Excerpt
“Control’ll love us bringing in a no-name on a Sunday.” Becca got back into the passenger side of the Astra.
Freddie drove. No blue lights needed. But something told him this wouldn’t be another quick tick-box caution and release. Because despite Becca’s best efforts to build a rapport with the lad on their way to the station, he remained mute. So when they arrived, Freddie guided him out of the car, through the secure doors, nodding to the sergeant behind the desk. Becca followed, filling in the details on the tablet, already ticking boxes and logging the time of arrival.
“Male, mid-to-late teens,” she said. “Brought in under Section five, suspected common assault and disturbing the peace. No ID given.”
Mick, the custody sergeant built like a wardrobe with the patience of a saint, arched a brow. “No name, huh?”
“He’s not talking.” Freddie stepped back.
Mick leant on the counter. “Alright, son. One last chance. What’s your name?”
The boy stared dead ahead. Not angry. Blank. Silent.
Mick sighed and gestured to the back. “Cell Two. He’s under eighteen by the look of him, so I’ll get Youth Services in. Can one of you pull a photo from school records or Missing Persons, see if we can get an ID?”
Becca nodded, already scrolling through the tablet.
Freddie lingered for a second, a tug at the back of his mind not letting him move on. But eventually, he turned and headed back out into the corridor. Statements needed taking. Paperwork needed drowning in.
Which he did for the next hour and was halfway through writing up the incident report when the door creaked open, and DS Bowen stuck her head in.
“Webb. Interview room two. We’ve ID’d the lad from this morning. Minor. His appropriate adult’s arrived. You were the arresting officer, so I want you in there.”
Freddie rubbed his eyes, groaning inwardly. “Alright. Gimme a sec to log off.” He closed the report mid-sentence and stood, stretching the knot out of his shoulders. “Is he talking yet?”
Bowen shook her head. “Not a peep. Maybe having you in there’ll jog something loose. Name’s Alfie Carter.”
Freddie froze. The name snagged in his brain like a thorn catching in cloth.
“Alfie Carter?”
The words echoed, meaningless at first. Until something clicked. A long-forgotten connection tugging at the edges of memory. It made little sense. Couldn’t be. But the feeling had already settled deep in his gut, crawling under his skin.
He followed Bowen down the corridor, the world narrowing to the tunnel of strip lights and the hollow hum of the station. The distant voices faded. Even his own breath felt far away.
They approached Interview Room Two, and Bowen reached for the door. But before they went in, Freddie peered in through the reinforced glass.
Fuck.
There was no other word for it, and it slammed through his skull with the force of a dropped weight.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
His heart kicked hard, each beat thudding out those curse words in synch. Because sitting in that room, to the left of the boy he’d arrested, was Nathan Carter.
Freddie hadn’t seen him in over a decade. Fifteen years, give or take, since everything had collapsed. Since promises had cracked beneath the pressure of real life, fear, and timing that was never quite right. And yet, in one glance, it was as if no time had passed at all.
Nathan’s lighter hair was cropped shorter now, almost a buzz cut. Or growing out of one. His shoulders broader. Still built as though he carried the weight of everyone else before his own. That same posture. Tight. Guarded. Composed. He hadn’t changed. But there was a shift now. A break in the armour. And as he sat hunched, bouncing one leg beneath the table, hands clenched in his lap, he looked worried.
No, scared.
The crack in Freddie’s chest, the one he’d papered over with work and quick fucks, split wide open as if it hadn’t ever healed.
Bowen paused at the threshold, nudging the door with her shoulder. “You coming in?”
Freddie didn’t move at first. Couldn’t. His body felt like stone, held together by instinct and uniform alone. For a second, he wasn’t a copper. Wasn’t anything. Just a man standing outside a room that had cracked open a past he wasn’t ready to face.
Then Nathan looked up.Fifteen years of silence shattered in that glance. And the breath Freddie had been holding slipped quietly from his lungs.
