by Jo Bannister
Donovan frowned. ‘How many are we then?’
Charlie shrugged. ‘You’ve met them. The coach, the boy and me. And you. And maybe Patsy, when the dust settles. For the moment Patsy’s too scared to put in an appearance.’
Donovan tried to milk the information he needed without seeming nosy; it wasn’t an easy task and he may not have wholly succeeded.
‘The others left with your last driver, did they?’
Charlie gave a snort of grim humour. ‘In a manner of speaking. He’s dead, two of the lads are behind bars and Patsy’s on the run.’
A terrible weight of foreboding settled on Donovan’s head. He didn’t want to ask; he didn’t want to know. ‘But he needed to, and besides too little curiosity would be as suspicious as too much. He said carefully, ‘Last job go a bit wrong, did it?’
Charlie shook his head. ‘Not the last one we did for the coach: don’t worry on that score. Trouble was, he was away for the day – a dog-fight in East Anglia. All we had to do was stay out of trouble, and they couldn’t even do that, the silly sods. Wanted a day in London, didn’t they? You’ll never guess what they did on the way back.’
Wanna bet? thought Donovan bleakly.
‘A train robbery!’ exclaimed Charlie, still unable to credit the absurdity of it. ‘A goddamned frigging train robbery.’
Liz got as far as the bottom of the front steps and stopped, exactly where Mrs Andrews had and for much the same reason. She didn’t want to do this. She didn’t have to do it. All that had got her this far was the abstract notion that she ought to.
It would have been easier coming in the back way. If she headed straight for the stairs, with luck she would see no one who’d expect more than a polite nod until she was safe in CID at the top of the building. On the other hand, those she avoided meeting now she’d have to meet later. It would be nice to think that she’d taken all the hurdles she could at one outing, that after this she could come and go without either feeling or causing embarrassment. She had nothing to be ashamed of, was damned if she was going to tip-toe round the place as if she had.
So when she was ready she took a deep breath and marched up the steps into the front office like an Assistant Chief Constable paying a surprise visit in the hope of finding the Duty Sergeant asleep with his feet on the desk.
They’d have been less startled if she had been an Assistant Chief Constable – if she’d been an Assistant Chief Constable in full ceremonial regalia complete with sword. There were three of them: Sergeant Tulliver, WPC Wilson and PC Stark who was bringing the Incident Book up to date. They did a matched set of double-takes, looking up as they heard the door, down again as they recognized her, then up once more in surprise at seeing her here and now.
Refusing to run, making herself face them, Liz sketched a smile. ‘Bet the Incident Book makes good reading this week.’
For a moment none of them knew what to say. But she felt a wave, not of embarrassment nor even sympathy so much as respect, that gave her hope. The ice was cracked; soon it would break.
PC Stark said quietly, ‘About the same as usual, ma’am. Some pain, some grief, and a lot of police officers doing work nobody could pay them enough for.’
Liz felt her heart swell. This wasn’t going to be the torture she’d feared. She’d been right not to put it off. The support she needed, from people who knew about being hurt and humiliated and having to carry on regardless, was right here. She nodded: ‘So what’s new?’ She headed for the stairs.
WPC Wilson came quickly round the counter, her face pink. ‘Er-’
‘Mm?’
But whatever the younger woman had wanted to say stuck in her throat. She coughed but couldn’t clear it.
‘The chief’s upstairs,’ said Tulliver, covering her confusion with his own. No one could get used to Shapiro’s promotion. ‘Shall I call him?’
‘No, I’ll stick my head in when I get up there.’
Wilson swallowed. ‘Ma’am – what happened. If there’s anything any of us can do, please say.’
Liz’s smile broadened. ‘I will. Thanks.’ There was almost a spring in her step as she climbed. She was conscious of having emerged from an encounter she’d been dreading not merely unscathed but strengthened. More than just relief, she felt the stirrings of confidence.
