Sunday, June 5, 2022
🌈Sunday's Safe Word Shelf🌈: Badge of Loyalty by Jude Tresswell
County Durham Quad #1
Mike Angells is an openly gay CID inspector based in North East England. There are three men in his life: Raith Balan, Phil Roberts and Ross Whitburn. Mike is particularly close to Ross.
Following a routine but significant investigation into thefts of farm machinery, Mike investigates the suspicious death of a footballer. The suspect’s father threatens to expose a crime Ross committed many years earlier, unless Mike withholds evidence that would incriminate his son. Mike must choose which badge he is loyal to—the one he was given when he joined the Force or the tattoo he wears that symbolises polyamory. His decision leads to a brutal conclusion when two men who bear grudges, an ex-con and Balan’s ex-lover, combine to exact revenge.
Interspersed with Mike’s story are comments made by Raith, Phil and Ross about Mike, each other, and the nature of their polyamorous relationship. It works for them, but, as Phil explains, they work at it.
Neither full-on erotica nor hard-boiled crime, and with many light moments, this is a story about love, hatred, and the price which is paid for loyalty.
**Warning: Adult Content**
CHAPTER 1
Phil
There's an Irish song about an angel that loved a human. I don't know anything about the deity the angel worked for, other than it was a bloody cruel one. It stripped the angel of its wings. I like to think that they were rainbow coloured.
The problem was, the angel wasn't meant to love the clay. What happens, though, when the clay loves the angel? That song is still playing.
The painting I'm looking at isn't a typical Raith Balan. It's a scene in a leafy garden. As such, it's markedly different from the wild waterfalls Raith paints for his own satisfaction and from the erotic ceramics that he sculpts primarily for the pleasure of others.
There are four men seated round a pub-style table, a parasol advertising lager unsuccessfully staving off the heat; all four men look hot. Raith himself sits on the left. He's leaning forward, talking urgently with animation. Obviously, one can't infer that from the painting. Though Raith's work is admirable — or so they tell me, anyway — he hasn't managed to make it speak yet, other than to the emotions, of course! But I know, because I'm the figure on the right holding a half-empty bottle of brown ale. Probably brown ale. Raith remembers the details of that day in the garden with greater clarity than I do. But then, Raith can recall most things he sees, and his hand can reproduce exactly what is held in his memory.
Ross is seated between us, worry adding to his thirty-something years. You can see the concern in the knit of his eyebrows and in the tightness of the muscles in his neck and bare arms. Concern for the fourth man, whose face Raith has never painted. Mike Angells, the man all three of us love and who, somehow, manages to love all three of us. Raith and I both know that we aren't the ones he'd risk his life for, though. If only Ross had had a different surname, not one named after a town in northeast England. Whitburn-Howe. That's Ross's surname. He usually only uses the 'Whitburn', and that was the part that caused us so much trouble. Within bell-ringing distance of Sunderland, and it rang one bell too many for our comfort.
* * *
"Anybody we know being reinflicted on society this week, Ron?" asked Superintendent Flaxby.
"One we might want to keep an eye on, yes," Detective Chief Inspector Fortune replied. "Remember seven years ago, that shooting at Merton's warehouse on Cantrill Industrial Estate?"
"I certainly do. The Babcock brothers. Angells' case."
"That's the one. Luke Babcock got sent down for ten years, along with his brother, but he's being let out early. The brother's got another year to do."
The super nodded. "I'll worry more this time next year when the two of them are running round loose again," he said phlegmatically.
"One for the inspector to lose a bit of sleep about, I'd have thought, though," said the DCI.
Flaxby could almost hear the glee in the chief inspector's voice as he offered his news. Luke Babcock had always maintained that he was merely a bystander, innocently caught up in a vicious attack on a warehouse security guard. According to his lawyer, he'd even tried to stop the attack. The judge had had none of it. Angells' case was technically sound and the evidence was watertight, so Babcock had been led away swearing not-so-sweet revenge.
"Does he know?" asked Flaxby.
"Not yet. I was going to tell him when he came in."
I bet you were, thought Flaxby.
"I need to see him anyway. I'll tell him myself," he said aloud, adding, too quietly for Fortune to hear him, "I'm not giving you the pleasure, you jealous sod."
