COLIN BRADFORD
NIGHT AND SNOW
It was late. Much later than it should have been, but Colin had lost track of time at work, and now it was dark, late and cold under the snow as he rushed back home. The young man shook himself at the door to his apartment, getting rid of most of the snow he had collected along the way before he could enter.
When he walked through the door, he heard the familiar clicking sound of tiny little nails on the wooden floor, and he only had time to take off his hat, coat and messenger bag before Hera appeared on the other end of the not-so-big entrance.
As soon as she saw him, the dog whined excitedly and ran to him, jumping up and down to celebrate his return. Despite his obvious and deep tiredness, Colin could not just stay unmoved by that, and he chuckled faintly as he petted her.
Hera and he had been together for three years already. She was a blue Pitbull, a breed that often terrified whoever he happened to pass while walking her, but the young man had always made sure that she was the sweetest girl there was.
“Hi, Hera.” He said, bending to a crouch.
The dog nestled herself against his side, and when he lost his balance, she rested her head on his legs comfortably. Colin snorted and leaned back against the wall, not actually feeling like moving just yet.
Today had been long. It was late. He was exhausted.
He could spend ten minutes on the floor with his dog, even with the lights off.
“Sorry I didn’t come home earlier, girl.” He said gently, scratching Hera between her ears. “I got caught up with work.”
Hera sighed, apparently still comfortable.
“It’s not even that I got caught up, you know?” The young man leaned his head back against the wall, staring at a ceiling he could not quite distinguish in the dark room – not that it mattered. “We’ve got this case, and it’s driving me insane.”
The great thing about having a canine friend was that he could tell her anything and she did not judge him.
Of course, the sad thing about having a canine friend also was the fact that she could not comment on his situation and provide valuable advice that would help him. He was secretly convinced that his dog was probably a clever one, and she surely had great ideas that could save him.
“It’s like I’m obsessed with it, you know?” He said, looking down at Hera; she looked up to look at him, but in the dark, it was hard for them to meet each other’s gazes with absolute certainty.
Colin sighed, his fingers gently drawing meaningless figures on the dog’s coat. The young man felt lost and confused, and it did not feel good, no matter how hard he tried to cheer up.
It simply did not work.
“I don’t know if I’m going insane and making up the intuition that I’m on the right track.” He whispered, more to himself than to Hera, this time. “What if I’m following ghosts, thinking they’re a trail of smoke? If I’m wrong, we don’t have anything, and we’ll have waisted an enormous amount of time, all because of me.” He shook his head. “And it’s really on me, too, you know? Because not even Kit thinks the Serpent Society is behind all this.” He sighed again. “But I can’t let go.”
His only saving grace was that they would not have lost everything, should his lead prove to be rotten and senseless. As a matter of fact, the rest of the team had already started interrogating the relatives and closed ones of Alfred Hughes and Viola Wood, so they would have some material to work with.
But his heart was not in it.
“I can’t let go.” He repeated.
Hera whined and grunted sympathetically, and Colin smiled sadly in the dark. He petted her a moment longer before slowly pushing her away and getting back up, not quite in the mood to be as pathetic as he felt he looked like.
He wanted to go to bed and wake up when they had found their murderer.
That sounded like a solid plan to him.
“Come on, Girl.” He told his dog. “Time for dinner.”
That did the trick and lifted her spirits too, at least. Sometimes, he wished he could be a dog, too. Life sounded simpler that way.
Hera followed him to the kitchen with more enthusiasm that he could ever muster, and Colin sorted them both dinner. One might have thought that he was being a little pathetic indeed, having a date with his dog when he could have gone out with his friends and colleagues, but the young man was rather content with that company.
He did not think he would be the best partner tonight – he felt too gloomy for anything merry.
Ultimately, he still found himself wondering what Kit might have been doing at this hour, on a Friday night. Even if he had declined the invitation, Colin did not think that it had stopped his best friend from going out in a pub.
