by Val McDermid
‘Very funny,’ Carol said. ‘I know it’s bad.’
‘Bad? I’ve seen better-looking road traffic accidents. Who did that to you?’
‘You don’t want to know.’ Carol shrugged off her coat and hung it on the rack by the door.
‘I do, I want to put a contract out on them for bringing the profession into disrepute.’ Wendy shook her head as she seated Carol. ‘Carol, what were you thinking? Once, in an emergency, that I could understand. But this? This is wilful vandalism. You’ve got lovely hair, you should respect it.’
‘And how have you been, Wendy?’ Carol let herself relax into the chair as Wendy swivelled and lowered it so her head was over the washbasin.
‘Busy,’ she said, soaking Carol’s hair and shampooing it briskly. ‘Too bloody busy. I haven’t been on holiday this year yet. And they say Lincoln freed the slaves.’ Massage, rinse. Both women fell silent as Carol luxuriated in the pampering. Shampoo, massage, rinse. Condition, rinse.
When she was upright again, Carol tried to explain her absence. ‘I’ve been renovating a barn,’ she said. ‘Out in the middle of nowhere.’
‘What happened to coppering?’ Wendy met her eyes momentarily, then went back to cutting and razoring.
‘I thought I was done with it. But apparently it’s not done with me.’
‘Well, I’m glad to see you back.’ They talked of nothing much as Wendy carried on. ‘I think we’re about done here,’ she said at last, working some wax into the tips of Carol’s hair and surveying the result in the mirror. ‘Nothing short of a miracle.’
As she spoke, the door opened and a young woman with a terrifying shock of pink and ginger hair came bounding in clutching a newspaper and a carton of coffee. ‘You’ll never believe —’ Then she caught sight of Carol and blushed a deep unbecoming scarlet.
‘You’re late,’ Wendy said.
‘I thought we weren’t opening till ten.’
‘Hi, Tamsin,’ Carol said.
‘I opened early for Carol,’ Wendy said. ‘You remember Carol?’
Tamsin couldn’t meet her eye. ‘Hi, Carol.’ She gave Wendy a beseeching look. Wendy paused. Carol couldn’t quite see what was going on behind her, but it looked as if Tamsin was showing Wendy the paper.
‘Ah,’ Wendy said on a long exhalation. ‘Carol, I’m guessing you haven’t seen this morning’s paper?’
‘No, should I have?’
Wendy pursed her lips. ‘I’d say so.’ She plucked the paper from Tamsin’s grasp and laid it with surprising gentleness on Carol’s lap. The front page of the early edition of the Sentinel Times featured a large photograph of Carol, in mid-laugh, head tipped back, glass in hand. Top Cop in Drink Driving Mystery, the headline screamed.
The room swam in front of her eyes. For a wild moment, she almost believed it was a tacky practical joke. But nobody leapt out to say, ‘Surprise!’ Wendy and Tamsin were both staring at her in the mirror in consternation. Carol forced herself to read on.
Mystery surrounds the dropping of a drink-driving charge against a retired top detective days before she was rehired to run a new crack squad.
Carol Jordan was a detective chief inspector with Bradfield Metropolitan Police until she retired recently.
Last Saturday night, she was stopped by police near her home on the West Yorkshire moors and breathalysed. According to a police source, she was ‘well over the limit’. Later that night she was charged with drink driving at Halifax police station.
She was due to appear before Halifax magistrates on Wednesday, but the Crown Prosecution Service told the bench the breathalyser had been faulty. Charges against Jordan and three other motorists were dropped as a result.
Our source said, ‘This was a bolt out of the blue for us. We knew nothing about any faulty breathalyser till it came up in court. And none of our breathalysers has been taken out of service. Something very odd has gone on here.’
Two days after the collapse of the case against Jordan, she was revealed as the boss of a brand-new regional Major Incident Team in a Home Office initiative to cut costs and streamline homicide investigations.
A Home Office spokesman said, ‘We have absolute confidence in DCI Jordan. There is nobody better qualified to run the new unit.’ He refused to comment on what happened at Halifax Magistrates’ Court.
