Her mobile cheeped.
‘Kate? It’s Stephen. Kate. Get round here. Quick.’
‘I’m working, Stephen. I’ll—’
‘Get round here quick. I’ve called the fire brigade but it may be too late.’
Ford looked at her. ‘We’ll use a rapid response vehicle. Out of the car.’ Seat-belt free, he opened the door.
Closing the phone, she shook her head.
‘Come on, woman!’
She took a deep breath. ‘What can I do if I go? I don’t want to watch my house burn.’ She swallowed back tears. ‘I want to go and get the bugger that’s responsible for all this.’
He turned full towards her. ‘You mean it, don’t you?’ Eyes narrowing, he appraised her. At last he nodded. ‘Jesus, but you’d better not have had that phone call. Officially. I never heard it, of course. I certainly didn’t hear that remark about getting the bugger responsible. Or you’d be off the case. Let’s just assume, young lady, that you’ve got a chip fire or something. We’re pursuing our enquiries into two deaths. Not your house fire.’
She nodded. ‘No, Gaffer.’
‘You understand?’
‘Yes, Gaffer.’ Like a schoolgirl to the head.
‘OK.’ He smiled. ‘So let’s go get her.’
It was early enough for the traffic through Spaghetti Junction to be light. Ford obeyed the Highway Code in every detail, but still conveyed urgency.
‘Tyburn Road already,’ Ford said briefly. ‘That name – still strikes a chill, doesn’t it? I wish I knew about capital punishment,’ he added. ‘Some scrotes don’t deserve to live, do they? And then you get the people who want them locked up and the key thrown away. That might be worse. I’ve seen “natural lifers”: nothing to live for. And while you can say …’ He continued the debate until well down the A38.
Talking to keep the victim’s mind off things. That was what he was doing. She’d done it herself often enough.
‘How do you want to play this interview, Gaffer?’ she asked, in a gap in his monologue.
‘Soft cop, hard cop? I used to be the tough one, Kate. A natural, you might say. But I’m out of practice, remember. Spend too much time chasing budgets. I should have got one of my lads to come with you, shouldn’t I?’
She couldn’t deny it. Questioning suspects was so much a matter of practice. That’s why it worked well, doing a two-hander with a good colleague.
‘Mark’s very good,’ she said briefly.
‘With that shirt?’
‘You should see the other shirts. He dazzles the info. out of the suspects,’ she said, trying to laugh. ‘Hey, it’s nice out here, isn’t it? Real countryside.’
‘And a real villain at the heart of it.’
The trustees of the Anna Seward Foundation certainly didn’t stint themselves. The general office, in a lovely building bent asymmetrical by age, hummed with mod.cons. Ford looked sternly out of place in a reception area replete with palms, discreet lighting and up-market magazines. Kate felt equally inappropriate, in what she now felt a totally regrettable dress. She shifted in the low chair: to sit elegantly in anything like that, you had to cross your legs. Now the bruises were coming out, crossing was the last thing her legs wanted. She picked at the edge of a dressing on her left hand.
Dick Ford caught her eye. She stopped.
‘Mrs Coutts will see you now, Superintendent,’ the receptionist cooed. But not especially warmly.
The office said simple power. The lines of the desk, the angles of the chairs said power. The empty grate, now filled with an arrangement of silk flowers, echoed it. No fuss. No ostentation. The sort of desks and chairs Kate had seen in country houses, five quid a head for the tour. Regency or Georgian, weren’t they? Maybe Mark would have known. As for Mrs Coutts, she was standing beside her desk, extending a courteous hand to Ford.
If asked, Kate might have predicted a grey-haired woman, stout to matronly, in a dress cleverly cut to conceal a spread waist. What she saw was a woman almost as compactly built as herself. Her hair – like Rosemary’s, Kate reminded herself – had been coloured, but Mrs Coutts’ showed far less grey. Her complexion must have been admirable without make-up: it was flawless with. A fuchsia-pink plain top was covered by the sort of suit Kate wore to court: simple and elegant. But better cut than anything Kate could afford. Like the shoes. She’d seen shoes like that in Selfridges, and rejected them, even in the sale, as too expensive.
