Power on Her Own (10 page)

Graham leaned forward to pick up the thin sheaf of papers. ‘These things happen,' he said, ruefully.

‘All those hours wasted!'

‘Nothing in police work is ever wasted. Surely you know that. All those names, all that form – it'll be in another computer now: yours!' He put his fingers on his forehead and smiled. ‘Locked away until you need it. And look at it another way, you could have spent all that time on the streets in pouring rain and still come up with nothing. Next thing you'll say you'd rather have done that.'

‘Well, since you ask me –' Kate grinned.

‘All in good time. Tell me, are all your disks in place? Nothing gone walkabout?'

She looked him straight in the eye. ‘No disks. But a notebook – no, anyone can pick up someone else's book by mistake.'

‘True. And anyone can return it when they find someone else's writing in it. I shouldn't be having to ask you these questions: you should be volunteering the information, Kate.'

‘As soon as I have proof positive. If ever I have proof positive, perhaps I should say.'

‘I'm terribly afraid it'll be the former. OK.' He looked at his watch, half standing. ‘You're looking pretty washed out. Are you all right?'

‘Trouble with the house. No, delays, more like. So when they offered to let me sleep at the Manse, I jumped at the chance. I was daft not to ask earlier. Or go into digs or whatever.'

‘Time for a pint before you go home?'

She flicked a glance at her watch. ‘I'd love one.' God knew she'd like a whisky more. Or would she? Perhaps things were getting better. And she'd have liked a drink with him. Pity she had to add, ‘But I'm talking to the chapel Boys' Brigade tonight: you know I've started to play the organ there. They need to know about the police for part of their community badge. The man who runs it's the minister's brother-in-law.' She could feel the excitement rising. ‘Actually … look, I've got to tell someone, and –'

Graham settled down again. ‘Tell someone what?'

Why was he controlling his voice so carefully? She checked the rush, and then let rip: ‘I found a cache of diamonds at Cassie's last night! Twenty-five of them – this big!' She held her finger and thumb a centimetre apart. ‘Or rather, Paul Taylor did – he's the brother-in-law – he found them. Under a floorboard.'

‘My God! So what did you do?'

‘Have them locked in the Manse safe. Well, they must be worth twenty-five grand or so. I phoned Cassie. She was quite casual about it. She had a long-standing relationship with someone in the jewellery trade: apparently he wanted to make them into a necklace for her but they had a falling out and by the time they'd made up again they'd forgotten all about the diamonds. Or he had. I'll bet she stashed them for a rainy day and kept mum. At least it'll keep her in that home another year.'

‘Is she OK there?'

‘Seems to be. I fancy she's running the place, actually.'

Graham laughed grimly: ‘Yes, these old folks know a bit about management. My ma-in-law has us all dancing to her tune. But she won't survive on her own much longer. So we're keeping our eyes open for a good place.'

‘I'd talk to Cassie, if I were you. She cased the lot before she settled on this one. Applied the pee test!'

‘Pee test?'

‘If the place smells of pee, you don't want to let her stay there.'

They were still laughing when they left the building. About other things. She couldn't have said what, had anyone cared to ask.

Cassie would have liked her to be a teacher, and had been shocked by her decision to do her Master's and then join the police. But after tonight she was quite sure she'd made the right decision. Paul had been vague about the ages and numbers involved: she'd rather expected thirty teenagers and had ended with twelve kids between ten and thirteen. None had seemed particularly interested, and she didn't know how to woo them. They perked up a little when it came to question time, asking for the gruesome details of any crimes she'd solved.

‘It doesn't work like that,' she laughed. ‘All this Morse and Lewis: it's not accurate. We work in teams, everyone dependent on everyone else. We need scene-of-crime officers, computer experts, not just a couple of bright men. Or women.'

They laughed, but weren't convinced. There was a lot of shuffling.

‘My goodness, it's the big match tonight, isn't it? What time do they finish, Paul?'

He looked grim: ‘They're supposed to have their own soccer practice tonight. We're bottom of the league, and I keep trying to get it home to them, watching Aston Villa or whoever isn't the same as training themselves! Trouble is, they've lost their coach, and I'm a rugby man.'