Jack Lorimer, who was one of the other motorists who escaped prosecution thanks to the faulty breathalyser, said, ‘I’m very glad that I was proved to be safe behind the wheel of my car. The police wouldn’t listen when I said I couldn’t possibly be over the limit, but I was right.’
DCI Jordan was not available for comment.
Carol folded the paper in half and handed it back to Wendy. ‘Well, forewarned is forearmed,’ she said, somehow managing to keep her voice steady. ‘Thanks for letting me see that.’
‘They make it sound like something dodgy went on,’ Tamsin blurted out.
‘That’s what newspapers do,’ Wendy said, tossing the paper into the bin. ‘They take something perfectly straightforward and twist it till it looks like something completely different.’ She brushed the loose hair from the protective overall Carol was wearing. ‘Nobody that knows you could take this seriously.’
Carol stood up and slipped her arms free. ‘Nice of you to say so, Wendy. But there’s a lot of people out there don’t know me from a hole in the ground.’
‘Don’t be daft. You’re a local hero. The woman who masterminded the hunt for Jacko Vance. Not to mention all the other bad bastards.’
‘That was yesterday’s chip papers.’
Wendy put a hand on her arm. ‘Never mind what the papers say. Fuck ’em. You’re better than that, Carol. Now get out there with that bloody marvellous new haircut and put the world to rights.’ She turned to Tamsin. ‘And you, get the kettle on. We’ll have our next client in ten minutes.’
Carol went to the podium to pay but Wendy shook her head. ‘I’m not taking your money today. It’s good to see you back.’
‘I can’t let you do that, Wendy.’
‘There’s a condition. You never, ever let that bloody savage loose on your hair again. It causes me actual physical pain to see lovely hair like yours butchered like that. Now bugger off and stop making the place look untidy.’ She pushed Carol’s hand with her wallet back into her bag. ‘Don’t brood. It’ll be forgotten by Monday.’
But Carol couldn’t help brooding. As she walked back to her car, she imagined people staring at her. The implications of the sensational article were obvious. Something corrupt had happened behind the scenes at Halifax Magistrates’ Court. Which was nothing less than the truth. John Brandon had painted it as a good thing, a positive act; now it was exposed in all its ugliness. She was headline news for all the wrong reasons. Maybe Wendy was right. Maybe people had seen her as a hero.
They wouldn’t now.
She’d be tarred with the label of bent cop. Drunk and bent. Exactly the sort of person you’d want investigating the murder of your child, your wife, your father. Every local nick they walked into, looking for support, they’d be faced with officers mutinous or contemptuous, laughing behind their hands at the drunk who’d had to be bailed out. The likes of Blake and Fielding and yes, John Franklin, would love every minute of her discomfiture and shame. John Franklin. Of course. She’d shamed him and his colleagues in the past and now he’d taken the chance to slap her down in return. Who else could supply anonymous quotes from inside the West Yorkshire force? She should never have asked them to call him. She’d invited the enemy into the tent and her new role must have seemed like the ultimate affront to him. Shopping her to the press was the perfect policeman’s payback. Public humiliation coupled with permanent damage to her ability to do the job.
By the time she got back to her car, her hands were trembling and her mouth was dry. She wanted a drink more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life. She could taste the zing of a margarita on her lips, feel the popping bubbles of a vodka tonic all along her tongu
e, sense the cold slide of a Pinot Grigio down her throat. If she was going to be hung for a drunk, she might as well be a drunk. What was the point in trying to stay sober when everyone would have already made their judgement?
Carol jammed the key in the ignition and revved up the Land Rover. She could drive straight to the supermarket and load up with booze then head home. Nobody would know if she leaned on a little drink. She was meeting the team, but not till tomorrow morning. Plenty of time to have a few and sober up again before anyone was any the wiser. And she’d feel so much better with a drink inside her. She could take on the world with a quick hit to calm her down, settle her nerves, kill her fears of facing the world.
She smacked her fist against the steering wheel. ‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!’ It had to be Franklin. Who else would have done this to her? Who else would have betrayed her like this? Who else knew enough to put the pieces together? Not the local hack covering the mags. If it had been her, the story would have hit days ago. No, this had to be Franklin, the bastard. The only other candidate who came close was Blake, and she didn’t think her former chief constable would take the risk of it blowing up in his face. He’d have other petty revenges up his sleeve, she didn’t doubt that. But this didn’t feel like him.