Knowing Kit, too, he was probably surrounded with lovely women who wanted to know everything about his scar, and possibly try to heal him, too. No matter how much it unnerved his friend in real life, when he had the possibility to score a night with a woman, Kit usually lowered his standards regarding what was acceptable and not acceptable discussion.
After her dinner, Hera went back to him, sitting at his feet while he was lounging back in his couch with his food on his lap. He was a slower eater than her, had always been, and she looked at him with as much adoration as she looked at his meal – it never ceased to make him laugh.
“Next time, I’ll bring Kit with me. He’s a nicer companion than me, girl.” Colin told her.
It would save his best friend yet another heartbreak, too. While he loved women – and women loved him – he tended to give his heart too fast, too much, too intensely. In that, Colin truly was no one to tell, though.
He was not much better.
Eventually, thinking about Kit and his Friday night made him wonder about Clare and her Friday night. He did not know what the young woman usually busied her free nights with – it was strange too. In a way, he felt close to her, because they worked together and were paired up on the same case, but at the same time, he knew virtually nothing about her. The climate they had to evolve in at the police station really did not make it easy for her to open up.
He really did not blame her on that. He, too, would clam up if anything he said could be turned against him as a weapon before he was even done with his sentence.
That his father was not doing anything to help her was beyond him. The way he had not even tried to defend her in front of Mayor Parson, playing along with the idea that she might be a clerk… Colin had not managed to stop himself from correcting them, too. There was nothing wrong with being a clerk, a secretary, or an archivist like Marlene. But the fact was that Clare was not.
She was an inspector, and she deserved to be considered as such.
As always, Colin felt confused whenever he let his thoughts wander towards the young woman. Clare was… a mystery to him. She was lovely and sweet, but her judgment and her resilience also told him the story of a woman who had been through a lot of hardship to have such a thick protective shield around her. The very fact that she had travelled all the way from New York City was already an indication that this woman had a drive like no other.
But was he the only one who could see that?
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
And why was his heart beating so fast at the thought of her looking at him across the open space, from her desk to his, and eventually giving him a smile – those were rare. He treasured them all, and he felt like a fool.
It was not like him to have a crush. He was usually too involved in his work to either notice a potential significant other, or – more often than not – tended to sometimes ignore them in favour of his cases and investigations.
In short, he was better off alone, because he did not want to hurt anyone. It would not be fair on whoever decided to give him a chance of fall in love with him.
The young man chuckled at the thought, and Hera perked up.
“You know, I think you would actually like Clare.” He told her, and the dog tilted her head to the side. “She’s righteous and strong. And clever.”
And so mysterious and tantalizing that she had become some sort of impersonation of temptation in his mind.
He did not understand those feelings, this attraction…
But he did not fight them either.
“And pretty, too.” He continued. “She’s the type of woman you hold dear in your heart. One of those you don’t want to disappoint.”
There was lying the true node of his moral struggle, he thought. He did not want to disappoint Clare, and he was doing everything wrong to achieve that goal, it seemed to him. He was afraid, in a way, because if he did not manage to find even the tiniest proof backing his claim – and something more than the rumours that Elaine Williams had told him – he would have failed completely.
Just like he was highly confused about what he felt in his heart whenever he thought of Clare Hampshire, Colin found himself bemused by how little he understood why he needed her approval so badly.
In a way, he perhaps did not want to know, all things considered.
“You know what’s not fun, Hera?” Colin heard himself ask again.
At the sound of her name, the pretty Pitbull looked up again, curious.
“Everything is a mystery.” He told her, sharing with her a piece of ham from his plate; he was not so hungry anymore, it seemed. “And sometimes I wish things were simpler.”
As he watched her eat, he wondered if being a dog was simpler – probably, yes. Maybe that could be his epic Plan D, E, or F, depending on how badly things would go for him throughout the investigation.
The young man sighed as he leaned back into his seat. He massaged his forehead with a faint grunt, not quite sure where all this anger and frustration were coming from. It was not like him to be like that.
