Bad Boy (12 page)

“How did you find out where I live?”

“I’ve got a friend in Human Resources.”

“Who?”

“Just a friend.”

“I could find out easily enough, you know.”

“Why do you say that? What do you mean?”

Annie sighed. “Nothing,” she said. “Just that you shouldn’t be here. It’s inappropriate.”

“What are you so afraid of? Being seen with me? If that’s the case, the quicker you let me in the better. Besides, we’re miles from Eastvale. I know it’s late, and I’m sorry. I did come earlier but there was nobody home. I’ve been wandering around getting lost, trying to pluck up my courage to come back. I stopped for a couple of drinks. I just want to talk to you, that’s all. Nobody has to know.”

“I don’t know. I shouldn’t.” Annie chewed on her lip and thought for a moment, still disoriented from being snapped out of her meditation. Nerys certainly didn’t appear drunk. Then she made a snap decision and stood aside. “Okay, you can come in. But just for a couple of minutes.”

Nerys entered the room. “Cozy,” she said, looking around. “Just another word for cramped.”

“Bijou.”

“Another word for too small.”

Nerys laughed. “No, I like it. Seriously.”

“Sit down. Can I get you a cup of tea or something. Coffee?”

“Nothing, thanks.”

“You sure?”

“My body is a temple.”

“Well, I’m having a glass of wine.”

“In that case…” said Nerys.

Annie went into the kitchen and took a bottle of pinot grigio from the fridge. She felt uncomfortable with Nerys’s visit and knew she shouldn’t be talking to her, or even listening, but she was feeling rebellious after today’s excitement. She was also frustrated by her visit to Tracy’s house in Leeds, and her later one to Jaff’s flat in Granary Wharf. It had been easy enough to locate. There had been nobody home there, of course, and one of the neighbors had informed her, before slamming his door in her face, that the police had already been around asking questions, that he had told them all he knew, and that he was damned if he was going to repeat it all again to her.

So she decided she might as well lend her ear to Nerys for a while. You never know, she told herself, you might even learn something. She opened the wine and took it through to the living room along with two glasses. Nerys was on her knees by the small selection of CDs on the lower shelves of the bookcase. She was wearing blue jeans that showed a bit too much arse crack and a light wind cheater over a black T-shirt, none of which did much to disguise the muscles or hide the bulge at her waist when she stood up. Probably pure muscle, too, Annie guessed. “See anything you like?” she asked.

Nerys glanced over at her. “Nope,” she said. “But then I’m not much of a one for music. Not like your boss, I hear.”

“Alan? Yes, he does have a bit of a reputation. I can’t say I’ve got a clue what he’s listening to half the time. Some of it sounds pretty good, but some of it, well, to put it frankly, it just sounds like a bull with a pain in its testicles to me.”

Nerys laughed and accepted her wine before sitting down. She was a good three inches shorter than Annie, though much stockier, and her hair was so short and spiky that it resembled a military crew cut. Her eyes were green. “Cheers,” she said, holding out her glass.

Annie clinked hers against it. “Cheers.”

“He’s got quite a reputation in other areas, too, around County HQ, your DCI,” said Nerys.

“Oh? What do you mean?”

“Bit of a cowboy. Likes to do things his own way.”

“I suppose so. But don’t we all, if we think ours is the right way?”

“True enough. It’s so hard to be certain, though, isn’t it? I’m more used to following orders. The Firearms Cadre is very discipline oriented.”

“I suppose it has to be,” said Annie. “But that wouldn’t suit Alan, you’re right. Still, I don’t suppose it was Alan Banks you came to talk about?”

“In a way, it is,” said Nerys. “Mmm, this is nice.” Annie shrugged. “Just cheap Italian plonk.”

Nerys stood up again and walked over to a framed watercolor of Eastvale Castle in the evening light. “That’s good,” she said. “Whoever painted it really caught the light at that time of a winter evening.”

“Thank you,” said Annie.

Nerys’s jaw dropped. “You mean…? You? I never dreamed.” She smiled. “Honest?”

“Honest,” said Annie, feeling herself blush. “Why would I lie? It’s all right. Why should you know, anyway? It’s just a hobby, that’s all.”

“But you’re so
good
. So talented. Have you ever thought—”

“Look, Nerys, I appreciate the compliment and all, but can you just get to the point. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to appear rude, but…” Nerys sat down again. “No. No. Of course. You’re right. I suppose I’m just nervous, that’s all. I tend to blather on a bit when I’m nervous.”