Shapiro was in mortal combat with his paperwork. His expression was belligerent, his eyes slashing and stabbing like lethal weapons, his pen flashing spiky comments in margins and ending his signature with a vicious full stop. He flung the vanquished in a tray for a clerk to mail or file as appropriate. But still the foe waited in serried masses, an endless army of paper that grew even as he despatched it.
In fact this was nothing new. Shapiro’s paperwork always mounted until either those waiting for it made a fuss or he couldn’t find room on his desk for his elbows. What was different was the savagery with which he was attacking it, and that had less to do with the task than what he was using it as a diversion from.
Before she decided that twenty years as a policeman’s wife was enough, Angela used to discourage him from working on Saturdays. She liked to have the family together for Shabbos, and though she appreciated that crime didn’t keep kosher she would have raised a disapproving eyebrow at the triviality of his present occupation. Except that she’d have understood why he couldn’t sit at home and think when anger was threatening to blow the top off his head. Paperwork wasn’t an antidote, but the mindless tedium at least blunted the pain.
The step in the corridor outside his office was so familiar that for a moment he gave it no thought. A moment later his head jerked up and his eyes widened. ‘Liz?’ His voice rose as if he’d been cornered in his office on a Saturday morning by an axe-murderer.
From habit she tapped as she opened his door. ‘On your own, Frank?’
Shapiro stumbled to his feet, ushered her in. She looked drawn, her skin pale and touched with grey. Even her bright hair had lost its glow. But in her eyes she was herself. A little bruised, a shade jet-lagged, but the authentic Liz Graham with her sharp mind and her cool head and her strong sense of purpose.
He spread a blunt hand at the littered desk. ‘Paperwork,’ he explained unnecessarily.
Liz nodded. ‘The secret is to keep on top of it. As the bishop said—’ She stopped. The unspoken punchline hung in the air between them, grey as ashes, heavy as lead.
‘Oh, Liz.’ Sorrow thickened Shapiro’s throat.
She lifted her head abruptly and her eyes slapped him. Her tone was impatient; only someone who knew her as well as he did would have detected the tremor. ‘For pity’s sake, Frank, don’t let’s start analysing every word we say! I’m not going to have an attack of the vapours at every veiled reference to sex. I’m all right. Lots of unpleasant things happen in this world, and most of them happen to police officers. Pilots say it’s not a bad landing if you walk away. Well, I’m walking, Frank. Tap-dancing may take a bit longer.’
Her courage struck him to the heart. Feeling his eyes fill he blew his nose vigorously. In the course of a long and eventful career he’d met a wide variety of professional tragedies. He’d seen colleagues injured, maimed and killed; he’d seen them succumb to the stresses of the job and lose their nerve, their wits, their wives and everything they’d worked for. He’d known officers who had killed themselves and a few who’d killed other people.
But to the best of his knowledge he’d never known one who’d been raped. He tried to think of it as just another in the long list of injuries which criminals inflict on defenders of the law, but failed. It wasn’t. You could laugh, ruefully, about the odd broken bone sustained in the course of duty; but the assault on Detective Inspector Graham couldn’t be defused by a bit of healthy badinage.
The enormity of it left him rudderless. He’d known this woman for twelve years. They worked closely together, shared a deep respect as well as a genuine friendship that had survived various disagreements, conflicts of priority, even of principle. Now, because of a li
ghtning attack behind her house, he’d no more idea what to say to her than Donovan had. Resentment at that seethed in his breast, only contained by the knowledge that he mustn’t – absolutely must not – let her see that it made a difference. She’d never let him down, never once; he wasn’t going to have her think that anything a barbarian could do to her could affect her relationships with friends and colleagues.
‘Right,’ he said briskly, stuffing his handkerchief in a trouser pocket. ‘Now, what are you doing here?’
‘Two things. Informing you that I’ll be available for duty on Monday.’ She gave a little self-deprecating smile. ‘And making sure that when I arrive on Monday morning I won’t get as far as the back door and bottle out.’
‘Monday?’ Shapiro was dismayed. ‘Liz, that’s too soon. Did Dr Greaves agree to that?’
