“We were all sorry to—”
Jeffery waved a hand. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t feel sorry for me. I’m okay with being here; it’s like a preamble to retirement. No one bats an eyelid if you drift off for ten minutes or take half an hour on the loo. There’s no deadline here, Eddie, except the one everyone finally crosses.”
Eddie sighed. “The department has just sunk in the space of ten minutes.”
“Well it’s very kind of you to say so, but I don’t think I was that integral to its survival.”
That made Eddie stop for a moment.
How important are we, really?
They say any big organisation is measured by the quality of the people in it. But each individual is tiny, insignificant; the organisation wouldn’t so much as twitch if any one of them died or left. Eddie had always secretly thought of himself as indispensable – not in an arrogant way, just in a ‘there’s only one of me’ kind of way. But hearing how his ex-boss thought the place would collapse without him, when in fact barely anyone had noticed his departure, made Eddie’s jaw drop a little. He felt saddened.
“We miss you, you fuckwit,” he said.
“Tough,” Jeffery smiled. “I like it here. No way I’m coming back, so if that’s why you’ve come, you’ve wasted your time.”
Déjà vu.
“That type of visit is above my paygrade,” Eddie said. “I just wanted to see how you were doing.” The sleeping boss let out a squeak of wind, and Eddie bit his tongue to kill the imminent laughter. “If there was a way back in for you, would you take it?”
“Not on your nelly.”
You lying bastard. “Yep,” he looked at the source of the smell. “I can see how you’d like it here.”
And then Jeffery went quiet, stared at the computer screen. Together they watched the little timer spinning round and round.
Eddie smiled. “I see you’ve got the same high-quality equipment.”
“A card would have been nice, though.”
Eddie looked at him – but turned away swiftly as Jeffery’s lower lids tipped a tear onto the desk. “Your departure… well, it was a bit swift. A bit sudden.”
“You’re here now. It’s been a few days,” Jeffery raised his eyebrows. “Forget it, did you?”
Eddie nodded. “Sorry.”
“Eight years I was there. Eight years. I like to think I was a pretty decent boss; that I made a good contribution to the team. And here I am, listening to pigeons all day, doing work that no one needs, and enduring Laurel and Hardy’s uncontrollable flatulence without being able to open a fucking window. If you want fresh air you have to walk along the corridor where you can open the windows. People passing by wonder what you’re up to. They think you’re going to jump.”
Eddie nipped the side of his leg and kept the laughter inside. “What do you actually do here?”
Jeffery blew into a tissue and composed himself. “We do research for people who don’t need things in a rush.” He looked at the revolving cursor on the screen. “We do research for people who can’t be bothered doing it themselves.”
“You could transfer to something else. Something a bit more dynamic. You don’t have to settle for this, Jeffery.”
“You’ve seen the state of the internal job market recently?”
“Just saying: keep looking, don’t give up.”
“I only have ten years until I retire,” he snorted. “Think of the crossword puzzles I could get through in that time.”
“I just think—”
“So how’s he doing, this Weismann fellow?”
Eddie shrugged. “Not really had much to do with him yet.”
“He’s an office dweller – a copper too. It’s a bad combination for forensics at Major Crime.”
“I told them that.”
“I thought you might.” And then he looked directly at Eddie. “But be careful, or you’ll be next. They won’t stop at me, so take my advice and pull your neck in for a bit. Make yourself invaluable, Eddie. You’re bloody good at what you do, so make yourself so important that no one else could do it.”
“And how would I go about doing that?”
“I’ve no idea. I was thinking of doing the same thing when they kicked me out of my office.” There was a shine in his eye. Eddie didn’t know if it was the embryo of another tear or the glow of humour.
Eddie stood to leave, and then said, Columbo-style, “Oh, Jeffery, there is something you could help with. If you’ve nothing better to do.”
Jeffery raised an eyebrow. “As it happens, I’m stuck on twenty-three across.”
“Doc Bolton’s case.”
“I had very little to do with it before I was ejected.”
“It’s linked to Marchant’s death, I’m sure of it. The common denominator is a woman called Jessica Ripley.”
Jeffery squinted at the mention of her name.
“Can you find out about her? About her case, and who was working it?”
* * *
As Eddie trotted back down the staircase into the belly of Killingbeck nick, he felt saddened to see what they’d done to Jeffery, and realised that irrespective of all that stuff about a company being made by individuals, them upstairs didn’t give a flying shit about people.
Eddie had watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest for the first time about twenty years ago. And it had saddened him almost to the point of tears. He looked at Jeffery now with the same sadness he’d reserved for Randle McMurphy and his lobotomised personality. Maybe a pillow over Jeffery’s mouth would be a good idea.
He stood thirty yards along the corridor from the divisional CSI office.
Thirty yards.
