“Hi Jeff, how’s it going?”

The two men shook hands. “Aye, not bad for a Monday. Take a seat. Ye know the procedure, let’s get this done. I’m sure we’ve got other things to do but ye know what the bureaucracy is like; gotta get it down on paper.”

“Of course, no worries. Horrible thing to have happen, ey?” The officer sat opposite Jeff and pulled his chair a bit closer. “Got the tape running too?”

“Aye. Now, on ye go.”

“Right, well. We got a call...”

“We?”

“Yeah, sorry. Me and Mark Wilson, my partner yesterday. We got a call of a disturbance on Queen Street, the one with the wee bridge - the overpass - there’d been shouting or something, it was unclear what exactly. Anyway, we got there and found this guy, he was just lying there under the bridge. Took a few minutes to find him.  Someone said they’d heard shouting. I don’t think anyone wanted to get involved. We thought maybe he was just a drunk; some guy down on his luck, started drinking a bit too early in the day, y’know?”

“Hmm.” Jeff barely looked up from his note-taking but nodded every now and then.

“So we called out; told him we were the police, asked him if he was alright. He didn’t respond so we got closer and repeated ourselves.  He started saying something but  we couldn’t make out what; he was…not quiet slurring but he wasn’t making a whole lot of sense.  At this point, my thinking was if we managed to get this guy on his way, he’d make it home and we could respond to another call in the area. Wilson was a bit more concerned. Said he dealt with drunks every weekend; - you know how town gets when the young ‘uns go out drinking - said he wasn’t laying the way a drunk person would lay.  Wilson got down on his knees and in the guy’s face, “Hey, it’s a kid,” he said. I thought that was a bit odd; - a kid lying under a bridge completely wasted.”

“Drunk.”

“Yeah. I mean, I’ve not ever heard of that - kids having a sly drink in the park, maybe.…anyway, we asked if he was alright but he couldn’t make proper words. He was groaning real quiet. I thought he was going to have to get his stomach pumped. Wilson put his hand on the lad’s shoulder to turn him over. The kid almost screamed, looked like he was in a lot of pain, could tell by his face.” The officer fell quiet for a moment as his own face tensed.

“Carry on,” Jeff looked up from his notes.

“Must have stirred him a bit, he was slightly more coherent. Kept saying something about his back, over and over. Poor kid was crying too. Wilson called for the meds before I even realised what must have happened.”

“He’s been on the beat since he was younger than you,” Jeff nodded. “It’s a good thing you managed to find the kid - that road is always pretty much deserted on a Sunday.”

“Have you heard how he’s doing?”

“Mm. He broke his back, so the surgery took quite a while. Had to fix up his heel too, he broke that as well.  He was resting up by lunchtime today though. From what you could gather from him - and he was rather groggy from the medication - was that he was dared to jump from the over pass to the road by his friends.”

“And he did it,” the officer shook his head.

“He did. Only, when he hit the ground, he didn’t get up. His buddies must have panicked. They bailed, just left him there. If you hadn’t have found him, he would have been there all night. Shock or hypothermia would have got him.”