Boots, bullets and biscuits. Book 1

The rain over the Mersey didn’t fall. It blew sideways.

It painted the high-arched windows of Merseyside Police Headquarters in a greasy grey film, turning the river beyond into something blurred and distant. Agnes Austin stood by the glass, her hands locked behind the small of her back, watching a container ship crawl through the murk.

Without her utility belt, her petite frame felt almost light, but the tight, athletic set of her shoulders beneath her black civilian knit sweater anchored her to the floor.

Her copper-ginger hair was pinned into a punishingly neat bun at the nape of her neck. Nothing about her was loose. Nothing about her was accidental.

Not even the way she stared.

Behind her, the office smelled of damp wool, stale instant coffee and the unique brand of bureaucratic exhaustion that seemed to live permanently inside senior management suites.

“You’re staring a hole through that window, Agnes.”

Chief Superintendent Hancock sat behind his heavy teak desk, a thick stack of manila folders spread in front of him.

“Sit down. You’re making the room feel smaller than it is.”

Agnes didn’t move.

Her ice-blue eyes remained fixed on the grey horizon.

“I prefer standing, sir.”

Her Wirral accent was clipped and flat, dry enough to make the words sound almost polite.

“Saves the spine on a long shift.”

Hancock sighed.

He knew that tone.

He’d heard it often enough over the years to recognise when Agnes was being difficult because she was bored, and when she was being difficult because something had already gone wrong.

He picked up a glossy document and pushed it across the desk.

A bright blue emblem sat at the top.

Arkansas State Police.

Agnes finally turned.

“No.”

Hancock raised an eyebrow.

“I haven’t actually told you what it is yet.”

“You’re holding paperwork involving Americans and me. Whatever it is, the answer is no.”

“Sit down.”

“No.”

“Agnes.”

She looked at him.

He looked back.

Eventually she walked across the room and dropped into the chair opposite him.

“Six-week secondment,” Hancock said.

Agnes stared at the document.

“Where?”

“Arkansas.”

There was a pause.

“That’s in America.”

“Excellent geographical work.”

“I try.”

Hancock tapped the folder.

“International tactical exchange. You’ll be embedded with their Interstate Criminal Patrol. The Home Office is funding it under the new mobile-trafficking initiative.”

Agnes leaned back.

“And what, exactly, do they want me to do?”

“They want an elite rifle officer. Specifically, someone with a Roads Policing background. You’ll study how they handle deep-concealment drug interdiction and mobile trafficking operations. Then you bring the relevant skills back to the Matrix Unit.”

Agnes looked at him as though he’d just suggested she spend six weeks teaching ballroom dancing to livestock.

“With respect, Chief, that’s a load of bureaucratic shite.”

Hancock’s mouth twitched.

“I suspected you’d say that.”

“I’m a rifle officer. My job is to sit three hundred yards out with an Accuracy International bolt-action and keep a perimeter secure. If you want someone to play nice with the Americans and take notes on traffic stops, send a constable from community policing.”

“The Americans didn’t ask for a community cop.”

“No?”

“They asked for an operator.”

Agnes said nothing.

“And you’re the best shot this force has.”

That stopped her.

Hancock leaned back in his chair.

His gaze softened slightly.

He had known Agnes for years. He’d known Mark Austin too.

He knew enough about the woman sitting in front of him to understand that her refusal wasn’t really about Arkansas.

It was about leaving.

Leaving the familiar.

Leaving the controlled environment she’d built around herself.

Leaving Birkenhead.

Leaving the small rented flat she came home to after every shift, where the silence was predictable and nothing unexpected could reach her.

“Your file says you’re thirty-one,” Hancock said.

Agnes’s eyebrow lifted.

“Congratulations.”

“Your sarcasm remains impressive.”

“Thank you.”

“You were seven when Mark found you.”

The humour disappeared from her face.

Hancock didn’t push.

He didn’t need to.

Mark Austin had been a Merseyside officer when he’d found a little seven-year-old girl sitting in the aftermath of a hit-and-run that had killed her biological parents.

He had been the officer who got her out.

The officer who stayed.

And when it became clear that the little girl had nowhere she could safely call home, Mark and Connie took her in almost immediately.

Agnes hadn’t grown up angry.

She hadn’t grown up broken.

She hadn’t spent her childhood fighting the world.

She’d grown up loved.

Properly loved.

There had been school runs, packed lunches, Christmas mornings, birthday cakes and arguments over curfews. There had been slammed doors and teenage eye-rolling. There had been Connie shouting up the stairs that dinner was getting cold and Mark pretending not to notice Agnes sneaking the last biscuit from the tin.

Normal things.

Safe things.

The sort of childhood that didn’t leave scars.

Then Connie got cancer.

Agnes had been twenty.

That was the first time the house had become quiet.

The second came four years later.

Mark had gone to work one morning as usual.

He never came home.

A brain aneurysm had taken him suddenly, brutally, without giving Agnes the luxury of preparation.

One moment he had been Mark.

Her dad.

The man who had found her at seven and spent the next seventeen years making sure she never had to wonder whether she belonged.

Then he was gone.

Agnes had been twenty-four.

After that, she had done what she knew how to do.

She had worked.

She had trained.

She had qualified.

She had put herself where the rifle gave her distance and the rules gave her control.

The scope became easier than conversation.

The firing line became easier than grief.

Three hundred yards was a comfortable distance.

Nobody could reach you properly from three hundred yards.

Hancock watched her carefully.

“You’ve spent seven years building a very effective wall.”

Agnes’s jaw tightened.

“It’s not a wall.”

“No?”

“No.”

“What is it?”

“A professional boundary.”

Hancock nodded slowly.

“Of course it is.”

Agnes picked up the Arkansas document.

She scanned the details.

Six weeks.

Interstate Criminal Patrol.

Mobile trafficking.

Roads Policing.

Firearms.

She hated that every part of it sounded interesting.

“You’ve already decided.”

“The decision is made.”

“So I’m being volunteered.”

“Correct.”

“Wonderful.”

Hancock smiled.

“You leave next week.”

Agnes looked back down at the paperwork.

“Next week?”

“Flight’s booked.”

“Of course it is.”

“Try to enjoy it.”

She looked up.

“I’ll be spending six weeks with armed traffic cops in Arkansas.”

“State troopers.”

“Armed traffic cops.”

“Agnes.”

She stood.

“Brilliant.”

She tucked the folder beneath her arm.

“I’ll pack my sun cream.”

And with that, she walked out.

The door closed behind her.

Hancock sat quietly for a moment.

Then he looked down at the photograph attached to her file.

A much younger Agnes stood between Mark and Connie, grinning at the camera with copper hair falling across her face.

For once, Hancock didn’t wonder whether he’d made the right decision.

He wondered whether Arkansas was ready for her.