He gritted his teeth, and he planted one foot towards that door, prepared to ask for his old job back; prepared to bend his knee to Peter McCain so he wouldn’t be out of work. But all by themselves, his feet turned around; he watched them carrying him towards the exit. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said to them, as the door to CSI disappeared from sight.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Eddie lit a cigarette and opened a window, letting the smoke crawl up his arm and out into the fresh air. There were two reasons why his feet wouldn’t allow him to walk up the corridor to the Divisional CSI office and ask McCain for his old job back. The first reason was this: McCain would grin at Eddie, rub his hands together and gloat – oh, how the mighty fall! This would cause Eddie to jump on him and snap his neck. So, within an hour of asking for his old job back, Eddie would be looking at life for murder.
And the second reason he couldn’t ask for his old job back was that he hadn’t finished with the current one yet.
He knew his walk-out looked final and, at the time, it was final, he’d meant it – he wouldn’t work for either Nicki or her old man. It would never work – in fact it would possibly also end in a life sentence. No job was worth that. But there was no way Nicki could manage major scenes by herself. Even if Kenny and Troy stayed behind, she would mess up, and Crawford would have to take action – he’d have to!
He’d try to cover up her shortfall, of course he would, and he’d probably succeed some of the time, but Eddie knew that even Weismann wouldn’t tolerate it for long. Yes, they had infiltrated MCU’s ranks at the same time, turfing out one incumbent after another, but Eddie had the feeling that Weismann was no dummy.
Weismann needed the job doing right – he was head of forensic operations, after all. If Nicki fucked up once too often, Weismann’s head would roll.
Eddie smiled just a little bit. He flicked the cigarette out of the window and started the engine. If he hurried, he might arrive on time. He might not be as sparkly as he was the last time, but nothing could be worse than getting into another aftershave war with his dad.
Chapter Fifty
Eddie ordered steak, medium rare, and watched her over the top of his menu.
“Eddie?”
“Sorry,” he said and handed the menu over to the waiter.
“Wh
at were you looking at?” She was smiling at him again.
“I was just enjoying the view.” Inside, he was still enjoying the view, but he was listening to himself too. And what he heard made him want to vomit.
What the hell did you just say?
Sometimes, you didn’t want your conscience along for the ride. Sometimes, you wanted to be able to be romantic without your harsher self judging you.
Piss off. Leave me alone.
She smiled, but there was concern behind it. “Do you think this is right? Us, I mean?”
Eddie made a real effort to smile back, but the question made him close one eye. “You’d prefer it if I brought my dad along?”
“No, no, I mean with everyone walking out… leaving their jobs. It seems a bit, I don’t know, wrong to celebrate.”
“At least we’re guaranteed not to get disturbed this time.” He laughed across the table, but she only smiled politely. “I even remembered to leave my phone in the car.”
She almost returned his smile.
“Look,” he said, “the forensic department at Major Crime is tiny, but it pulls ten times its weight; it has massive power there. And despite having me in charge, it has a good reputation. Mostly. And I actually quite like my job these days.”
“I know, but—”
“It’s a difficult boat to steer, Moneypenny. And right now, it has a hole in it so large that it’ll be at the bottom of the ocean within a week; less, if we have any more bodies.”
She stared at him.
He stared back, really looking into her eyes, wondering what it was she didn’t understand about what he’d just said. He cleared his throat. “Pressure will mount pretty quickly, and… They’ll ask us all to come back again.”
“You think so?”
“I’d bet your wage on it.” He winked.
She didn’t look so impressed.
Eddie sighed. “Do we have to talk about work? It’s depressing enough being there without it ruining an evening away.”
“Okay. Was that our first argument?” She was smiling at him.
“If you want it to be. I call it conversation, though.”
Her eyes sparkled. “When is your birthday?”
“June. Why?”
Moneypenny nodded, and said, “That explains it.”
“Explains what?” What the hell was wrong with him? She was trying to have a pleasant evening out with him, and so far his only contribution had been aggression.
His conscience rolled up its sleeves and shook its head at him. You haven’t been aggressive, it said. Or confrontational. What you’ve been is distracted by the worst day at work, and you’re finding all this small talk a drag – especially now you know she’s one of them astrologists. It shook its head even more. Really, get a grip. We’ve had enough female hocus pocus to last us a fucking lifetime, man.
“You’re a Gemini. Twins.”
Eddie stared, aghast. He wondered how rude it would be to ask for the bill before the meal had even arrived. And the wonderful image he’d formed in his mind on the drive over here this evening began to crumble, along with his hope that he’d finally met someone with whom he could…
Wait. She was smiling at him.
Her hand went to her mouth, and then she began laughing at him. And when she took away her hand to free a full-blown belly laugh, Eddie started to chuckle too. People stopped eating to look at them and eventually they too began to laugh.
The wonderful atmosphere didn’t last long. The laughter gave way to the sound of glass smashing, and shouting. Moneypenny shrieked, Eddie looked around and Troy’s fist was on its way into his face again. Luckily, this time, the blow was aimed under the influence of something and its accuracy suffered substantially.
Eddie popped his head to one side and the fist missed by a yard but continued to travel until it was somewhere around the centre of the table, by which time Troy was fully off balance. Eddie caught him around the chest before he collapsed onto the table. And, amid the screams, amid the sounds of crockery smashing and cutlery chiming as it hit the floor, Eddie, with Troy in his arms, rolled off his chair and into his neighbour’s table. More crashing, more shrieks, men screaming angrily.