And yet he did not know how to shake that off him.
Despite his better judgment, and the definite need he had to get some rest and sleep, Colin still got up. He brought his plate back to the kitchen, leaving Hera behind as she finished wrestling with her piece of ham and letting out content grunts.
When he came back, he had his bag in hand, already rummaging through it to grab his notebook and files.
He laid them on the sofa next to him as he sat down again, opening the first one to review their progress so far. Most importantly, he wanted to read the reports that Clare, Marlene, and all the inspectors who had been involved had drawn regarding the different interrogations and questioning sessions that had had taken place already.
When Clare had come to give them most of the documents he now held in his hands, she had told him that there was probably valuable information to cross between one testimony and another. It would be a fiddly task, but she had seemed convinced that they would find out more clues if they took it upon themselves to just read between the lines and keep an eye open on the other testimonies – they would corroborate one another, and hopeful carry traces in the mud path they were trying to cross.
Hopefully, she would be right with that assumption.
Colin read for a little while, taking notes as the radio by the wall played soft, soothing jazz tunes that were enough to keep him company while not fully distracting him away from his job. It felt almost pleasant to work like that – he could imagine his mood slowly lift, at long last.
It was a good thing.
That probably explained while he could think a bit clearer, too. He was slowly relaxing, the tension easing out of him as he sat deeper into the sofa, with the music in the background, his dog snoring at his feet.
One by one, the papers trickled out of his grip. His slurred movements were not enough to catch them before they spilled over the wooden floor. Instead of picking them up, though, Colin simply tilted to the side, so that his head could rest against one of the armrests.
And he fell asleep.
----------------------------------------
Saturday and Sunday passed without anything to report, and their fruitless taste weighed heavily on Colin’s conscience.
He was not exactly his gloomy self from Friday, but the uneasiness that had characterised him back then somehow lingered, although he could tame it a little more easily. Still, he found himself almost relieved to be back to work on Monday, and if that did not scream pathetic little boy, he did not know what did.
Truthfully, the young man just wanted to get this investigation over with. They had two bodies that needed to be avenged, if anything.
It was the only way for them to finally rest.
The first few hours of work went as smoothly as they always did. Everyone caught up with each other, and most importantly with their own work, and the busy station was soon filled with the quiet yet soothing sound of typewriters, footsteps and hushed whispers.
A few inspectors sometimes disrupted the quiet by laughing or speaking a little too loudly, but Colin was now a master at blocking that out of his mind.
He did not care too much about one’s weekend or if someone had a sick relative at home at the moment. It was not so much that he was a heartless man – but rather, he had some work to do.
He was not the best at small talk, quite frankly. He often felt uncomfortable when he had to talk about meaningless, light matters – the weather would always be cloudy and cold, as they were now in the winter months. Someone would always be a bit gloomier because they did not see sunlight as often as in spring or summer.
What Colin craved was substance, and that was on him. He was not going to blame anyone for the things he was not able to do.
Instead, he worked. Drank a strong cup of tea when his attention wavered. Chatted a bit with Kit, who knew how to keep a conversation going when he obviously had no mastery of the craft.
Eventually, though, he paused when he saw his father, Chief Superintendent Bradford, emerge from his office on the other side from his own desk, across the floor and the furthest away from the front door. That Colin and he were related held no importance, anyone could have said that their boss was an impressive man. He always wore a suit to work, a habit the young man had gotten from him, and he looked impeccable in it. His stance was strong and powerful, his aura commanding even in silence, with his chin tilted high and his gaze unwavering.
He looked more like a commander of war than the leader of this police station, but that had served him right over the years, no doubt, as no one truly countered him.
Turning his head faintly, Colin caught sight of Kit by the desk next to his, peeking up from his documents and frowning faintly in surprise.
“Your attention, please.” Richard spoke up, bringing everyone to a halt as they were still working obliviously. “I have an announcement to make.”
