For now, she would take his tone. Had to. There was work to be done. But later she would buy him a drink, encourage him to talk. ‘We go off towards the museum, like we agreed. But instead of going with you to the shop, I stop off in Paradise Forum and buy one of those cheap-o cameras – the disposable sort. And I walk back to the car, and drop the third set of papers into the car and wander off, tutting and looking at my watch as if wondering where the hell you were. In fact, you’re hurtling back, clutching a dinosaur or whatever.’
‘So you lurk in the shadows of the car park, ready to take a photo of anyone showing an unnatural interest in my car.’
‘Spot on.’
Mark shook his head. ‘Don’t like that. We work as a pair.’
‘Two can’t lurk as well as one. And I tell you, Mark, once we’ve had our nice gentle amble to the Forum, you go off like greased lightning to do your shopping, and come back like the bloody clappers. OK?’
‘We couldn’t do it the other way round?’
‘Whatever happened to your equal opps. training? Come on, you don’t have to protect me.’
‘Not because you’re a woman, I don’t. I do because you’re my mate.’
She touched his arm lightly. ‘Thanks. Now, give me your keys and go.’
Kate strode back to the car, throwing an A4 brown envelope on to the driving seat and relocking it. At the last minute she’d had a rush of sense. If she messed up, someone would have a lot of information she didn’t want anyone to have. So the envelope now contained several sheets of the day’s Birmingham Post photocopied specially for the occasion. The original photocopies were crammed into her bag, now safely slung round her neck, lest she had to give chase.
Tapping her watch, she peered round, sucking her teeth in irritation. Everything about her, she hoped, wondered where the hell Mark was. And said she was going to look for him.
It didn’t take long to slip round to the car park from the other direction. No, she didn’t want to look furtive, more like a snap-happy tourist. Pity there was very little touristy stuff to look at just here. Just act casual. Uninterested.
Yes, there was someone near her car. Probably innocent. But worth a look.
Feigning interest in the commercial skyline over Broad Street, maybe panning in to Symphony Hall, she edged closer. A crow-bar! Jesus! Hardly your streetwise break-in gear! Well, Mark wasn’t going to like having his driver’s door jemmied, but it all tied up with what Graham had said about the fires – that the whole thing smelt amateur.
The poor camera was amateur too – not really up to the job. The shutter was audible, there was no motor-drive. But she had him, there, on record. And now she was going to get a nice snap of him grabbing the decoy papers.
There was someone behind her. She waited as long as she dared, then feinted to the right. Then to the left. The knee screamed. So did the man following her who fell flat on his face. She bounced off a bonnet, pushed herself upright. Somehow the camera stayed in her hand. She closed the other one round it, to make sure.
Crowbar man ran towards her. Hell, where would an amateur strike with a crowbar? Not to maim, that was for sure. To kill. She took off to her right, bouncing off a Volvo wing, and hurtling down the exit lane. Not tarmac here. Cinders. Not good. The footsteps behind were getting closer. Mustn’t look back. Think feet. Dodge reversing cars, leap pot-holes.
And a voice to the right. ‘Kate! Kate! To me!’
Swerving took a second off her speed. Another second to register Mark, running parallel to her. And then she was brought down. As she fell, she slung the camera, still clutched in both hands, sideways. Thank God – yes, roll to protect the head and face – thank God for all that training.
Nothing would protect the knees, though, even her trousers.
Several people were hauling her to her feet. She must fling them off, chase the bugger who’d tackled her. Only someone else was doing that, hotly pursued by Mark. He’d better have that camera safe!
Safe enough. Chummie jumped into a car that emerged from nowhere and accelerated fast enough to shake off Mark and the other man, who walked back together, apparently too deep in conversation to think about radioing for back-up. Better do it herself, then, and hope Mark would remember he’d need to tell her the car make and number. Amateurs might not have nicked one specially for the job.
‘You really should go to casualty, with those poor hands,’ a woman with a kind Brummie voice was telling her.
