Random Acts of Unkindness by Jacqueline Ward

mirror.
    Just as I pull off I see it. A small bundle of fur, tied with blue garden string to my back bumper. I jump out and run around to the back of my car. I know before I get there that it’s Percy.
    He’s mangled and his back legs are twisted, and covered in dust and blood. I pick him up hoping that he’s still alive, but, of course, he’s cold and dead. Oh my God. My poor cat. My little friend. All I really have left. I wrap him in an old fleece I have in the boot and lodge him behind the spare wheel. I get back in the car and turn the key, checking myself for the panic or fear that I felt at Bessy’s. There is none. Only a droning determination and a deep anger.
    It’s happening again. Just like last time, and on the first day of the operation. Someone is out to get me. Us. Probably already got Aiden. Is that what this is about? Take Aiden to get at me? So it is my fault? I’m always like this when I feel guilty. Always working the blame round to myself. That way I can reconcile the hurt and the emptiness.
    I turn right and see the black BMW pull up behind me, bumper to bumper. Probably one of Connelly’s men. I take the registration number and commit it to memory. Just in case. I drive back to the station, slowly, intentionally trying to catch the driver’s eye in my mirror. That’s the sort of woman I am. Straightforward. I don’t hold with secrecy or beating around the bush. When I’m pissed off everyone knows it.
    As I cross the security gate and the BMW slopes slowly by, I stare at the man behind the wheel. Then I take Percy out of the boot of my car, cradling him gently, and carry him into the operations room. I march into Jim Stewart’s office.
    ‘Exhibit A in this operation’s payback. My dead cat. It was tied to the back bumper of my car when I was on obs with Mike.’
    The operations room is perfectly quiet. Jim nods.
    ‘Sorry, Jan. That’s awful. Let’s log it.’ It wasn’t the response I was expecting. He fetches an incident report form from his filing cabinet and writes the detail at the top. ‘So the cat was alive and well when you left this morning?’ I get a mental picture of Aiden, age eight, opening the box containing baby Percy. The delight on his face.
    ‘Yes. Alive this morning. Fed him just before I went to work.’
    Jim looks up.
    ‘Did you let the cat out?’
    I sigh.
    ‘No. We don’t have a cat flap. He was in the house last time I saw him. On Aiden’s bed.’
    I feel a lump in my throat. Percy. Didn’t I hear him just before I left? But how could I have? He had definitely been in the house last time I saw him. Jim continues.
    ‘Have you been home?’
    I shake my head.
    ‘No.’
    ‘OK. Come on then. I’ll come with you, and a couple of uniformed. It’ll give me a chance to have a chat with you.’
    He picks up the phone and arranges for the dog handlers to come and get Percy. We walk through the car park to my car.
    ‘They’ll have him cremated and you can decide if you want the ashes or anything.’
    I nod. ‘Mmm. Yes. You seem like quite an expert.’
    He laughs. ‘Long service record. Two dogs and three cats gone. No children as yet.’ He stops dead. ‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. And why I’m coming with you. A body’s been found, up at the Clough. Yesterday. A young man.’
    I turn to look at him.
    ‘Is it . . .’
    ‘We don’t know. He had no ID on him. He was naked when he was found.’
    I nod slowly.
    ‘OK. Let’s go. But you’d better drive.’

CHAPTER FIVE
    I can’t breathe. I’ve seen dead people before, but none of them are potentially my son. Jim Stewart’s talking to a uniformed officer I don’t recognise up the corridor.
    I know what happens here. It’s one of the few things that scares me. I’m fairly used to seeing dead bodies in morgues. Desensitized, maybe. But post-mortems, autopsies, somehow they’re so final.
    The body dissected, organs removed, clinically weighted, all the bits counted, then put back