Jesus, how was she going to do this job if she had to watch her back every minute? But she couldn’t retreat now. She’d given John Brandon her word. And besides, she had her team working on a series of deaths that nobody but them thought was suspicious. She couldn’t walk away from that. Someone had to speak for the dead, as well as protect the living.
But yet, there was room inside that commitment for a drink. She had to swing by the canal basin to pick the dog up from Tony. But she’d hold it together. She’d tell him she had work to do, grab the dog and go. She’d be home inside an hour with a few bottles to tide her over till the humiliation subsided. It would be fine. She was in control again.
Carol put the Landie in gear and headed down the car park ramp. She threaded her way through the city centre streets and ten minutes later she was drawing up at the far end of the quayside from Steeler. She jumped out, not bothering to lock the door, and ran over the cobbles to Tony’s mooring. She leapt aboard, pushing back the hatch and slamming the doors open.
He was at the saloon table, laptop open, hands startled frozen in mid-sentence. He looked at her in consternation. ‘What the hell is it?’
All resolution gone, she crumpled on to the galley steps. ‘I need a drink,’ she wailed.
37
Paula was luxuriating in the rare treat of a lie-in. Elinor had gone to work, Torin was having a sleepover for his best mate’s birthday and Carol had ordered her to take the day off. So she was enjoying the drift between sleeping and waking, dozing then surfacing, languid and loving it. Then she was prodded to the surface by the vibration of her phone. For a moment she thought it was a dream, but her hand was already stretching for the bedside table.
She registered the caller – Elinor – and took it without thinking further. ‘Uh huh,’ she groaned, not quite awake.
‘Have you been online yet?’ Elinor asked without preamble.
Paula swallowed and squirmed into a sitting position. ‘No, why?’
‘You need to look at the Sentinel Times front page. I’m assuming it’ll be in the online edition. Otherwise you’ll have to go and get a paper. I can’t stop, I’m up to my eyes here, we’ll talk later.’ And she was gone.
Paula shook her head like a dog emerging from water. Had she just dreamed that? She yawned and stretched, then went downstairs to grab her tablet. While she waited for the kettle to boil, she rubbed the sleep from her eyes and opened up the Bradfield paper’s website. And there it was, in all its glory: Top Cop in Drink Driving Mystery. ‘Oh shit,’ she muttered, reading on. In its usual attempt to prove it was as bold as the national red-tops, the paper sailed as close to the wind as possible without actually saying ‘police corruption’. But you didn’t need a magnifying glass to read between the lines. It was hard to see how it could be any worse.
Ignoring the kettle, Paula ran upstairs and called Stacey. ‘Are you home?’ she demanded.
‘Yes, I’m home.’
‘I’m coming round,’ she said. ‘We need to put our heads together.’
Stacey said something about Carol having told them to take a rest day. But Paula was already cutting her off and heading for the shower. Ten minutes later, she was running out the door, hair damp, rage fluttering in her chest. How dare they, the cheesy scumbags? Did they have no idea what Carol Jordan had done for this bloody city over the years? How many people were walking through their days without a care who might be six feet under if not for the job she’d done. Putting herself on the line for the ungrateful bastards. And if you were going to be completely selfish about it, how many bloody newspapers had been sold off the back of Carol and her team?
Once behind the wheel, she forced herself to calm down and drive attentively. The last thing they needed right now was another headline. By the time she rang Stacey’s entryphone, she had simmered down a little. But not much.
‘Have you seen the paper?’ The words were out before she was even across the threshold.
Startled, Stacey backed up a couple of steps. ‘Only the FT,’ she said. ‘What’s happened?’
Paula marched past and went straight to the work area. ‘Which one of these can I use?’
‘None, ideally,’ Stacey said, slipping past her and into a chair. ‘What am I looking at?’
‘The home page of the bloody fucking Sentinel Times.’ Paula drummed her fingers against her thigh. Even the speed of Stacey’s solid state drives couldn’t match her impatience.