‘Dr Greaves gave me a thorough physical and the only damage he could find was a slight concussion. I’ve an appointment at the hospital later today, to make sure there aren’t any souvenirs, and after that my diary’s free. Now, I could sit at home feeling sorry for myself; I could go buy a wig and a long black coat like your granny wore so I could venture out in daylight without being recognized; I could spend the day with a counsellor and be reassured that it’s perfectly normal to feel a whole lot of things I don’t feel at all; or I could get on with my job. Which of these do you think’ll make me feel most like a human being again?’
She wasn’t as calm about this as she wanted him to think but perhaps that didn’t matter. Perhaps pretending to be in control led to regaining control in fact. He had two concerns: whether she was competent to work, and whether the stress of trying would be harmful. On the first he had no doubts. She wouldn’t be at her best and brightest, but Liz Graham in third gear still outperformed most people in top.
The second criterion was harder to judge. All his instincts told him she needed cosseting, needed time and space to rebuild in. He thought getting out in the sun with her horse, or on to a Greek beach with her husband, would speed the healing. But he couldn’t trust her instincts on every issue but this one. He scrutinized his hands folded on the desk, gave a protracted sniff. ‘My grandmother was a woman of impecable fashion sense who owned a hat shop.’
Liz had known Shapiro as long as Shapiro had known Liz. She knew when she’d won an argument without him handing her a coconut. She vented an unsteady sigh. Girding herself for battle with him had stiffened sinews which softened with the victory. ‘Monday then.’
‘If you’re sure it’s what you want.’ His gaze was compassionate but still troubled. ‘Before you decide, think how you’re going to deal with it when this becomes public knowledge. Because it will. You know this town: gossip’d get about somehow even if all the people moved out. I can tell you, the way I tell all rape victims, that every effort will be made to protect your identity, and I don’t believe anyone at Queen’s Street would betray that, but we have to be realistic. Because of who you are this isn’t a normal rape case and you shouldn’t count on anonymity. Sooner or later some sick sod you’re in the process of arresting will throw it in your face. You need to know how you’re going to react.’
She hadn’t considered it. The rules to protect the privacy of rape victims worked so well she hadn’t wondered if they’d work for her. But he was right: rumour was no respecter of law and the piquancy of a sex attack on the town’s senior policewoman would lend it wings. By Monday all Castlemere’s criminal fraternity would know what had happened. Most of them would have too much class to refer to it. But not all. It would happen; if not Monday, then soon.
She forced her voice on to a level. ‘Professionally, I hope. You’re right, sooner or later someone will. I’ll try and think up a good put-down first. But how I deal with it is less important than the fact that I will deal with it. I have to, if I want to go on doing this job in this town. Whether it’s Monday, a week on Monday or six months from now: it’s not going to be any easier whenever it comes. That’s why I’m here today. Some things get harder to do the longer you put them off. That’s why I’d like to get back to work at once, even if it does give me some rough moments. I’ll cope. You know that.’
He did; but it would still be like a knife turning in the wound. He wanted to protect her but he couldn’t protect her forever. She wouldn’t let him; apart from that it would be a bad idea. The rest of her career hung on what the next several days would bring.
But the next several days would be easier if the inquiry seemed to be making some progress. That meant discussing it. By her presence here Shapiro assumed she was ready to do that. ‘You told me yesterday morning pretty much what happened. But you were still in shock. Has any more detail come back to you since?’
The thing was in her mind constantly, running and re-running before her eyes like a jerky, meaningless snatch of film. Yet focusing on it, thinking about it in a deliberate and coherent way, was unexpectedly hard. Liz made the effort, creases netting her eyes. But nothing new emerged. ‘I really don’t think so.’
Shapiro’s face screwed up like an old apple. ‘I need to get some sense of why you? Because you’re another good-looking forty-year-old blonde professional woman? We know that’s what he likes – is it just coincidence that he picked you? Has he seen you in your garden and thought “That’ll do nicely”? Or was it more calculated than that? Did he know about the operation at the Basin – is that where he saw you, only he realized you had company then so he found out where and when he could get you alone?