‘I must say, Superintendent,’ she was saying, ‘we seem to have been seeing rather a lot of your colleagues recently. These outbreaks of arson – terrible, aren’t they? All those jobs gone overnight. And, I understand, a death.’
‘Indeed. A very sad business. I hope my team haven’t hindered you in your work.’
Hard cop indeed! That man was eating out of her well-manicured hand!
‘Such a lot of responsibility, educating the young. And of course,’ he added, ‘we have this life-long learning business, now. I was saying to my sergeant here, I’ve taken up ballroom dancing myself.’
Kate nodded on cue, realising slowly which role she’d been cast in. The silent, anonymous one, so far. How long did Ford want her to sustain it? Certainly his – the charming, slightly bumbling middle-aged gent – wasn’t entirely convincing Mrs Coutts. How long should Kate wait before jumping in as nasty cop? He’d give her the opening, sure, but it would have been better to rehearse the moves first. Except he’d been too busy chuntering away to keep her mind off her house – and her fire. Oh, yes. She could do nasty cop. But she must take extra care over what she said. That neat, friendly woman was bright enough to be taping everything, wasn’t she? And she could certainly employ lawyers ready to pounce on every weak word.
‘Ballroom dancing,’ Mrs Coutts repeated, as if to prompt him.
‘Indeed. Excellent exercise, of course, as well as being very pleasurable.’ He paused.
The pause grew into a tense silence. Kate’s eyes never left Mrs Coutts’ face. Yes, however bland her smile, Coutts must know which way the questioning was going. And she was planning to outwit them, wasn’t she? By simply remaining silent.
Whose nerve would snap first? Ford – he’d be unflappable, surely. And Kate herself had only to think of two dead women to be able to button her lip.
Coutts. Yes, she was going to break. She looked at her watch as if to hint at more urgent things on her schedule than standing in silent conflict with two police officers. And then – yes, they’d got her – she said, with a silly giggle she’d regret till the end of her life, ‘Surely you’re not here to discuss exercise, Superintendent.’
Kate’s turn. ‘I assure you we are, Mrs Coutts. Precisely that.’
Chapter Twenty-seven
‘But,’ Kate continued, ‘before we do that, Mrs Coutts, I’d like to talk about your health. You look a very fit woman. All that exercise we’re going to talk about, no doubt. But I sense you don’t always feel as well as you look. Now,’ she paused to look around, ‘I can’t help noticing that there are no fresh flowers in this room. I simply cannot believe that your secretary couldn’t produce some as easily as she types your mail. And that fireplace simply cries out for live gladioli, not silk ones. I’d say you suffer from hay-fever, Mrs Coutts. But I’m sure you keep it well under control. What do you use, Mrs Coutts?’
‘It’s none of your business, but I use a nasal spray.’
‘And? If your allergies are so bad you can’t even keep cut flowers in a room, I’d bet in the summer you need more than a nasal spray. You’d need antihistamines. What sort do you use, Mrs Coutts?’
‘This is a gross impertinence.’
‘You do use antihistamine tablets? Yes or no, Mrs Coutts?’ Ford shot in.
She glanced at him. ‘I wouldn’t know the name.’
Kate continued: ‘I’m sure your pharmacist will be happy to tell us, to spare you the trouble. Are there any other ailments you might suffer from, from time to time, shall we say? After all, we women have all sorts of problems, don’t
we? PMS; cystitis; thrush: that sort of thing. If it weren’t for the presence of Superintendent Ford, I’m sure we could have a nice womanly chat. Your homely remedies. My homely remedies. That sort of thing. But since we wouldn’t want to talk about them in front of Superintendent Ford, maybe we should return to the subject of exercise.’
Ford said politely, ‘I’m so impressed with the way these young women keep fit, aren’t you, Mrs Coutts? Now, Sergeant Power here—’
Yes! A tiny gasp, a slight dilation of the eyes: Kate shouldn’t be here, she should be back in Kings Heath watching her home in flames, that was what those minute signs said.
‘– she’s got, I’m told, an injured knee. And the police physio takes it so seriously he’s got her exercising regularly. So I’m told. But it has to be light exercise, none of your jogging on mean streets. No, she exercises on a proper surface. A tennis surface.’