Through it all, Eddie caught sight of Moneypenny. Everything had quietened, like an audio version of a vignette – the silence began at the edges and worked its way inward. And then so too did the vision. The outside world bled away from the scene until only she was there, standing alone, her petite hand to her petite mouth, large eyes staring at him with concern. He couldn’t remember anyone being concerned for him before.
Ah, yes. Jilly had. Briefly. And then Ros. But it turned out hers was short-lived, like a candle giving its everything to light up your life, but dying as dawn came along, leaving you abandoned for another long day, leaving you facing the terror of another night alone.
But here, look. Concern anew. She cares.
Eddie was about to experience gratitude when life bled back into the scene, and Troy screamed, “I’m gonna fucking kill you!” It dampened the mood a little.
Eddie snapped to as a man in a black waistcoat dragged Troy to his feet. Eddie was standing a second later, and he saw the venom in Troy’s eyes, saw how the little man in the waistcoat was just another obstruction to him, as he tried to shove him aside while keeping his eyes on Eddie.
Troy won and lunged at Eddie’s throat, a vicious snarl pulling his lips back.
Moneypenny screamed again.
Eddie stepped sideways into the attack and casually rammed an elbow into Troy’s face.
Troy hit the floor and rolled around on his back, hands cupped over his face. There was a curious mix of screams from the women present, and relief from the men there. Waistcoat Man tugged at Eddie’s arm, and Eddie turned to face him. “Help me into the back room with him. I’m calling the police.”
“There’s no need,” Eddie said. “Leave him to me.”
“I don’t want any trouble, sir, I just want—”
“No trouble. I know him; it was a personal attack.”
“Eddie,” Moneypenny looked across at him.
Eddie looked between her and Troy, the kid who was hell-bent upon ruining everything, right from day one, all the way up to tonight, and forward into Eddie’s future with her. “I’ll get him out. Leave the police out of it, okay?”
“Okay, you get him out now.”
Eddie nodded. He looked up at Moneypenny. Her concern had gone – and he didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. And then he thought about it, and knew it was a bad thing. She reached down for her purse. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, as she walked away. Again.
Everyone was looking at him. Some were retaking their seats, straightening out tablecloths, picking up chairs or cutlery or whatever, but they all looked at him like it was his fault, this disruption to their evening. He looked down at Troy, grabbed him by the sweater and dragged him to the entrance, where Waistcoat Man held the door open.
“I’ll come back,” Eddie said, “settle up for the damage.”
Waistcoat Man only nodded, eager for them to be out of his restaurant.
There was no sign of Moneypenny.
Chapter Fifty-One
Eddie had gone back out to the Discovery and taken his phone off charge. There were absolutely no text messages from Miss Moneypenny. No missed calls either.
He went back inside. He nudged Troy’s foot – slightly harder than necessary – but the little bastard still didn’t stir.
He sighed and slid the phone away. He looked down at Troy as he lay like a broken doll on the sofa, huddled into his blue and white hoodie as though it were a blanket. All at once, Eddie felt like stabbing the little twat, or at least beating him to a pulp; something that would take Troy a few months to recover from, anyway. Troy Ainsley had been a pain in the arse since day one, and Eddie had had just about enough of him.
He sank into the leather chair with the chrome armrest
s by the cold, dead fireside and lit a cigarette, watching the smoke meander up to the ceiling. He looked around at the lounge. It was naked of clutter these days. In the days of old there had been figurines and ornaments everywhere, walls crumbling under the stress of all the paintings and photos on them, shelves sagging under the weight of the porcelain and the silver.
All gone now.
The ceiling had all but been replaced, the walls needed new paper, and the carpet was long gone, leaving bare floorboards and warped gripper rods. The smell in here was curious: a mixture of dampness and the wet musty smell of new plaster. Even the veneer on the lounge door was warped. It was, of course, in two pieces because his dad, hitting a DIY spell without gathering the necessary knowledge first, had thought the door was five foot six high. When he discovered it was six foot six, he’d tacked another twelve inches on the bottom and called it good.
Eddie found himself smiling. The memories this place held for him came whether he wanted them or not; Sunday afternoons with Jim Reeves on the turntable and the smell of roasting beef in the air. Where had it all gone? Time slithers away like a coward when you start looking for it. But while this was a place of sweet memories for him, it was also a place of vile memories. He grew cold.
Eddie stood and kicked Troy.
He moved and then rolled off the sofa, groaning. “Did you just kick me?”
“I’ll do it again if you give me any of your lip.”
Troy sat up and rubbed the back of his neck, squinting at Eddie, who stood over him looking for an excuse to land a wrecking ball in his face.
“Go sit down,” Troy said. “I’m not getting up while you’re hovering over me.”
Eddie drew on the cigarette again, and then creaked into the chair, feeling the familiar stitching of the arm rest give way to the chrome tubing beneath. “What is your problem? Let’s get it all out in the open, shall we?”
“I’d rather just keep surprising you every now and then.” Troy stood and headed for the door.
“Sit down.”
“You can’t make me; I’m free to go.”
The Death of Jessica Ripley Page 18