Page 6

DAY ONE

Pember

West Newton was allegedly one of the oldest rural police stations in the country, but as the population grew, and the force became West Newton & High Enfield Constabulary, the little cottage was no longer enough to cope with the growing demand.

At least, that was what he’d read on the website as he prepared for his job interview.

Pember was no stranger to the police station.

He’d met Oliver there for coffee half a dozen times, the last occasion being that fateful day when he’d shown him the job advert on the West Newton Facebook page.

He’d um’d and ah’d about it for a good week—especially given that the advert specified an honours degree in forensic science, and not biochemistry or mathematics —before hurriedly sending off his CV in the middle of the night.

He’d never expected to get a call back, let alone a job offer.

Standing behind the imposing front desk, the receptionist chewed and popped a piece of gum. Her blonde bob swayed as she moved in time with some kind of aggressive rap music that was blasting into the space behind the Perspex security screen.

She was doing an utterly fantastic job of pretending Pember didn’t exist, as she did every time he called in. It was doing nothing to quell the nerves in his stomach, and he balled his fists in his pockets to stop his hands from shaking.

Just as it was starting to get awkward, he cleared his throat.

“Um… hi, Samantha.”

The receptionist’s eyes flicked to him from behind her computer screen, and she let out a weary sigh. “I suppose you want me to call him?” she said, her voice crackly through the ancient two-way speaker.

“N-no, I… um… I’m not here to see Oliver. It’s my first day. A job… I have a job.”

Samantha raised a brow, her eyes dragging up and down his body before finally landing on the blue Forensic Services badge peeking out from under his coat.

“ You’re the new science guy?” she said, brows tilting into a frown.

“Y-yes,” he said. “I mean, yes .” He tried to sound confident but was doing a piss-poor job of it.

“I expected someone taller. And with glasses. Do you have glasses?”

“No? Should I?—”

Pember’s head snapped up as a fire door opened behind Samantha.

“Saint Peter’s tits , Sam, it’s freezing in the lab.” A rough North Wales accent suddenly came through the speaker. “Be a lamb and lend us the electric heater?”

An older man appeared behind the screen, his wiry grey hair and bushy beard giving him the appearance of a rather eccentric discount Santa Claus. Samantha scowled as she propped her feet up on a rusty old heater.

“Over my dead body,” she growled, top lip peeling back over her fangs. “I had to fight admin tooth and nail for this baby.”

The older man tutted, doing a double take when he noticed Pember shuffling from foot to foot. “Oh, hello!” he said, a wide smile splitting his kind face. “You must be Pember, the new SOCO?”

Pember nodded, watching as the man slid a blue lanyard from around his neck and tapped it against a keypad on the other side of the door. As he looped it back over his head, Pember read Wallace Davidson - Lead Crime Scene Investigator.

“Come in, come in.”

Pember was ushered out of the waiting room and into the front office, which felt utterly wrong and like he was breaking the Geneva Convention or something.

“I’m Wallace, your CSI team leader. We’d have liked you to start last month, but…” He shrugged. “Home Office vetting, and all that.”

Pember swallowed, shuffling past Samantha and her ancient heater.

“Y-yes, hi, I’m Pember… but you already know that.”

Wallace nodded, pushing open the security door and leading him down a long, terribly lit corridor. He could hear Samantha mumbling something from back in reception, but it quickly faded away as they took a sharp left towards a set of stairs leading into the basement.

Wallace smiled and exchanged pleasantries with every person they passed, until they eventually reached a grey door with the words ‘Forensic Biology & Scene Investigation Unit, No Unauthorised Personnel’ stamped across the frosted glass.

It was like something from a horror movie, with a cloudy halogen lamp flickering and casting washed-out shadows.

Wallace hummed, tapping his badge to another keypad, which was followed by a high-pitched beep and a whoosh of air as the sealed room came into view.

The harsh lights, linoleum flooring and chemical stench were an immediate comfort to Pember’s nerves. The lab at university had been his safe space prior to graduation, and he’d thought about carrying on to complete a PhD as a means to escape his mother for a few more years.

Until his sister?—

“Biochem, right?” Wallace said, knocking him out of his thoughts. He plucked a lab coat and face mask from a hook by the door, handing them to Pember.

“Y-yes. Master’s at Wickham University,” he replied.