‘Casualty? She should be going to Twickenham,’ Mark’s new chum said, all Welsh charm, turning her gravel-rashed hand and kissing the back with aplomb. ‘I haven’t seen a dive-pass like that since Gareth Edwards retired. Mind you,’ he added, more seriously, ‘he didn’t practise on a surface like this. Anything broken?’
She shook her head. She found herself returning a twinkling smile. He must be nearly old enough to be her father, and here she was, flushing like a teenager under the gaze of those blue eyes …
‘I’ve got a first-aid kit in my car,’ he continued. ‘You should swab that gravel rash. Come on. It’s just over there. You did very well, you know. I was afraid your face would be hurt.’ His tone told her that that would have been a shame.
She followed. She had, after all, to take his details as a witness.
The bruised and exposed flesh quivered as she dabbed with the wipes he offered her. Both hands. Then he found Melolin dressing pads. All the time they were talking the sound of mobile back-up was coming closer. She didn’t expect it to come in the form of Rod Neville, or to come while the Welshman – Martin, his name was, disappointingly English – was applying adhesive to the dressing-strip.
‘Kate!’ If he’d stamped his foot, Rod couldn’t have made his displeasure more obvious.
Martin smiled easily. He produced a card from a slender wallet. ‘I should imagine you may want me as a witness. Yes, I’ll be happy to make a statement. And believe me, Sergeant Power, even happier to come to the trial as a witness. Provided you’ll be there.’
Rod glared.
Martin melted obligingly towards a uniformed constable. Pity: she’d have enjoyed – but Rod was already asking her something.
‘Sorry?’ she prompted him.
‘Graham Harvey wants us to meet him in Steelhouse Lane nick,’ Rod said at last, as the last response vehicle drove away. No, there’s been no sign of what he clearly found difficult to call the scrotes. His mouth curled fastidiously as he used the term.
‘Not until I’ve bought some new trousers,’ Kate said emphatically.
He stared.
‘I’m going to have to soak these off, and even I don’t go into meetings wearing a towel as a kilt,’ she said, pointing to the bloodstains on her knees.
His voice dropped. ‘Oh, Kate – I didn’t realise. Let’s get you to casualty.’
‘Casualty wouldn’t solve the trousers problem. Come off it, Gaffer, there are enough people back at the nick with first aid training to sort out playground knees.’
The word ‘Gaffer’ brought him up short. ‘OK. How long will it take?’
‘Ten minutes to walk into the town centre. Ten minutes to shoot into Rackhams and out. Ten minutes to shower these off and dress whatever’s underneath.’
He checked his watch. ‘Two, then. My room.’
She pressed her luck. ‘Since it’s a lunchtime meeting, will there be sarnies, Gaffer? ’Cause Mark and I haven’t got round to having any lunch.’
He leaned slightly towards her, as if to bollock her. ‘Look here, Sergeant—’ he said loudly. Then he dropped his voice: ‘When you talk like that, what I want to do is take you home and fuck the arse off you.’
Rod’s eyes gave her much the same message when she turned up in his Steelhouse Lane office wearing not the usual neat trouser-suit, but a dress. The thought of spending the rest of the day with tight fabric chaffing her sore knees had been too much, and the sun was now warm enough to tempt her into buying something less severe, more feminine, indeed, than her usu
al line. The bonus was that it was long enough to wear with knee-highs, so she didn’t need tights.
There was a welcome smell of coffee in the room – it hadn’t taken Rod long to start up his favourite machine – and a pile of sandwiches. Kate grinned, but said nothing, taking her place beside Mark and Graham. There were a couple of spare chairs, one for Sue Rowley, no doubt. But the other?
‘Has someone seen to your injuries, Kate?’ Rod asked, almost absent-mindedly, as he opened a file and picked up a ball-point.
‘Injuries?’ Graham repeated sharply.
‘Someone tried a flying tackle on her in the car park at the back of Baskerville Place,’ Mark said. ‘Lovely pass she threw me, though. And here are the photos, Gaffer, that the scrotes wanted.’ He laid a wallet on his leg. He laughed. Funny, she couldn’t recall being irritated by his laugh, not for a couple of days now. ‘Mind you, I should think it’ll be a bit hard for you to hold a racquet tomorrow, won’t it, Kate?’