The first thing Flaxby did when he got into his office was telephone the governor at Blay Fenn Prison. Ten minutes later, he felt fairly reassured. If Babcock did have thoughts of retribution, he hadn't been voicing them recently. But then, you never knew, and for that very reason, you couldn't allow yourself to worry much. For Angells' sake, though, he'd have liked to have had the bastard watched for a week and, hopefully, seen him off his turf; but cuts were cuts, and he didn't have the officers to sort out the urgent tasks clogging up his in-tray, his desk, his chairs, his room ... let alone the non-essential ones.
It would probably be all right. The badge was a great protector. Anyway, there were more pressing things to think about. So he left a message on Inspector Angells' desk. See me when you get in.
Mike Angells, pronounced with a hard 'g' like go and get. Not that hard 'g's meant anything to Raith, who habitually addressed most folk as 'babe' and, knowing an angel when he saw one, preferred to call all five foot eleven of Mike his 'Angel Baby'. At work, his nicknames were less flattering. As long as the super was out of earshot, Ron Fortune called him 'Angela'. Mike always ignored the provocation — a wise move, as Detective Chief Inspector Fortune was his immediate superior in the Tees, Tyne and Wear CID.
Fortune and Angells disliked and distrusted each other, but while Mike had the self-discipline, respectfulness and courtesy to subjugate personal dislike to professionalism, Fortune had no such scruples.
Suspicious of those he still referred to as poofs and queers, and most definitely not the face of modern policing, he envied his younger colleague's standing with the super. Fortune was furious to think that, with the upper echelons bending over backwards to nail their rainbow colours to the mast, kowtowing to the law if not to the zeitgeist, he would find his path to superintendent blocked, whereas 'a fucking sodomite like Angela' would doubtless make it sooner or later. Probably sooner: he was rising steadily. So Fortune made sure that, if he had to be ordered around by a fucking fairy in the future, he'd order the slack-arse around now.
Flaxby knew all this, and would have liked to have Fortune transferred, but in a shrinking force, with recruitment at an all-time low and experienced cops retiring early, he needed all the skill and knowledge he could get to keep his Warbridge division running smoothly. So, he deflected the slings and arrows whenever he was able to, and it was he, not Fortune, who requested Angells' presence on that particular morning.
There was a knock on Flaxby's office door, and Angells pushed the door open.
"You wanted me, sir?"
"Come in. Sit down, man."
Flaxby waited until Angells had deposited the pile of paperwork that took up both available chairs onto just one of them.
"Do you want me to take some of this stuff off you, sir?" he asked, sitting down.
"You mean you've nothing better to do, Mike?" Flaxby said, smiling.
"Wouldn't go as far as that. If it helps, though."
"No, but thanks. Something's come up. Mike, what's the word on the street about these farm machinery thefts?"
"Not being funny, sir, but would that be on the street in general, or are you specifyin' my Street and gossip at the Tunhope Arms?"
The stretch of narrow, winding road that ran from Tunhope on the 689 through to Tunhead at the head of Tun Beck was called 'The Street', and the Arms was the only pub for miles. Thus it was the inspector's local, if a local can be three miles away from home as the crow flies and ten if you stick to poorly maintained tarmac.
"Your Street. Much being said?"
"I'd say the farmers are worried, sir. We've had nuthin' taken up the Tun yet, but the farms to the east of ours have been hit and that's gettin' too close for comfort."
"What sort of stuff's going?"
"Old stuff, as far as I know. The only kind of machinery these hill farmers have. They can't afford all the new gear. If the goods are endin' up abroad, which is what the thinkin' is, the thieves want the old stuff. Mechanics not electronics. Things you can fix with a screwdriver and a bit of gaffer tape, not a load of fancy engine management linked to a computer. There's quads gone too, though," he added. "At least three that I know of, and that hits these farmers really hard."
"What's security like?" the super inquired.
"Well, non-existent usually," the inspector replied. "There's all this advice goin' around from us and from the insurance companies — perimeter fencin', CCTV, security lightin' — but it costs an arm and a leg. Mostly, the farms rely on their dogs and geese to tell 'em if sumthin's up. And they daren't take their guns to anyone now. Not that I'd be wantin' them to do that, mind."
"So what's the feeling in the pub?" asked Flaxby.
"Oh, you know how it is, sir. City lowlife. Boro, Sunderland ... Newcastle maybe."
"You think so too?"
"Maybe. I'd like to know a bit more first," said Angells with his characteristic caution when faced with a lack of evidence. "It just doesn't sound like opportunists to me. It's not exactly the same as nippin' in and nippin' off with the family jewels while the owner's havin' a night out at the Metro, is it?"
He was referring to the Metro Centre — a large leisure complex on the outskirts of Gateshead. It was a lengthy drive from the becks on the Wear but there wasn't anywhere as large and as exciting that lay closer.