‘Of course,’ Kate observed, ‘exercise makes you very thirsty, doesn’t it? I wonder what you drink when you’re thirsty, Mrs Coutts? Water? Or do you prefer fruit juice?’
‘This whole conversation is quite bizarre, quite surreal,’ Coutts said. ‘You’ll be aware—’ She stopped short. Yes, she was rattled, wasn’t she?
‘Aware of what, Mrs Coutts? I didn’t quite catch that,’ Ford said politely.
Coutts shifted her weight to the other foot. All three were still standing. Kate forced herself to unbrace her bruised knees. The more relaxed she was, the better she could react.
Coutts was reacting, too. Trying to retrieve what must have been a gaffe, she smiled, dropped the pitch of her voice. ‘You’ll be aware that I have other appointments—’
‘At five o’clock? Most people are packing up to go home,’ Ford said. ‘In any case, I’d like to talk a little more. Why don’t we all sit down? Maybe your secretary could organise a pot of tea. I’ll just ask her, shall I?’ As he turned, he flickered a minute wink to Kate. Hard cops, it said, were not asked to organise tea.
Neither did hard cops normally wear light summer dresses which fell in soft folds as she sat on one of those elegant chairs. She might just manage a feminine cross at the ankles.
What would the house be like? What would she find when she got home?
Ford was back. He sat heavily in the other chair. Mrs Coutts withdrew to hers, the far side of the desk.
Mistake. They’d made a big mistake. OK, she wouldn’t be the sort of woman to keep a firearm in a desk drawer, but there might be other things—
Kate was on her feet. She headed for the window behind Coutts, as if to throw it open and let in spring air. But stopped, turning swiftly. Ford’s eyebrows moved up and down. She nodded curtly. If only they were a team, not two colleagues thrust together by chance.
Kate’s new position seemed to throw Coutts even more than it threw Ford, however. The only way she could see both was to push back from the desk, and turn her chair through ninety degrees. Good. She couldn’t reach the desk drawers even if she wanted to, not quickly and easily.
A knock at the door. The secretary with a tea tray: teapot, water jug, fine china. Ford, facial lines more austere than ever, stirred the tea and poured three cups. ‘Milk and sugar, Mrs Coutts?’
‘Neither, thank you.’ She produced a bleak, self-derisory smile. ‘A milk allergy, Superintendent.’
Was this the start of a confession? If so, the tension between them was broken by the bathos of a mobile phone chirrup. Ford’s. Whatever the message from the other end, he kept his face completely impassive. The monosyllables he grunted revealed as little.
‘Very well,’ he said at last, ending the call. He looked first at Kate, then at Coutts. ‘I think it would be better,’ he said, ‘to continue this conversation back at Steelhouse Lane. Mrs Coutts, if you want your solicitor present, I think you should phone him.’
Wherever Mrs Coutts was languishing, Kate was damned sure it wouldn’t be a standard cell – not a member of the Police Committee and the mother of a detective inspector. But languish she must, until what Rod Neville – why wasn’t he back in Kings Heath with the MIT? – referred to as a little local difficulty was sorted out.
Face unreadable, he ushered Kate into his room. There his poise deserted him. He faced her, apparently wanting to kiss her but unable to. At last, he reached a tentative hand to her face, pushing her hair behind her ear. ‘Oh, Kate …’
‘What is it, Rod?’
‘God, I don’t know what. I think you’re the bravest, gutsiest woman I know. You hear your house is on fire and you carry on doing the job. But you shouldn’t have, Kate, you shouldn’t have. What if the other side find out you were personally involved?’
His fingers still in her hair, she considered. ‘Rod: that call never reached me. Dick Ford and I never had a call. I kept my mobile switched off, didn’t I?’
‘Have you thought of the consequences of lying under oath?’
‘You sound like Graham Harvey,’ she said flatly. ‘Of course I have. But no one will ever know about the call, so I won’t have to perjure myself. But,’ she added ruefully, ‘clearly I know now, so I won’t be questioning her, at least.’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
She looked him straight in the eye. ‘What’s the damage, Rod? What did they do to my house?’
