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1
If I had known in the beginning what I know now, would I have made the same choices?
I’m a police officer standing in the woods under cover of darkness, burying a body, hoping that this damp earthy smell will hide everything, all the crimes, all the lies. Mud on my hands. Blood on my hands. Hoping that in this case, justice will not be done.
I always would have listed honesty and integrity as my two top qualities, top scoring on my police interviews, quickly promoted to Detective Sergeant. Always a morally driven officer, fiercely loyal to the job.
A devoted, steadfast wife always trying to do good.
I am Detective Sergeant Jen Towers.
DS Jen Towers. Nottinghamshire Police Officer.
In Sherwood Forest burying a body.
Honesty and integrity.
Where are they now?
2
Being a police officer was everything I had ever wanted. Doing the right thing was important to me. Helping people was important to me. I had this dumb fantasy that being a police officer would mean catching the bad guys, getting them off the street, making the world a safer place. But it doesn’t. Not really.
I was naive and fresh faced when I joined at eighteen. Now, twelve years in, I often wonder what the point is. Long hours, little appreciation and the satisfaction of actual ‘justice’ is rare. Just having moved from Rape to Drug Squad, I was so used to criminals serving little or no time, then getting out and getting straight back into it.
The police force is supposed to be equal opportunities now, but it still isn’t. I’ve seen male officers of questionable intelligence and ability promoted before outstanding female officers and I kept ending up having to work on operations run by these idiots.
I was busy on Operation Phoenix in August 2018. Operation Phoenix was an investigation into the huge drug problem in the city and the criminal at the centre of it all- Daniel Lorenzo. Lorenzo was suspected of numerous crimes but he had a huge team around him and he was as slippery as he was charming. We had known for years his huge illegal substances business in the city had enabled him to fund organised crime but nobody had managed to get the evidence we needed to convict him of anything significant. Lorenzo always said the police were useless. And we were, we were impotent. He was doing exactly as he wanted regardless of the law and getting away with it. Daniel Lorenzo was laughing at us.
I was thirty years old and I had become numb to everything in my world but hadn’t even realised it. My husband Simon was someone I was growing more and more distant from. He was an accountant at a big firm in the city. He used to run every morning before work. He has always been good looking and financially stable and years ago these were qualities I thought would make a good husband. I used to think having a husband was important, a measure of success. I thought being a police officer and being married were what I wanted in life. Weren’t they?
We had been together 5 years and no longer had anything to say to one another. Many a long evening spent existing in the same house. Sometimes he felt like a stranger to me. Sharing a bed, his hot body and lean muscles next to me, the void between us getting gradually bigger. We had a lovely house on the outskirts of the city. A desirable area close to a couple of nice bars that we had once thought we might go to, but never did.
We didn’t have children, which I was glad of in the end. I’m not sure I’m a maternal person really, and I never really wanted to push that upon my hypothetical children the way my un-maternal mother did to me. There was a time that we tried, perhaps half heartedly, to create new life. That’s what you do when you get married right? But it never happened for us.
I didn’t realise what was missing. I’m not sure I realised anything was missing. That’s just the average person’s life at thirty right? Hating your job, beginning to hate your spouse? I looked at Simon sometimes across the sofa, typing fervently on his laptop, concentration across his handsome features and I wondered what I was doing there. It took a complete stranger to breathe life back into me and little did I know that she was to start a ball rolling that would rock the very foundations that my life was built upon.
Her name was Lyra.
I went to the gym after a long day on Operation Phoenix as usual and that was the first time I saw her. Lifting weights. She was the kind of woman that people look at. Men thinking they are looking discreetly at the beautiful lines of her body but I could see the hunger in their eyes. Women looking with envy, knowing that however many hours they spend training they will never look like her. Tall, dark ponytail swinging, athletic, with her bronzed muscles working hard. A fire burned in her blue eyes and it was that intensity that dazzled me. People see women like her. They don’t see me.
Which is why I was so surprised when she saw me. She looked at me as though looking into my soul and I had to look away to escape. Our gym work clashing as we continued an awkward dance through the weights section as the only two women in there. I loaded the bar for bench press and re-tied my messy bun higher so it wouldn’t press on the the bench when I lay down. I looked in the big mirrors as I did this, I saw myself and I saw her. I wished in that moment that I just wasn’t so ordinary. Sweaty. Red. I go red when I train. I don’t know why I cared. I was straight wasn’t I? Mostly. Perhaps curious. Perhaps there had been moments in my life where I had been curious, where I might have tried sex with a woman if it had been on offer. But it never had. So there I was, straight, married and thirty years old and intensely attracted to this woman.
The rough iron of the bar in my hands was a reassuring normality. A deep breath in and out as I pushed its weight up away from my body, repeating the action, getting stronger.
I finished my set and sat up. And there she was, long lean muscles in all their shimmering glory.
“Hi,” she said, her smile lighting the room. “I’m Lyra. Do you want a hand?”
If it was possible to go redder and stutter, I did.
“Sure,” I said.
I wanted something. I was still unsure what it was. But she seemed somehow magical to me, even then, and I wanted to be around her.
We finished our session together. I watched her body move and her effort as she lifted. People look at Lyra. I looked at Lyra. We put weights away, we wiped down benches. We went to the changing rooms to shower and I had such a weird feeling thinking about her naked in the neighbouring cubicle.
Jesus.
What was I doing?
I sighed and tipped my head back allowing the steaming water to rush over my face and down my body in a futile attempt to drown my derailed thoughts.
“Jen, can I borrow your shampoo?” Lyra asked.
I passed the shampoo bottle blindly under the thin cubicle wall separating us and as our soapy hands touched electricity ran through me. I got out of the shower and dried and dressed quickly. I felt so uncomfortable with these unfamiliar feelings.
We hadn’t really spoken much but she was so familiar straight away. So friendly and warm. I sat on the changing room bench gazing vacantly anywhere except at her and mindlessly running a brush through my tangled mousey mane.
She came up behind me wearing a black bra and tight jeans left unbuttoned at the top, her taut stomach and full breasts madly seductive.
“Do you want to go for a drink with me sometime?” Lyra asked so casually.
No.
No.
No. Absolutely not. I’m straight and I’m married.
The word yes spilled from my lips. Yes Lyra.
Was it a date? Did she just want to be friends? Who was she?
I had a million questions I kept to myself as I gave her my number.
Yes Lyra.