"You've got to know how to drive a tractor, and they don't exactly do the ton on the motorway, do they?" Angells added. "That's if they are driven away. From what I've heard, they just seem to vanish."
"OK, Mike," said Flaxby. "This farm thing has fallen into our lap. Don't want it — got a hundred other things to do — but there it is. The chief con and I went to a big meeting about these thefts yesterday, and she's come back full of ideas. Seems like you're one of 'em. She wants to see you, so ... off you go upstairs."
"Now?"
"Right now."
Angells rose, but as he went to open the door, Flaxby called him back.
"Look, son," he said. "One more thing. Luke Babcock's out this week. I'm not expecting any problem — talk is easy, action's a hell of a lot harder — but, just in case, keep my personal number on your speed dial. One word — Babcock — and I'll get onto it and track you. OK?"
"OK, sir. No worries. Thank you."
"Oh, and you might as well take that pile of stuff with you, seeing as you offered!" Flaxby said lightly. "Computers seem to generate paperwork, not cut it down."
Angells smiled and returned for an armful of files before going out of the room and shutting the door behind him. He wasn't fooled by the super's parting levity though. First he checked he had Flaxby's number on his phone, and then he went to the chief constable's office.
* * *
Mike Angells, Raith's Angel Baby, was no sour, dour, angst-ridden misery! He'd got into all the normal childhood scrapes, spent the usual number of hours in A&E with a frantic mum as medics checked limbs damaged in climbs and tumbles, pubbed, clubbed and danced the night away, and had never had to come 'out', having never made much of an issue of being 'in'. He'd known he preferred Sam Mitford's company to that of any other kid in his class and when, mid-teens, he started to see that their mutual fondness went deeper than the need for a mate to kick a ball around with for an hour after tea, he accepted the realisation with the same good-humoured shrug of his shoulders as he accepted most other things. Most things — for, when he was eighteen years old, six months off his A levels, his father died and he got his first inkling of something Raith had known for years, that life wasn't always fair.
Bob Angells had worked in the stone industry, a quarryman loading the local 'marble' into trucks and sometimes driving the lorries himself. One November afternoon, after three days solid rain, the stretch of road he was driving over subsided, and he was buried under twelve tons of limestone.
With three younger sisters and a younger brother, an elderly grandparent living in the house as well, and bread to be put on the table....
"It doesn't brook no argument," Mike had told his mum. "There's still work over Kielder way. Not on the reservoir itself. They're buildin' this tunnel to transfer water through to Frosterley so that the towns on the Wear don't go short in the summer. I can get there on Dad's bike. I'm quittin' school."
And so, for the next two years, he developed his social skills and his muscles on a construction site, travelling the only way a carless youngster in a bus-free world could: on two wheels, his two powered by a 600cc engine. Whenever he had a day off, he rode to Durham, to the hall of residence where Sam was living while he studied archaeology, and they'd spend their free hours exploring the hills and the coast and the country pubs before finding somewhere quiet and secluded where, for an hour or two, they lay closeted in each other's arms. No two ways about it: the two men were in love, and they were still in love, four years later, when Sam died too.
Waiting for Mike to bring the bike round in the car park of Emelda's, a gay nightclub close to the Metro Centre. Ploughed into by the drunk driver of a Merc, and dead on arrival at the hospital three-quarters of an hour later. So Sam had been buried in the little churchyard in the village where he had been christened twenty-five years earlier, and Mike applied himself to work with a single-mindedness that left as little room as possible for thinking about loss and what might have been. Fortunately, the job he was in by then didn't leave much time over for thinking.
The Kielder Project over, he'd joined the police and done his two-year probation. He'd proved his competence, completed a stint of 'ordinary' police work and then moved to the RPU, the Road Policing Unit, patrolling the busy north-east section of the M1/A1 on a big, hefty looking BMW R1200, twice the size of his own crimson Yamaha. But when government cutbacks affected policing, as well as other local public services, the RPU was scaled down and, thinking ahead, Mike had applied to CID, been interviewed, been accepted and found he had the money to go where he wanted. The problem was that the person he wanted to go where he wanted with was lying in Tunhead graveyard.
Jude Tresswell lives in south-east England but was born and raised in the north, and that’s where her heart is. She is ace, and has been married to the same man for many years. She feels that she understands compromise. She supports Liverpool FC, listens to a lot of blues music and loves to write dialogue.
Badge of Loyalty #1
County Durham Quad Series
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