Faking It • Queen FanFiction

Cʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 19

Somewhere along the line Bernie must have fallen asleep, because in the late hours of the morning she was harshly awoken by the trill of the phone ringing. Grunting, she extricated herself from the sheets as gently as possible, which still inflicted pain. Fumbling clumsily with the straps, she fastened both the boot and the brace to her left leg, surprised at how the phone still hadn't stopped ringing. But it would stop soon, so she made haste to hoist her body through to the living room where the little beige phone sat. "Hello?" She said groggily down the line, hoping the caller was worth such disturbance to her.

"Hello. Is this Bernadette Maxwell?" Came a sombre male voice down the line, which Bernie was entirely taken aback by. She straightened herself up immediately and tried to formalise her morning voice.

"Urr, yes, speaking." Not bad.

"Hello Bernadette. My name is DCI Lind. I have your boss, Richard Bletch with me currently and I'm contacting you regarding your accident last week." God, he sounded so formal. Why so formal? Bernie's heart sank. And why were police involved? She had nothing to reply with, so just stayed silent and let the policeman talk. "After a steady investigation, we have discovered that your accident may not have been so much of an accident after all." What?

"That doesn't make sense. That wall was unstable, that's all." Bernie tried to reason with DCI Lind, she thought he was being rather melodramatic. Nobody could have purposefully inflicted such pain upon her like this.

"Yes, it was, I agree with you there Bernadette. But have you considered why it was unstable?" The inspecter's voice was losing it's official tone and he sounded less automated as he dug into the roots of the problem.

Bernie put a hand to her head; she hadn't really thought about why the wall was unstable for her but everybody else caned it just fine. "No. Perhaps it was just wobbly by the time I'd gotten to it. A lot of people had gone before me."

"Do you remember what you did before climbing the makeshift wall?" His sudden question change made Bernie halt. She had no idea where any of this was coming from. Or where it was going, for that matter.

"Urr...I'm not sure...it was a week ago now, and a lot has happened since then-" she tried with all her might to rack her brains, this information was obviously of some importance to DCI Lind and Mr Bletch. "Well, I finished the last obstacle, tied my shoelaces and then began scaling the wall. That's all."

A freeze down the line. Had it gone dead? "You tied your laces and then did the climbing wall?"

"...Yes." This was sounding much like an interrogation now and Bernie didn't want to know where it was going. Beings as she'd just gotten up, she also really needed a wee and her left knee bounced as she listened.

"Okay, Bernadette, at the bottom of the wall were a pile of sandbags, yes?"

"Yes...even Mr Bletch can tell you that."

"Now, could you see what was going on on the other side of the wall?"

"What a stupid question," Bernie accidentally blurted out rudely, She was getting impatient and didn't mean for her answer to sound so antisocial. "I mean...no. No I couldn't."

"Exactly! It is a stupid question! So's this one: if you couldn't see what was going on behind the wall, would you have seen if somebody had taken a few sandbags away - especially if you were...distracted, for say, tying your shoe lace?" Even on the phone, DCI Lind sounded both extremely intelligent and extremely proud of his discovery. The emptiness in Bernie's stomach suddenly made itself noticed as it twisted in knots and grumbled loudly. Somebody could have done this to her...on purpose? At first, she didn't believe a word of it. She needed answers and solid evidence first.

"But Mr Lind, if you don't mind me asking, who would want to do such a thing to me?" She was beginning to get uncomfortable now, and not just from the sheer weight of her ankle with the hefty black boot on it. After being told that somebody may have sabotaged the obstacle course with the intention of harming Bernie, she certainly didn't feel too great.

"Can you think of anybody who may be angry at you, or not like you, or perhaps even be jealous of you..?" The vagueness in DCI Lind's voice as he trailed off made Bernie sense that him and Mr Bletch already had somebody in mind.

"Yes, my landlord. But he works in retail and has never had a tiring day in his life."

"Well we have detained a Tiffany Banesco. Ring a bell?"

"Yes, I know Tiffany. We've been close working partners this entire time. What evidence do you have to prove it was her, she's ever such a nice girl." Bernie was now feeling rather uneasy, her stomach spiralling into more and more knots. How could they accuse Tiffany? She wouldn't hurt a fly; it was a wonder why she was joining the police force sometimes. A bitchy joke went around that she was only here to play with the german shepherds, but Bernie never joined in the middle school-like giggles that took place behind Tiffany's back.

"Our evidence?" DCI Lind sounded skeptical and Bernie huffed quietly so that he wouldn't hear. Would she have to be working with these people? She pitied herself to think so. What the hell does he mean "our evidence?" You need evidence to charge somebody.

"Yes, DCI Lind. Your evidence," by this time she was immensely restless and couldn't sit around, not learning anything particularly vital about her situation, any longer.

"Our evidence is that she blatantly admitted it." Oh. Well that changed things slightly.

"How do you know she wasn't lying?"

"We have a witness, Bernadette."

"A witness?"

"Yes, a witness."

"Who is said witness?"

"None other than Mr Bletch himself." Her eyes widened and she sat back in the sofa, leaning into the cushions, suddenly invested. This was progress and she liked the sound of it.

"Then why didn't he do anything about it?" Eyebrows knotting together, a stab of hurt outside of her injuries pierced through Bernie, followed by bubbling rage that he knew but said nothing.

"I tried!" Mr Bletch's hysterical voice could be heard somewhere in the distance. He sounded genuinely upset, so she gave him the benefit of the doubt and waited for DCI Lind to explain everything.

"He did try. He saw what Tiffany had done, thought everything was fine and went off to check on the other trainees. Then he caught sight of you halfway up the damn wall and his first instinct was to blow the whistle, hopefully startling you out of making it to the top. But it didn't. Do you remember hearing a whistle sound?" It was all slotting into place. DCI Lind's narrative made absolute sense, at last.

"Yes...yes! I do remember! By that time I was already formulating how to get over to the other side." Surprising even herself at how she could remember such insignificant details from such a while ago, she continued on with the story. "Then I fell and heard the 'Emergency Stop' whistle. For me, of course. I don't remember seeing Tiffany in that crowd, though..." Although to be fair, she didn't really remember seeing many faces of the crowd that had bunched around her.

"That's because she'd scarpered. She admitted that, too. Bernadette, I don't want to take much more of your time, but we're opening a case for it here at the station. Things aren't quite adding up for us here, as I'm sure they're not for you either. I wish you a speedy recovery, goodbye Bernadette."

"Bye DCI Lind, Mr Bletch. Thank you for ringing me." With a final 'no problem', the line went dead. Now she was left to process everything for the rest of the day. She knew she shouldn't have answered the phone, how was she going to nap with all of this on her mind now? And to think she'd be one of these DI's one of these days made her feel suddenly nauseous.

15/11/22