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‘That’s right,’ Bradford says, before Ryan can.
‘Okay – you’re Echo.’ She looks straight at Ryan. ‘And Mike.’
‘Mike?’ Ryan says. ‘Sorry, no. I’m Ryan. Ryan Hiles.’
A flutter of Bradford’s eyelashes. A frisson that Ryan fails to understand. A beat. And then the room erupts.
‘Echo Mike,’ Bradford says, laughing, as though it is a punchline. He has one hand on the doorframe and one hand on his stomach. ‘Did you not learn about the phonetic alphabet at the Manchester academy, or do they not teach that these days?’
‘Oh yes, yes,’ Ryan says, his cheeks hot. ‘No, I did, I just – sorry, I thought … Mike confused me for just a second there.’
‘Right,’ the sergeant says, clearly unimpressed at the unbridled laughter. Just as it stops, it begins again, a wave coming from where CID are clustered. Great.
‘Echo Mike two four five,’ Bradford says, clearly trying to move on. He moves towards Ryan. ‘I’ll do the first response, then let you pick up the second,’ he adds, hurrying them out of the briefing room. Ryan daren’t ask what he means.
They walk down a green-carpeted corridor that smells of hoovering. They reach a locker and Bradford hands Ryan a radio. ‘All right. That’s yours. Calls come in like this: Echo Mike, your vehicle number. You respond with your collar number – yours is 2648, from your shoulder, right?’
‘Okay,’ Ryan says. ‘Okay.’ Every officer spends their first two years on 999 calls. Anything could come in. A burglary. A murder.
‘Right. Great,’ Bradford says. ‘Let’s go.’
He makes a gesture which says both This way, please and Christ, I hope you’re not a fucking idiot, and Ryan walks back out through the reception and into the rain.
‘This is EM two four five, all right, like Zamo said?’ Bradford says, gesturing to the police car. The stripes. The lights. Ryan can’t stop looking at it.
‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Sure.’ He opens the passenger seat and gets in. It smells of old cigarettes.
‘Echo Mike two four five, two four five from Echo,’ says the radio.
‘Echo from Mike two four five, go ahead,’ Bradford says tonelessly back. He hasn’t turned the engine on yet, is still twanging the gear stick. Next, he checks the lights work, hits a huge button on the dashboard which bathes them in blue. Ryan sits with his legs crossed in the footwell, listening to the radio.
‘Yes, thanks. We’ve got reports of an elderly male who appears drunk and is being offensive to passers-by.’
Ryan checks his watch. It’s five past eight in the morning.
‘Echo from Mike two four five, that’s received, on our way.’ Bradford finally starts the car’s engine and puts it into gear. ‘It’ll be Old Sandy,’ he remarks.
Ryan, terrified that there is also a letter of the police alphabet hidden in this sentence, says nothing.
‘Homeless guy, nice guy,’ Bradford says, checking his rear-view mirror as he pulls out. ‘We’ll just probably give him another warning. Call an ambo if he’s in a really bad way. Vodka’s his thing. Drinks pints and pints of it. Amazing constitution, really.’
Ryan watches the traffic as they wait at a set of lights. It is a totally different experience to driving his civilian car. You’d be forgiven for thinking everyone was an exemplary driver; it’s like something from The Truman Show, everyone acting. Hands at ten and two. Eyes straight ahead.
‘Amazing how well behaved everybody is,’ Ryan says, and Bradford says nothing. Ryan keeps thinking about Old Sandy and his vodka. And, of course, about his own brother. ‘What’s his history?’ Ryan says. ‘Old Sandy’s?’
‘No idea.’
‘Wonder if we could ask.’
‘Ha,’ Bradford says, his eyes looking straight ahead. ‘Yeah – if we did that for everyone, we’d be fucking heroes, right?’
‘Right,’ Ryan says softly. The rain has smudged the lines outside to a soft blur, the streets reflecting brake lights and the white skies.
‘First rule of the job: almost all 999 calls are boring or involve idiots. Usually both,’ Bradford says flatly. ‘You can’t save idiots.’
‘Okay, great,’ Ryan says sarcastically.
‘Second rule: the new recruits are always far too soft.’