‘You see what I’m getting at? In the first case he’s just a bastard, in the second he’s a clever bastard. He knows who you are – precisely who, he knows you’re involved in this investigation. He knows you tried to trap him, this was his reply. That makes the attack on you personal.
‘Either he followed you home or found out where you live so he could ambush you when you least expected it. That’s not just nasty, it’s arrogant; and that means he’s not doing this because of some primordial urge he can’t resist, he’s doing it for kicks. He’s not at the mercy of his hormones, he won’t be pushed into taking risks and making mistakes: he can wait until he can have what he wants at little or no danger to himself. He’s going to be a sod to catch.’
‘Well, Frank,’ Liz exclaimed impatiently, ‘I had actually worked that out. Something to do with the fact that he’s already raped three women and we still don’t know anything about him! I know it’s going to be hard. It’s always bloody hard. We’ve still got to bloody do it.’
‘Of course we have,’ he agreed mollifyingly, wanting to pat her shoulder and knowing she’d probably slap his hand away. ‘And of course we will. I’m just looking for anything you can tell me that’ll help. Every prison library is run by some clever bastard who thought he’d outwitted us. That’s where this man’s going to end up – stamping “Property of HM Prison Service” on cheap editions of Charles Dickens.’
Dropping her eyes Liz sketched an apologetic shrug. ‘I’m sorry, Frank, I don’t mean to jump down your throat. I know it’ll take time – God knows it always has when it’s been me doing it! Don’t feel you have to humour me: if I’m behaving like a silly mare you’d better tell me. By Monday I have to be back in full working order.’
‘No,’ he said gently, ‘you don’t.’
‘Yes,’ she said firmly, ‘I do. And for what it’s worth, I think he knew exactly who I was. To come to my house, to my own back yard – that’s not like waylaying someone on the public street or in an office-block. That’s as personal as it gets.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ Shapiro admitted. ‘Makes it worse, somehow, doesn’t it?’
‘Not for me it doesn’t,’ she gritted. ‘So he knows where I live – I already knew that. Now let’s track the bastard back to where he lives.’
Chapter Thirteen
All the time he was getting enough gear from his boat to look he was moving out, Donovan was waiting his chance to get word to Shapiro. But the boy shadowed him too closely. There w
as no time to use the phone, to pass a message to a neighbour or even drop a hint that might be acted on. Finally, in desperation, he wrote a note that he put in an envelope with the keys and dropped through the hatch of the James Brindley on the next mooring. What he wrote – ‘Got a job offer, have to split, love to Liz’ – would make no sense to Martin and Lucy Cole. But they knew where he worked, would have the wit to forward it to Queen’s Street where Shapiro would understand what it meant.
Andy took a covetous look round Tara as they left. ‘I can see why you don’t want to muck in with us.’
Donovan shrugged. ‘It’s not mine, I’ve just been looking after it. Keeping the squatters out. Everything of mine’s in the bags in the van.’
Brian Boru thought he was going fighting again: his eyes glowed with anticipation. Donovan didn’t have to force him into the van, the dog dragged him out by the chain and clawed at the tailgate. He thought his life had improved immeasurably in the last few days.
Gates met them outside the cottage, greeted Donovan politely and Brian effusively – Brian’s answer was to lift his lip just enough to show the tip of a fang and had a quiet word with Andy while Donovan was unloading the van. He couldn’t hear what they were saying but he could guess. ‘Did he try to contact anyone?’ ‘He left a note when he dropped his key off. But I saw it, there was nothing in it.’
They settled Brian in the piggery – he couldn’t see the other dogs, the exchange of threats and menaces as they heard one another didn’t last – then went inside.
‘There isn’t much room,’ Gates said wryly. ‘If it’s any comfort, we don’t live like this all the time. It was the best I could do that was both handy and private.’
Coffee was simmering on the stove. Gates poured four cups and they joined Charlie in the little sitting-room. There were four chairs, which would have been enough if Chang hadn’t claimed one of them. The nude dog and Donovan regarded each other with mutual dislike.