“Specialisation?”

“Enzymology and mathematics.”

Wallace’s grey eyebrows disappeared beneath his white hair. “Enzo guy, huh? Not had one of those for a while.” He sucked his teeth. “Do me a favour, don’t put things in the milk. My bowels can’t take another biocatalytic event.”

Pember frowned. “The milk? Why?—”

“Our last enzo guy spiked the milk with a home-made brew of God-knows-what. Didn’t tell us we were the test subjects for his little research project.”

Pember gasped. “That’s extremely unethical.”

Grimacing, Wallace nodded. “And illegal. Needless to say, he didn’t stay long. Anyway, I’ll give you a quick tour of the lab, then we’ll meet the team.”

Pember nodded, pulling on the white jacket and face mask as he followed Wallace through another door behind the PPE lockers.

It was a tiny lab, much smaller than what he was used to at the university. However, the familiar sight of white workbenches, extraction equipment, elongated monitors, amplification machines and thermocyclers set his mind at ease.

I can do this. This is my world.

There were two people hunched over the same microscope, both of whom Wallace tapped on the shoulder then indicated towards the door. They looked up, briefly glancing at Pember before spinning on their swivel stools and heading out of the lab.

Wallace gave him a cheerful, albeit brief, rundown of the equipment and storage facilities before they reached another door at the opposite end of the lab.

Pulling off their masks, they stepped into what could only be described as a time machine.

Gone were the clean lines and modern technology, now they were back in the dated, carpet-tiled, woodchip-wallpapered confines of the police station.

Wallace grinned when he noticed Pember’s look of confusion.

“We had the lab upgraded after the sex trafficking scandal. The Home Office attached us to the Major Incident Unit so we could get a better grip on organised crime. The government realised just how terrible the forensic hubs were in the countryside forces. It’s small, but it’s worlds away from what we had before. ”

Pember nodded, tugging off his jacket and hooking it over a peg. “Looks good. A lot of the equipment is similar to what we had at uni.”

Wallace smiled, clapping. “So you’ll know how to use it, then? Because Christ knows I’m a sodding dinosaur when it comes to the new tech. Give me a Petri dish and a microscope any day.”

Pember chuckled at that.

“But you know that we do fifty percent lab, and fifty percent fieldwork, right?” Wallace continued. “You’ll spend a large part of your time going to crime scenes and post-mortems.” Wallace indicated towards a storage rack containing multiple high-spec cameras.

“Y-yeah, the lady in recruitment told me,” Pember replied.

Wallace let out a relieved sigh. “Good. Between the three of us we’ll get you inducted into the lab, then everything else is learnt on the job. You’ll be heavily supervised, of course, but I don’t micromanage my staff by any means. Speaking of, shall we meet the team?”

Pember nodded nervously. They entered a little kitchen area and Pember’s nose inadvertently wrinkled at the musty smell of microwave meals and stale coffee. The classic eau de parfum of any break room.

Flicking on the kettle, Wallace turned to him. “So, you a local lad, or…?”

Pember ran his tongue over his teeth. “Yeah. Originally from High Enfield, now living on my own in West Newton.”

Thoughts of his mother flashed through his mind again, and he glanced up at the ceiling to distract himself from the gnawing guilt. Before they had time to continue the conversation, movement from the corner of the room made Pember nearly jump out of his skin.

Two bodies, who may or may not have been police officers, suddenly sat up from beneath a foil blanket. The kind that was meant to be in first aid kits. They were slumped over on a beanbag, their stab vests hanging open and their faces pale.

“Oi!” Wallace snapped, slapping one of them across the shoulder. “I told you, this is a professional space. Not somewhere to have a nap after an all-night bender.”

“Wha?” one of them slurred, his dark hair sticking up on one side. The other peeled open his eyes, looking around the room in a daze.

They could not have been more different. In appearance, at least. One had the darkest skin Pember had ever seen, and the other looked like he’d been dipped in corn flour beneath a tangle of chestnut hair.

It was only then that Pember noticed the guns on their hips and a lot of other equipment he didn’t recognise.

He’d never even seen a gun before, let alone been in close proximity to one.

Both their heads jerked up when they noticed him, nostrils flaring as they dragged their eyes all over his body.

More alphas. More sodding alphas. He’d never felt so stared at in all his life.