a bang on the door. The toast fell from his fingers and he put his coffee down before he dropped that too. A glance out of the window showed him it was an Amazon van. It had gone by the time he opened the door, all his purchases left on the step. He brought everything inside.

Three hours later, Drum stood in the middle of the living room, roller hanging loosely from one hand, and looked around. The walls and ceiling were still drying, but the fresh paint made the room seem much brighter. He’d taken down the living room curtains and stored them in the wardrobe of the second bedroom, and fixed the hinge. He’d painted the bedroom he was using and the bathroom.

The stale smell had gone and been replaced by that of paint. Not particularly pleasant but it would fade. For the first time since he’d arrived, the house looked less like somewhere an older person had lived and more like somewhere Drum could live.

He should have felt pleased. Instead, he felt shattered. Not physically. The painting had been easy enough. Fixing the wardrobe and sticking down the wallpaper with glue had made him happy for a moment, but his brain had motored on. Now he felt overwhelmed by the sort of hollow tiredness that usually came when he’d spent too long thinking about the past. Going over what had happened, what he could have done differently, how he could have changed the outcome… It was pointless but he couldn’t quite let go of the what ifs, not yet.

Drum washed the brushes in the kitchen sink, but threw away the roller. There was nothing left to emulsion apart from that second bedroom and he wasn’t going to do that. There probably wasn’t enough paint left anyway. He cleaned up and opened the French doors to let some air into the house.

The garden seemed bigger, the flowers brighter. He smiled at the thought of it growing overnight. A blackbird hopped on the lawn. Somewhere, a lawnmower droned. Normal sounds. Neighbour sounds. The kind of sounds that should have been reassuring. But as Drum leaned against the doorframe and watched the sunlight move across the garden, his chest tightened unexpectedly. He thought he might be about to have one of his episodes and he wrapped his fingers around his bracelet.