“Why should you be nervous?”

“Well, you’re a DI and I’m just a lowly PC.”

“You’re hardly lowly. Besides, you’re the one with the gun.”

“I’m not carrying. Honest.” She held her arms out. “Want to check?”

“The point?” said Annie.

Nerys finally let her arms drop, sat back down in the chair and seemed to relax a little. She ran her finger around the rim of her glass. “That stuff at the meeting yesterday, about Mrs. Doyle asking for DCI Banks. Is it true?”

“Yes, it’s true,” said Annie. “They’re old friends. Neighbors.”

“Would he have gone?”

“I think so. Probably. But he’s not here.”

“Where is he?”

“America. A long way away.”

Nerys took a sip of wine. “Pity he wasn’t here. It would have saved us all a hell of a lot of trouble.”

“Not what Chambers thinks.”

“Chambers is an arsehole.” Nerys put her hand to her mouth. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that in front of you.”

Annie couldn’t help but laugh. “No, you shouldn’t,” she said. “But you hit the nail right on the head.”

“I understand you worked for him once?”

“For my sins. You know a lot.”

“When the shit hits the fan like this, I make it my business to know as much as I can.”

Annie raised an eyebrow. “Your friend in Human Resources again?”

Nerys grinned. “Another one, this time. Records.”

“My, my, but you must have a lot of friends.”

“No. That’s the problem. I don’t. I’ve never felt so alone. So isolated.”

“But that’s ridiculous,” said Annie. “You AFO teams have a reputation for being close and tight-knit. Your lives depend on one another.”

“It’s true enough on the job,” said Nerys. “It’s our training. But it doesn’t always work that way off duty.” She leaned forward in her chair and looked Annie in the eye. The directness and intensity of her gaze were disconcerting. “Look, I’m a woman in a man’s world. More than that. I’m a gay woman in a man’s shooting club. You might think they treat me like one of the lads, but they look at me more as a freak.”

“I’m sure that’s not the case.”

Nerys’s upper lip curled in a sneer. “What do you know?”

“Nothing, I suppose,” said Annie. “What got you into it in the first place, then? I mean the Firearms Cadre?”

“I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I mean, in the force. I did all the courses—surveillance, vehicle pursuit, worked undercover, even traffic. I was all over the map.”

“And?”

“I suppose it was my dad, really. He was a para. Real macho. Got killed in Iraq two and a half years ago. Another sniper. Dad was really a perfectionist, a technician. I grew up around guns, the smell of them, the mechanics. Christ, I could dismantle and reassemble a Hechler and Koch or a Parker-Hale in the dark, going by sound and touch alone.”

“That sounds like a useful skill,” said Annie. “Well, you never know.”

“But you never thought of this before, when you first joined?”

“Not really. It wasn’t as if I wanted to follow in my dad’s footsteps. Not until he got killed. Then it all seemed to make sense. And I’m good at it. They fast-tracked me. I’m the youngest on the unit apart from Warby.” They let the silence stretch for a while, as Nerys no doubt thought about her dead father and Annie thought about Banks. Where was he? Los Angeles? Reno? Tucson? She knew he was somewhere in the American southwest. She wished she were there with him. “I don’t want to be on Firearms Cadre forever, though,” Nerys said.

“Ambitious?”

“A bit, I suppose. I’d like to work in counterterrorism eventually.”

“Sounds challenging.”

“I like a challenge. That’s also why I’m worried about…you know…all this…”

“A big blot on your copybook?”

“Yes.”

“There’s probably not an officer in the service who hasn’t made a mistake. I mean, there’s some people would say DCI Banks is a walking disaster area. Our friend Chambers, for a start.”

“What’s he really like?”

“Chambers?”

“Yes. He reminds me of that fat comedian with the bowler hat, the one in those old black-and-white films.”

“Oliver Hardy?”

“That’s the one. But seriously. Do you think he supports gay rights? Has a soft spot for cuddly lesbians?”

Anne couldn’t help but laugh. She topped up their wineglasses. The level in Nerys’s was much lower than hers, she noticed. “No, I
shouldn’t think so. He’s more the kind who thinks every woman he meets can’t wait to drop her knickers for him. And he probably believes that all a lesbian needs to cure her is a good stiff twelve inches of Reginald Chambers. Though my guess is it’s closer to three or four inches.”