‘Racquet?’ Rod asked.
‘My tennis lesson,’ she said. ‘And however stiff I am, I think I should go. Don’t you?’ She looked round at the three men.
‘Dead right she should.’ Sue Rowley, making an impressive entrance. ‘So long as the place is stiff with the rest of us. Discreetly concealed about the place, of course.’
‘Why?’ Graham asked.
‘Because,’ Sue said, sitting down and helping herself to egg and cress on brown, ‘we should have most of our friends tied up then, and those we haven’t may want a last despairing go at Kate.’
‘Or a spot of revenge,’ Mark amended grimly.
Rod nodded. ‘I’d like to postpone any discussion on this till we’ve heard everything else. Henceforward, none of our decisions can be taken in isolation. In fact, after the work Graham has been doing this morning, I’ve taken the liberty of inviting my opposite number in the MIT investigating the warehouse fires to join us. I think you know why, don’t you, Kate?’
Chapter Twenty-five
A sharp tap, and the door opened to admit Rod’s opposite number in the MIT dealing with the warehouse fires. Detective Superintendent Dick Ford was a man near to retiring age, with a face with as many vertical lines as the outside of Birmingham Town Hall. He scanned each person in the room, giving the distinct impression that he found most of them wanting, especially Kate, in her light dress, and Mark in his peacock plumage.
When Neville, presenting them in order of seniority, introduced Kate as the lynch-pin of the investigations, she could have cursed him for his tactlessness. Ford was clearly the sort of man who preferred to make up his own mind. Which in turn preferred white sandwiches to wholemeal, and stewed tea to coffee. A room which had been full of colleagues at ease with each other was suddenly on edge.
To her surprise, Graham took the lead. Not, she thought, because he wanted to puff his own status, but because he too seemed to sense the older superintendent’s disdain for the younger and his trendy assertions of power.
‘I originally asked Sergeant Power here to represent us at that outbreak of warehouse fires, Superintendent Ford, because I wanted to widen her experience and because I knew she was a damned good cop. It was her investigations that enabled us to discover that all the premises concerned were on land owned by the Anna Seward Foundation. And it’s she who – as you know – has just slotted into the jigsaw the fact that we have an adult male currently hospitalised who was picked up not from his home’ – he paused to smile at Kate – ‘but from a phone box near Spaghetti Junction.’
‘Ah. The poor bugger tried to get home but collapsed in pain,’ Ford said. He grunted. ‘Pity you didn’t think of it earlier, Power. Still, better late than never, I suppose.’
She wouldn’t bite. ‘What’s the latest on him, sir?’
‘Still touch and go whether he pulls through. A Mr Blakemore, by the way. Jeremy Blakemore. Has a fine art shop out Lichfield way. You know the sort of place – one picture on an easel, tastefully lit and no price, so you know it’ll cost.’
Not for anything would Kate allow her eyes to drift to the Feininger print on Rod’s wall. But she couldn’t resist shooting Rod himself a glance when she was sure the others’ attention was on Ford. She was rewarded by the merest flick of a wink from an eye suddenly gleaming with affection.
‘So what’s a man like that doing starting fires in less than lovely parts of Brum?’ Sue Rowley asked.
Ford’s shrug wasn’t the elegant shoulder twitch that Rod had mastered: Ford’s gave the impression that someone had hitched a coat-hanger upwards and then let go. ‘Still not talking. Well, not able to talk, according to the quacks. But at least we’ve got his clothes off to the Forensic Science people. Poor bugger,’ he added reflectively.
‘What’s known of him, sir? Apart from his taste in art?’ Mark asked.
Ford shook his head. ‘A highly respectable man. Always the Tory agent, never the candidate. A Mason. Governor of some boys’ public school. And a trustee of a high-profile charity.’
‘Don’t tell me,’ Kate said, before she could stop herself. ‘The Anna Seward Foundation.’
Ford looked at her coldly: she should have known better than to steal his line. ‘Which owns the land on which all those premises were built,’ he concluded for her. ‘So we now know there’s something up. Precisely what we’re working our arses off trying to find.’
