The cloying stench of cigarette smoke oozed from every fibre of the detective’s fraying-at-the edges suit jacket as he stretched wearily across the table for the tape machine. He let out a sharp cough, adding faint notes of stale alcohol and inadequate masking Polo mint menthol to the stifling pub ashtray melange.
‘This is Detective Inspector John Papparlardo resuming the interview at fourteen twenty three hours on February 19th, 2025,’ came the weary, disinterested drawl. He wheezed again, a sickly wet crackle echoing through his ribcage.
‘Also present are Detective Constable Richard Bodyform and Mr Raymond Douglas Davies, who has waived his right to be accompanied by the duty lawyer today.’
On the face of things, it was a low-level case a Detective Inspector wouldn’t usually condescend to involve himself with. But DI Papparlardo wanted to be there. He needed to be there.
He hadn’t been home for three days. He knew what going home meant. Home was a gloomy three-time divorcee bedsit above a one-star food hygiene-rated kebab shop. Home was where his murder scene photo-stained thoughts could corner and torment him. Home was the bottle. Home was where his base urges dragged his drunken legs out to the seedy side of town, to that basement flat, the one you had to know the special knock for. Home was the sickly perfumed bedroom and the emaciated, dead-eyed Slavic girls taking a hit from a pipe, undressing slowly and telling him in broken English that he was the world’s greatest detective just like he asked. Just like he paid extra for. Home was another new concerning itch, another test, another course of antibiotics. Home was loathing himself for doing it to himself again and again.
But at the station his mind kicked into the comforting autopilot churn of paperwork and process. The nervous looking young man sitting across the table from him was just the latest in a long line of faceless miscreants to be processed and instantaneously forgotten about. A cold, mechanised production line of arrests, interviews and charges. Onto the next one. And the next one. Anything to avoid going home.
‘So let’s just go through this again, Mr Davies,’ he said, leaning forwards. ‘You met this…individual…in a club down in old Soho?’
Davies drew his fingers down his face and exhaled in frustration.
‘Look, for the last time, I’ve done nothing wrong, I don’t know what I’m even doing here.’
‘The…individual…you met in this club has alleged you committed a hate crime against them, Mr Davies. I’m just trying to establish the facts.’
Davies looked up as if seeking the intervention of a higher power to release him from the grip of DI Pappalardo’s relentless questioning.
‘I’ve already told you all of this. I’m just there at the bar and…she…walks up to me and asks me to dance.’
‘And at this point you were perfectly happy to accept this invitation?’
‘Yeah…I mean, we had a great time. We drank champagne and danced all night.’
DI Pappalardo sat back and raised an eyebrow. ‘But things turned sour between you at around the 2am mark?’
‘Well, there was a slight disagreement. More of a misunderstanding, really. Something and nothing.’
The atmosphere in the interview room suddenly took on a slight chill.
‘You call violently misgendering someone a misunderstanding, do you son?,’ exploded DC Bodyform, ramming a handful of photographs down on the table. ‘This looks like more than a slight disagreement to me.’
DI Pappalardo straightened the photographs out on the table. ‘For the benefit of the tape, the suspect is being shown CCTV stills of him pushing another individual away, walking to the door and getting down on his knees. Care to explain, Mr Davies?’
Davies held his head in his hands as he surveyed the images.
‘Listen, I’d been dancing in a dark club all night with what I thought was a fit bird called Lola and thought I was onto a good thing. Then, right, she literally picked me up and sat me on her knee. It was like being manhandled by a bloody steel fitter. That’s when I noticed the five o’clock shadow and blonde wig and the penny dropped.’
‘You’re not doing yourself any favours here, sunshine,’ growled DC Bodyform, darkly.
‘Right, okay, I admit I pushed her away when I realised she was a bloke. But as far as I’m concerned there were no hard feelings. Once I calmed down we had another drink and I just told him man on man stuff wasn’t for me and we went our separate ways. I don’t understand what I’ve been arrested for.’
DI Pappalardo sighed and flicked through the case file.
‘The problem we have here, Mr Davies, is that in this mixed up, muddled up, shook up world, the individual who has lodged the complaint against you identifies as a woman.’
‘And? What’s that got to do with me? He can identify as a gerbil for all I care. It makes no odds.’
Pappalardo rolled his eyes and adopted a more sympathetic tone.
‘Look, son, under the current hate crime laws, girls will be boys and boys will be girls. And you referred to Lola several times as a man. I’ll lay it on the line to you, Mr Davies, we’re a hair’s breadth away from charging you with assault for pushing her away, aggravated by transphobic hate speech. You could go to prison.’
The interview room door opened momentarily, and a file was passed to DC Bodyform. He immediately began leafing through it with a zealous gleam in his eye.
‘Seems you’ve got a bit of a chip on your shoulder ain’t you, Davies?,’ he said. ‘You’re a member of a lot of far right groups, according to this.’
Davies’ eyes widened with the growing horror of a wounded animal cornered by ravening wolves. ‘Wh..what far right groups?’
‘Hmm, where to begin?,’ smarmed DC Bodyform, smirking ominously. ‘What’s this Village Green Preservation Society all about then? Preserving the old ways from being abused. Protecting the new ways for me and for you. Doesn’t exactly sound progressive, does it? Not very inclusive. No place for Lola in your little preservation society, eh?’
‘Seems you’re a big admirer of Queen Victoria too,’ grunted DI Pappalardo, browsing the file. ‘Big fan of the British Empire are we?’
The interview room door cracked open again and a uniformed officer whispered urgently to DC Bodyform, whose shoulders suddenly dropped in a dramatic teenage girl flounce.
‘Chief, we need to talk outside for a moment,’ he sighed, glowering angrily at Davies.
DI Pappalardo reluctantly suspended the interview and turned off the tape recorder.
‘Just have a think about how you’re going to play this, son,’ he said, winking knowingly at Davies. ‘Show me some contrition and I might be able to get it downgraded to a non-crime hate incident and we can chalk it up to experience. Save me the bloody paperwork eh?’
He dug a crumpled cigarette packet out of his jacket pocket and shuffled into the corridor to speak to a now wild-eyed DC Bodyform, who was clutching his smartphone in a quivering hand.
‘What’s the problem, Richard?’
‘Word’s got out, chief, that’s what’s the problem,’ babbled DC Bodyform. ‘It’s all over bloody social media. Davies is a cause célèbre for all the usual wingnuts. Julie Bindel has written a 1,200 word op-ed about it for The Daily Mail. JK Rowling has called Lola a man and challenged us to arrest her. India Willoughby is threatening to self-immolate if Davies isn’t charged. Elon Musk is retweeting it all. They’ve crowdfunded a KC to come down to the station to represent him.’
DI Pappalardo leaned back against the wall and drew a deep breath into his brown, shrivelled lungs. On the face of it, this was the last thing he needed. It was going to be a long day dogged by crisis meetings, legal chicanery and paperwork. But long days were what he craved. Long days kept him away from the bedsit, from the vodka, from the late night strolls to the basement flat and scrawny Romanian pox-carriers. Away from the self loathing. Away from the shame.
A young uniformed officer barreled up the corridor in a fluster and broke DI Pappalardo’s reverie.
‘Sir, there’s a bloke at the front desk who says he wants to report his father for having him Christened Sue as a baby to try and toughen him up. Says he’s going to track him down and kill him if we don’t do something. I’m not sure how to proceed.’
DI Pappalardo sighed. ‘Take a statement, constable,’ he said. ‘I’ll take a look and run it past the brass.’
More paperwork. More sweet, cumbersome paperwork.
© DH 2025