Nerys laughed. “But what do you really think about him?”

Annie swirled the wine in her glass, then drank some more. She didn’t like remembering her time with Chambers; the memories weren’t good ones. “Let’s just say we didn’t get along too well and leave it at that, shall we?”

“So what can I expect? He’s going to try to crucify us, me and Warby, isn’t he?”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” said Annie. “Don’t be so bloody melodramatic. He’s not that bad. There are plenty worse than him around. I said we didn’t get along. That’s all. It was probably as much my fault as his. It wasn’t exactly my dream posting. I don’t get on with very many people, if you must know.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Annie checked her watch. “Look, I hate to rush you, but if you’ve finished…” There was no way she would be able to get back to her meditation now, not after this disruption, not to mention the wine, but at least she could watch TV or something and veg out. Almost anything would be better than this.

“I’m sorry,” said Nerys, her lower lip quivering. “I didn’t mean to spoil your evening…I mean, I just wanted to know if I could count on you, if you’re on my side. I’m sorry to waste your time. I’m just worried, that’s all.”

Then Annie saw tears in her eyes and softened. She hated herself for it, but she was a sucker for tears. Worse than any man she’d ever met. “Come on,” she said, pouring more wine. It was going down quickly; the bottle was almost empty. “Pull yourself together, Nerys. Look, Chambers isn’t going to crucify you. After all, it wasn’t you who fired the Taser. He’s an arsehole, yes, and a bully and a male chauvinist pig, but as far as I know he plays straight. At worst, he’ll play up to the media and give them what they want. He’s a PR man at heart, not a copper. But he’s not going to fit you up, for crying out loud. He’ll discover the facts and play it by the book, obnoxious bastard as he is.”

“But that’s just it, isn’t it? That’s the problem. The facts. What are they? And doesn’t it all depend on how someone else interprets them? What version will the media want? There could be as many different stories of what happened on Monday morning as there were people present.”

Annie knew that was true. She had once seen a film called
Rashomon,
one of her father’s favorites, which told the same story from several different viewpoints. Same facts. Different stories. “Perhaps,” she admitted. “But there’s nothing you can do about that. And he’s got his team from Greater Manchester to keep him on the straight and narrow. He’s not a law unto himself, much as he might like to think so.”

“I just need to know what to expect, so I can be prepared. What did he do to you when you worked with him?”

“Didn’t your friend in Human Resources tell you?”

“Nobody really knows but you.”

Annie took a deep breath and followed it with a draft of wine. “It was a long time ago,” she said. “Seven, eight years or thereabouts.” And why does it keep coming back to haunt me? she wondered. She thought she had finally seen the end of Janet Taylor, Lucy Payne and the Chameleon case over a year ago, when it had come into her life again with a vengeance. Now Chambers was back. “Chambers himself didn’t do anything to me,” she went on. “Back then he was simply a lazy, lecherous, time-serving arsewipe who got others to do his dirty work for him while he got all the glory. Whatever glory there is in a job like that. Mostly he got his jollies from what he saw as his vindication in the gutter press. He always swayed with the wind of public opinion.”

“Why didn’t he retire when he’d put in his twenty-five? I heard he was practically living on the golf course.”

“The reorganization gave him a new lease on life, a renewed purpose. More power. Now he just seems to want to put as many coppers away as he can before he retires. But it’s not as if some of them don’t deserve it, and like I said, he’s not bent. He plays by the book.”

“But he has an agenda?”

“Oh, yes. With Chambers, you’re always guilty until you’re proven guilty. Especially if the newspapers say so.”

“So I’m right to be worried?”

“The two cases are very different,” said Annie. “PC Janet Taylor, the one I was working on, killed a notorious serial killer who had just hacked her partner to pieces in front of her eyes and was about to do the same to her. Unfortunately, a civilian called John Hadleigh, who had shot a burglar in his home about three hundred miles away, was convicted of murder around the same time. It would have appeared bad if a police officer had simply walked away scot-free after killing someone. End of story.”

“Even a serial killer? The Chameleon? I know about that case. I’ve studied it.”

“Then you’ll know what I’m talking about,” said Annie. “But you had to be there to understand the political climate and the media circus. Anyway, I convinced the CPS to lower the charge against Janet Taylor to manslaughter. You know the rest.”