‘Which is why we agreed on this meeting,’ Neville added smoothly. ‘You see, my MIT has found other Anna Seward activities. We’ve got the death of a woman opposing the development of a site owned by – guess what – the Anna Seward Foundation.’
Kate slapped the side of her head. ‘I think another officer should be here too, sir.’
‘Who’s that, K—?’
Silly man. Why hadn’t he used her first name? Suppressing it was far more noticeable than using it.
‘Tim Brown, sir, back in Kings Heath. He’s been making investigations concerning the old people whose cottage was knocked down.’
‘The budgie people? Go on.’
‘You’ll never guess who owns the land next to their home, sir.’
‘Spit it out, Power: OK?’
Ford grunted. ‘Obvious I’d have thought. The Anna Seward Foundation.’
Graham leaned forward. ‘I’d like to contribute my mite here, if I may. At – at Kate’s behest’ – bless him for giving credit where it was due. Even if the effort had been palpable – ‘I’ve checked the identities of several women on the Police Committee. One of them, a Mrs Coutts, is quite interesting. Apart from being the mother of one of our officers, she is married to a very senior local politician. A very powerful man.’
Ford shifted in his seat. ‘Well?’
‘She’s a very bright woman. Very bright indeed.’
‘No doubt a product,’ Kate said, ‘of the Anna Seward Foundation.’
Graham’s eyes opened wide. ‘Why on earth should you think that, Kate? No, she went to Cheltenham Ladies’ College. Then to’ – he checked his notes – ‘Girton. Where she got a First.’ He said it so flatly no one would have guessed that he himself had once been a high-flyer too. With a Starred First. If not from Cambridge. ‘She did her doctorate at the Sorbonne, some aspect of education, as it happens, and then became, of all things, a teacher.’
Sue frowned. ‘An ordinary school teacher?’
‘If you call teaching at a succession of girls’ public schools ordinary, yes. And ending up as Chief Mistress of—’ He waited, as if to gather them into a chorus.
‘An Anna Seward Academy,’ all but Ford chanted obediently.
‘But only one academy,’ Kate put in.
‘That was then. Now she’s’ – Graham gestured quotation marks – ‘“retired”, and has taken on another role. She’s—’
‘Don’t tell us: she’s big cheese of the whole fucking lot,’ Mark said.
His face straight, Rod said, ‘Which is precisely why, Ford, we needed to get together. The only question in my mind is who goes
to talk to Mrs Coutts. More precisely, who goes with Kate to talk to Mrs Coutts.’
Ford stared. And then a slow smile spread across his face and he rose to his feet, proffering a stately arm. ‘May I have the pleasure, Miss Power?’
Chapter Twenty-six
‘The wife and I do a lot of ballroom dancing,’ Ford volunteered, as he unlocked the door of his Rover. ‘Exhibition standard, actually.’
Kate got in, fastening her seat-belt. While they were heading for Lichfield, and the headquarters of the Anna Seward Foundation, the unlikely combination of Mark and Rod were setting off for the Tax Office. What Graham and Sue were doing, she’d no idea: but she’d been glad of their presence at that meeting. And of their support over the weekend. Two good, kind friends. Not a lot of bosses would have come round as Sue had done to sort things out. Not a lot of bosses would have leapt into action after a hasty phone call.
And not a lot of bosses would have wanted to fuck the arse off her.
‘Sequins and everything?’ she asked.
‘My wife sews them all on herself,’ he said. ‘It’s tricky, fitting the competitions in with work. When there’s a panic on, of course, I have to let her down. But it’s a nice thing, to work in partnership with someone.’
‘Have you been married long?’ she asked idly.
‘Eighteen months come next Wednesday,’ he said. ‘My first – she died a while back. And I thought the world would end. Wanted it to, to be honest. Then I met Irene—’ He gave it all three syllables. And stopped.
He might as well have said, And my heart stood still. The grim contours softened. Could she ever say the same about her and Rod? The best she could say was, My vagina salivated. And she’d no idea whether he’d be round tonight. He better hadn’t be, come to think of it, till she’d laid in supplies. Or would they steer a romantic trolley round Sainsbury’s, as Robin and she had once done?
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