She laughed. ‘Well, if they're desperate, I suppose – I've always been keen on soccer …'

‘So there I was, offering to be their coach!' she said to Colin the next morning. ‘They all look so weedy and unco-ordinated. God knows how long it'll take me to knock them into shape.'

‘How do you propose to start? God, this coffee's worse than usual. Try some tea.' He slapped the dispenser. It produced a thin stream of muddy water and expired. ‘Shit!'

‘And when do you propose to start? I'll bring me binoculars, like.' Selby leered at the front of her shirt.

‘Tonight. And after chapel on Sunday. Why don't you come along?'

‘Fuck that: got better things to do of a Sunday morning.'

‘Come on. I'm sure you'd like to see me at work on a big organ.' She turned her back on him: time she was back at her desk. Graham had asked her to read through the transcripts of all the statements, just in case. In case of what she wasn't sure. What she did suspect was that he was still protecting her. The trouble was his paternalism irritated the others. She wanted to pair up with someone, start seeing some action.

On impulse she phoned the CID team that were handling the Kings Heath rape. She couldn't have explained why, even to herself. Was it to talk to someone else who was stuck or to find out how the girl was getting on?

‘Hi Kate! Ready to ID some more bums, are you?' This was Maureen, one of the women trained in dealing with rape victims.

‘Maybe. Any news?'

‘Only that the poor kid wouldn't go home. She's with some auntie in Leicester – more liberal than the rest of the family. My opposite number in Leicester's in touch with her now. Seems they didn't like her being out at night.'

‘So why was she? It was past ten.'

‘At the Central Library, studying. And then she had a drink at McDonald's in Paradise Forum. Poor kid, she's blaming herself –'

‘What rape victim doesn't?'

‘Well, it seems she was going against her family's wishes by going to college, compounding it by studying late in the Ref, and then committed the heinous sin of relaxing with a milk-shake. And then she goes and gets herself raped.'

‘So the lads could have seen her in the library, in McDonald's or on the bus?'

‘Or even at the Kings Heath bus-stop. And we're not much further forward. How's that cut of yours?'

‘Fine. Tell you what, though, Maureen, it wasn't glass I cut it on. I went back and checked, me and the constable looking after the scene. I think it was a small knife. A little Stanley knife, something like that.' She'd have to talk to Mrs Mackenzie. Try to find out what she was so anxious about. And she'd bet a new carpet it would be something to do with young Royston.

So there she was, still avoiding the problem. But not for any longer. Time to get stuck in. Not that there wasn't a page of statement she hadn't read two and three times.

She snapped her fingers in irritation. There'd been something she'd wanted to look up, hadn't there? She'd written it down in that notebook that had gone walkabout. Something the kid had muttered in his sleep. Duck, that was it. Fancy forgetting that! Damn it all, they'd bought him that cuddly toy.

‘You look as if you'd lost a bob and found a rusty button,' Sally said. ‘Sorry, didn't mean to make you jump. You all right?'

‘Fine.'

‘No more trouble?' Sally jerked her head in the direction of Selby and Cope.

‘Not recently. How are you? Not seen much of you for a bit.'

‘Been liaising with Family Protection. But I'm coming off that now. Thing is,' she added, dropping her voice and looking around her, ‘I'm leaving altogether. And now I'm expecting and all –'

‘
Expecting!
That's –'

Sally shushed her. ‘And then we had this win on the Lottery, see, me and Huw thought it'd be better if I became a full-time mum.'

‘Win!' Kate mouthed. ‘Wow!'

‘Huw's in this syndicate, see. Two hundred thousand between them. So we get nearly seventy. And he's got a job with this micro-electronics place back home. So I told Graham, 'cause I thought he'd want to keep some continuity. I reckon he'll ask you to take over.'

‘Me!'

‘Well, since you and he are – you know.'

‘I don't know.' Kate tried to keep her voice low.

Sally bit her lip. ‘Sorry. But – come on, let's go to the loo.' She looked in Selby's direction. ‘I'll swear that bugger can lip-read.'