His other hand gripped her shoulder. ‘Enough. Could be a lot worse. That tiled floor in your vestibule saved you. But there’s smoke and water damage to the front of the house. The back’s relatively untouched. Habitable, the fire people say. And Guljar – he phoned in ten minutes ago. Habitable.’
‘It wasn’t our art-dealer friend who did that.’
‘No.’
‘Any idea who did?’
He shook his head. Not because he didn’t know, she thought. More because he didn’t want to say. Her insistence on going to Lichfield had shocked him more than she’d expected.
‘Rod?’
‘It’s out of my hands, Kate. Bent policemen don’t get investigated by their day-to-day colleagues, do they?’
‘So what now?’
‘You go back to your house. Sort out insurance and security and whatever. Take a few days off if needs be. Compassionate leave, whatever. Why not?’
She was shaking her head violently.
‘I’ll do what I have to do to the house. But there must be something I can do, behind the scenes, to help tie up this lot.’
‘You’ll have to let me think about that. I’ll have to take advice.’ He pulled away his hands, shoving them deep in his pockets like a guilty schoolboy.
‘Think about something else, then, Rod. Tomorrow is Tuesday. Tennis coaching day. I still want to play tomorrow. I want it known I’m playing tomorrow. To everyone.’
‘You want to be a decoy?’ His eyes widened.
‘A bit more active than your normal tethered goat, but yes, a decoy.’
‘What sort of predator are you expecting to attract?’
‘I’ve no idea. What interests me more is who will be there to catch the predator. Without him knowing they’ll be there.’
‘Leave that to me.’
So how was he speaking? Superintendent to sergeant? Or man to woman? She doubted if he knew any more than she did.
‘Of course. The plan was I should walk down to the centre, and Mark would collect me. You’ll let me know if you want changes?’
‘Jesus. You’d be so bloody vulnerable …’
‘Quite. Which is where the team comes in, as Sue suggested. I take it someone will brief me? Or is it more convincing if I don’t know the details?’ Despite herself, she had to stop. Biting her lip, she turned away. Her house. The house she’d worked so hard to make her home. She wailed with the pain of it.
Knowing in another single agonising second that the man she’d slept with wasn’t going to comfort her, she opened the door and fled from his room.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Sue one side of her, Colin the other, Kate stared at her house from the road. Habitable, was it
? Well, she supposed it was.
What she didn’t expect was to see Alf emerging from her entry. ‘Soon sort that out.’ He jerked his thumb at the tarpaulin where the front door had once been. The inner door, which she’d been to such pains to have re-glazed with stained glass, was a shell of burnt wood dumped on her front garden. ‘I’ll get a door for you now – no time to hang it properly tonight but I’ll fix it, inside and out. You’ll have to use the back door for a bit. Kettle’s on, as a matter of fact.’
She didn’t expect to see Stephen ready with a teapot, either.
His smile was embarrassed. ‘I think I may have made it out to be worse than it was,’ he said. ‘There’s actually not all that much damage. Considering.’
Apart from muddy footprints and something chuntering away in her washing-machine, the kitchen was just as she’d left it. So, as she pushed her way gingerly through, was the living room. Apart from the smell of smoke and burnt paint. But beyond the living room were the tiny hall and the vestibule. Both stinking messes. God knew what the dining room would be like. Not to mention the front bedroom.
‘The FIT have been in, have they?’ she asked Colin, who had his hands on her shoulders.
‘Yes. Complete with dog,’ he said.
‘Did they say anything?’
He shook his head.
‘Did the dog get excited?’
‘It wagged its tail a lot.’
Did that mean it had found petrol? Well, that was the usual m.o. for domestic arson. Nothing to get excited about. Excited! This was her own house. But better be interested than appalled.
‘I gather your front bedroom’s not very well. But Stephen’s been trying to sort out the damage,’ Sue, who’d not followed them, announced. ‘Ready to see?’
He’d propped up the carpets to dry and set a fan heater going. He’d actually saved the curtains, Sue said, and set them to wash.
‘If I know you, you’ll insist on staying,’ Sue added. ‘But you know there’s a bed for you at my place.’
‘Thanks, Sue. But you’re right. I do want to stay here.’
Power Games Page 19