‘Oh,’ Stacey said as she read the headline. She clicked on the story. ‘Oh no.’
‘That didn’t happen by accident,’ Paula said. ‘And it didn’t happen by routine either. If it had come from the local rag covering the court, it would have broken before now.’
‘Mmm. It would have had to be reported the next day, there are rules about that sort of thing,’ Stacey said slowly, letting her fingers move over the keyboard without actually pressing the keys. Paula had seen her do it often when she was considering what to do next.
‘And besides,’ Paula continued, ‘she won’t have been identified in court as ex-DCI Carol Jordan, she’ll have been on the charge sheet with her name and address alone. That would’ve been meaningless to the hack who covers the mags for the Halifax Courier. If they’d noticed it at all, their story would have been “faulty breathalyser put four drivers through hell of suspicion”.’
‘Somebody leaked this, you’re right.’ Stacey stood up and gently pushed Paula back from the screens. ‘Caffeine and sugar,’ she said. ‘I know you when you’re insufficiently stimulated. Go out on the balcony and vape while I sort us out.’
Nonplussed, Paula did as she was told. Silicon Stacey was a changed woman. Love was slowly leaching the cool remoteness from her persona. Soon she’d be like the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica, indistinguishable from humans. Paula leaned on the rail of the small terrace and gazed unseeingly across the city. Who was so heavily invested in the failure of the new MIT that they would try to scupper it before it even began? ‘Take a number,’ she muttered, turning up her jacket collar against the thin breeze cutting across the rooftops.
Stacey called her inside and they sat round the kitchen table with a pot of green tea and a pile of buttered crumpets. ‘Sam not around today?’ Paula asked as she reached for a crumpet and some rhubarb and ginger jam.
‘No, he’s off with his mates,’ Stacey said, busying herself with the teapot.
‘So, I think we can assume that this was a deliberate leak from inside the tent. Somebody that wants to fuck us up before we even get out of the starting blocks.’
Stacey poured tea. ‘That doesn’t exactly narrow it down. Blake must be furious that she’s back running his murder cases without actually being accountable directly to him. DCI Fielding hates her guts
because Carol made her look even more stupid than she actually is. There’s two without even thinking.’
‘DCI Franklin can’t be best pleased either. They’ve got history. She’s made him and his team look like turnips a couple of times over the years. Then his officers make a righteous arrest – actually, four righteous arrests – and some hotshot at the Home Office decides they need Carol Jordan more than they need the law upholding on his patch. I’d be bloody furious if I was him.’
Stacey stared into her tea. ‘He does have a point. I’m not entirely comfortable with how we got here.’
‘It’s a balance, isn’t it? We know the good Carol Jordan has done in the past. We know the good she’s capable of doing in the future. And this was such a small indiscretion.’
‘This time,’ Stacey said severely. ‘She’s been flying close to the edge for years, we both know that.’
‘But it’s pushed her into stopping drinking. So that’s a strong positive to come out of it. I know if you take the high moral ground it’s dodgy, but I think the benefit is much greater than the downside.’
‘We’ll have to wait and see. But those three – Blake, Fielding and Franklin – they’re just the ones we know about off the top of our heads. There must be plenty of others. There’s six forces involved in this project – I can’t believe there aren’t officers with an axe to grind there. Bosses pissed off at having the big cases taken from them. DCIs who think it should have been them.’ She did a jerky shrug, as if she wasn’t quite accustomed to so much animated conversation.
Paula stirred her tea and helped herself to a second crumpet. Exactly how she liked them. Slightly crispy, running with butter. Thank God Elinor couldn’t see her. ‘We need to find out who’s behind this in case they’re not going to stop at one sabotage attempt. This is probably going nowhere fast, but there’s real malice here. We need to stomp it into the ground, Stacey.’
‘What do you suggest we do?’
Stacey nibbled at her crumpet, not meeting Paula’s eyes. Nothing new there; she’d built a career on going deep inside herself when she needed to figure stuff out. ‘Can you get inside the newspaper’s system? There must be something in there. An email. A payment. A message. It’s a big story, they wouldn’t run it without a bit of to-ing and fro-ing.’