Kate led the way. Sally followed. Neither spoke till the inner door was shut.

‘Now what's this about me and Graham Harvey?' Kate asked, not quite failing to keep calm.

Sally looked at her wide-eyed. ‘It's all round the squad, see. That you and he are – you know – having a relationship. I mean, he's good looking, and there's a lot of these blokes'll get their hands in your knickers with the promise of a quick promotion. I must say, I never thought it of Harvey.'

‘Or of me, I hope.'

‘Oh, I didn't mean – no, of course not. But they say that's how you got into CID. I mean, there's a long queue waiting to get in, and you come up and –'

So this was the cause of the hostility. She sighed. Still, if Sally was so adept at spreading information – or mis-information – she might as well use her to spread the honest truth. ‘I was in CID before. Up here. They borrowed me from the Met to go undercover at an old folks' home. And when my bloke was killed, I found I couldn't work any longer with the guy who cocked up the whole operation and so I got transferred. I know it's not the usual way of doing things, but that's how it worked out.'

‘OK, OK, keep your wool on. I just thought you should know, that's all. So you're not an item, after all, you and Graham?'

‘Sorry to disappoint the rumour-mongers, but no. We've been trying to sort out a problem I've had with my computer. And his mother-in-law needs a residential home, like Cassie.'

Sally peered in the mirror. ‘Poor bugger: I wonder if she's as dreadful as his wife. Real tartar
she
is. Has these migraines all the time. She
says.
I reckon it's just to get him dancing to her tune. Won't do this, can't do that. Won't come to any of our dos with him. Poor bugger. Deserves better. You're sure you don't …?' she asked almost wistfully. ‘Ah, well.'

‘Right.' Kate put a full-stop on the topic. ‘Now, tell me about the baby. When's it due? And when will you be going?'

‘Now, lads, I want you all to give it your best shot tonight,' Paul was saying. ‘Remember Kate's not done this sort of thing before, and whatever happens we should be very grateful for her trying.'

Kate said nothing. This might not have been the sort of introduction she wanted, but to cavil publicly would only draw attention to what he'd said. She smiled. And then, hoping he but not the boys would pick up on her sarcasm, said. ‘OK. Tonight I'm Glenda Hoddle. Right? And next match we play, we're going to score!'

The laughter wasn't much more than polite. But it was laughter, and they started on their stretches. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Paul disappearing into the church hall. Excellent. Without an audience, even an audience of one, the boys would be less self-conscious. And then he re-emerged.

‘Hell, Paul, we're not ready for this sort of treatment, not yet. Nor for a long time,' she added so only he could hear. ‘We're simply not ready to be videoed. They're self-conscious enough having a new trainer around without wanting a camera in on the action. Put the bloody thing away. Right, lads. This time we're going to jog and every ten steps we're going to stop and kick, stop and kick. OK?' She blew the whistle she'd found in a photographic shop, of all places, just off the High Street.

They jogged half-heartedly round the car park at the back of the chapel.

‘Call that kicking? Wouldn't kick the skin off a rice pudding. Come on. Hell, now what?' She sprinted over to a red-haired lad at the back of the joggers. ‘Marcus, you OK?'

‘Asthma.' The kid's chest heaved.

‘Got a spray?'

Paul was at his side. ‘We keep one in the hall, don't we, Marcus? Come on, old son.'

Marcus pulled away.

‘I'm sure you'd be better in the warm with me. Maybe football's not a good idea for asthmatics.'

‘Lots of great sportsmen get asthma. People like Ian Botham. They just need their sprays. So just go and get it, would you, Paul? Now, Marcus, we'll soon have you OK. Paul? What are you waiting for?'

‘I'll take him in. Come on, son.'

‘He's not a baby. He just needs his spray. Now.' She tried for the boy's sake to keep the urgency out of her voice, but could hear herself failing.

‘Yes,
sir
!' Paul saluted her aggressively and jogged off.

Marcus watched him out of sight.

‘Had asthma long?' Kate asked conversationally. ‘Come on, the rest of you: who told you to stop?'

‘Ever since. I was a kid. Getting better. Bad when there's a cold wind.'