The Kill Call

Angels.
    He’d come away from that service with mixed feelings. Some parts of it had been moving, like the sight of so many other relatives of dead police officers. But he wasn’t so sure about the idea of turning the occasion into a spectacle, as if it was the Edinburgh Tattoo. People grieved in different ways, he supposed. Some preferred to remember their loved ones in a public way, rather than confine their feelings to private grief. Yes, emotions were sometimes easier to deal with in public, when people felt the necessity to behave properly, and not to be an embarrassment.
    At the time of the remembrance service, The Beat had been under water and impossible to reach. Hundreds of trees in the arboretum had to be replaced because of the effects of repeated flooding. Not just in winter, either. Last summer, a temporary lake had formed, drowning The Beat. Fifteen inches of water had surged across the site, washing away stakes and flattening trees.
    Ben had promised himself that he’d come back one day, and Matt and Claire had jumped on the idea with enthusiasm, much to his surprise. He shouldn’t think that they didn’t grieve too, just because they didn’t always show it. For heaven’s sake, he didn’t show it too much either, did he?
    ‘Perhaps we should go back to the visitor centre,’ Claire had said. ‘The rain is getting a bit heavy.’
    ‘In a minute,’ said Matt. ‘Give me a minute.’
    Something in the tone of his voice had sounded wrong. Matt’s back was to them, and he hardly seemed aware of the rain falling on his shoulders.
    Ben turned and walked a few yards away towards the RAF memorial. Alongside it, he saw a smaller grove – two rows of hawthorns supported by wooden posts. They looked to be young trees, seven or eight years old, maybe. They were probably intended to form an arch eventually. Each tree carried a label bearing a curious logo, with a name and number. He saw 7 Group Bedford, and 8 Group Coventry next to it. Before he could look more closely, Matt called to him from the other side of The Beat.
    ‘It’s funny,’ he said, ‘but in Dad’s day, we all believed the police were on our side. They kept us safe, protected us from criminals, all that stuff. We respected them for it. Everyone I know would have done their best to help the bobbies because of that. But now it’s changed. And I don’t know where it went wrong.’ He looked up at his brother. ‘Maybe you know, Ben.’
    Ben blinked. Where the heck had that suddenly come from? What switch had turned on the flow of his brother’s resentment so abruptly?
    He looked at Claire, but of course she’d been nodding as Matt spoke.
    ‘Well, I know exactly what you mean,’ she said. ‘It’s because the police seem to spend most of their time persecuting law-abiding people for petty infringements of the rules instead of going after the real criminals. They’re pursuing government targets and political correctness instead of chasing the bad guys.’
    ‘They do it because it’s easier, and it gets their detection rates up,’ said Matt. ‘A motorist who goes a few miles an hour over the speed limit is a nice soft target. Not to mention all those cases where people tackle yobs causing trouble. If they don’t get beaten up by the yobs –’
    ‘Or killed,’ said Claire.
    ‘Yes, or killed,’ agreed Matt, ‘then they get arrested themselves. And yet at the same time you hear stories of police officers standing around doing risk assessments while someone is dying. It’s ludicrous. I can tell you, Dad would never have done that. He would never have hung back if he thought he might save someone’s life.’
    ‘No.’ Claire was quiet for a moment. ‘I suppose you hear this all the time, Ben.’
    ‘Pretty much.’
    When it had come time to leave the arboretum, Claire insisted on taking a photograph of her two brothers on her digital camera. She posed them near the rain-streaked windows to get the best light, gesturing them to get closer together until their shoulders were touching. Ben tried to smile, but could sense that his brother was as stiff as he was. Not the best family portrait, probably. But Claire didn’t seem to notice, flashing off a few shots before pulling up her hood and leading them out into the rain.
    ‘All right,’ Matt said. ‘I suppose it’s just today, visiting this place. Thinking about Dad. About how much things have changed in those few years. He would never have been able to live with