“Shit.” Kit’s eyes widened as he turned his head towards Colin. “Do you know anything?”
He shook his head, his heart pounding in his chest.
The young man did not like the idea that his father needed to make an announcement to the whole station. It could not be a small thing, then, for him to address the whole personnel. Whatever it was, it was not small indeed, and Colin almost shuddered with dread at the idea that they might be served with a third murder.
Another one.
It could not be, though, could it? Surely his father would not make an announcement as grandiose as this if they were faced with another crime related to their case. It would be something to keep quiet for now, at least until they made sense of the situation, and they would have to be sent on the scene of the crime, not… this.
“What is happening?” Kit mouthed as silence fell.
“I don’t know.” Colin repeated.
“As some of you may know, my son is going to turn twenty-six years old very soon.” Richard started.
Colin went very still. He made sure that his facial expression registered nothing of the mad and disrupted heartbeat that was going on in his chest, especially as a few of his colleagues turned to check him out. Obviously, those looks were for him.
He was “the son”, after all.
“Given the last turns of events that the station has had to face, I’ve decided that we all deserved a few hours of break from the tension and the harassing work that we are all doing. The main investigation we are leading now is a complex one, and it is also my way of thanking you for your hard work.”
Where was he going with this? Colin wondered, frowning ever so slightly, before remembering that he was under heavy scrutiny at that moment, and it was probably not the best idea to look puzzled or upset. Even surprised would bring about some comments – and yet, this was exactly what he was feeling at that moment.
What was his father doing? Why had he not been warned? What was this surprise of his, too? He had not asked for anything.
He did not want anything, especially not a public announcement that was completely uncalled for. This was not who he was – Colin was fine with no one knowing when he was born.
“As such, I’d like to invite you all for a birthday ball that I am throwing in my son’s honour. It will take place this Friday night at the City Hall, and we would be delighted to see you there.”
We? Colin’s eyes almost bulged out of his skull when he heard his father’s plan, and the look of horror on Kit’s face as he turned his way broke through the young man’s resolve to look neutral. Colin shook his head in helplessness, eyes wide with horror and surprise as everyone in the open space started cheering and applauding.
This.
This was a nightmare.
Colin had not been warned of this, he had not planned for any of this, especially not for his father to meddle in his life like that. What if he had had plans already? What if he did not want a ball?
What if his birthday was just an excuse anyway, to brush up their recent failure and make the police station shine bright in the face of challenges and a hard case?
What the actual fuck was happening?
In the chaos of celebrations, Colin actually missed the moment when his father started walking through the open space, accepting handshakes and congratulations like he was a war hero.
Actually, the comparison was not the best one to make, since Richard Bradford was a war hero indeed. But his son’s birthday was no war, nor any battle.
It was all very ridiculous indeed, and Colin noticed that his father was by his side only when it was too late. Richard placed a heavy hand on his shoulder and gave him a couple of pats that almost felt too strong to be fatherly.
When he turned his head, his dark eyes met his father’s lighter ones, and they stared at each other for what felt like forever.
Colin felt goose bumps breaking onto his skin at the sensation of looking into Richard’s eyes. He somehow felt like he had made a mistake, and it was not pleasant.
“You should probably smile, Son.” Richard said eventually, warning in his voice.
He patted him on the shoulder once more, and Colin thanked his reflexes for not letting his body flinch in immediate reaction like he wanted to do.
It did not matter if he did smile or not – Richard turned away as soon as he was done, and he started some other conversation with Paul. Of course, if anything, Inspector Edwards was more like his son than his actual one, bound by blood.
Colin repressed a sigh as he felt Kit close in on him, a frown on his face. But the young man simply shook his head at his friend, feeling like he might need a few minutes to recover from what had just transpired between him and his father.
When he turned his head away, trying to catch his breath, it was pointless: across the open space, he met Clare’s light green eyes instantly, as she was already looking at him intently. Their gazes held, intense and heartfelt, and Colin could tell at once that she had seen what had happened.
And that she understood.