Power Shift

by Judith Cutler

  ‘So you’re the officer whose worth is beyond rubies! You’re Mr Choi’s favourite officer!’ she declared triumphantly. ‘As soon as you’ve finished, make yourself a cup of tea and bring it into my office.’

  When he came, he inched in, and stood guiltily in front of her desk.

  She stood to greet him. ‘No tea?’

  ‘Well, in the circumstances…’

  She was puzzled. ‘What circumstances, Dave?’

  ‘The photocopying, ma’am. It wasn’t police business.’

  ‘Why not sit down and tell me about it?’

  He looked for a chair but, having put his hand on the back of it, remained half sitting, half standing

  ‘Look, Dave, I’ve been wanting to speak to you for the last week. Why not tell me what’s wrong, then go and make your tea and bring it in here I think we’re in for a long session’

  ‘I was photocopying something for my course, ma’am.’ It was just like her, years ago, confessing to Miss Firth that she’d forgotten her geography homework.

  ‘This is your Cantonese course?’

  ‘You know about it?’ He smiled, straightening, a different man. ‘Yes. I was only messing about at first, you know, thinking it might be useful. But now I’m doing an evening a week at the Brasshouse Centre—the languages centre in Ryland Street—when I can make it, that is.’

  ‘It seems to me that we should ensure you can make it every week. A skill like that’s invaluable round here.’

  Like a teenager, he flushed with pleasure.

  ‘You’ve obviously got the personal respect of the Chinese community,’ she continued, ‘and I was so impressed the way you’d contacted Cherish House to wish them well for their reception. You were sadly missed, all the same.’

  He blushed. ‘It sounds as if I’ve passed over. To the other side.’

  ‘As in “gone before”?’ She pulled a face.

  ‘Yes, ma’am. As in shuffling and mortal coils.’

  No wonder he got on well with Mr Choi. ‘In that case you deserve a cuppa. I’ll ask Mrs Speed to get us both one. China tea for you, I presume?’

  ‘Actually, ma’am, I hate it. I only drink it to be sociable. I’m really a coffee man, ma’am.’

  ‘And I’m really a gaffer woman, Dave—Kate when we’re not on duty, gaffer when we are, OK? Otherwise I feel I should be in a gilded coach, waving.’

  ‘But isn’t that pronounced, “mam”, ma’am, to rhyme with “jam”?’

  ‘As opposed to rhyming with “harm”? Or,’ she added, when all she heard from the phone was noises she couldn’t place, ‘rhyming with “alarm”?’

  She’d better check what was up. Nothing was up, but Mrs Speed was down, face down, to be precise on the desk, surrounded by a knot of officers. Tim Wilde was the only one she recognised.

  Replacing the handset someone had left on the desk, Kate joined her colleagues.

  ‘The tummy bug?’ she asked. ‘Better call an ambulance.’

  These might have been the words to rally both her and Ronnie Hale, but they didn’t stir Mrs Speed. Nor did the efforts of Sergeant White, who presented himself as their duty first-aider. So the ambulance it was—with a very sober group of officers watching while Mrs Speed was carried away, accompanied by Sergeant White. Someone fiddled with the phone in the hope that it would put all calls direct to the extension required—when that failed, Kate asked Tim to get on to the central police switchboard.

  After this it was almost a relief to return to her conversation with Dave Bush, who’d quietly made an excellent cup of coffee for them both.

  ‘Mr Choi seemed to be warning me that there was something illicit going on in the wholesale market. Not everyone thought his warning was… shall we say, disinterested? Now, two things have happened. The first, as you’re probably aware, is that Phil Bates has disappeared.’

  ‘You don’t want to worry about him, gaffer. He’s as reliable as an eleven pence piece. He’ll be off with his mates, fishing.’

  ‘In this weather? For seals? Through a hole in the ice? Look, Dave, the last time anyone saw Phil he was setting off on his regular beat incorporating the market. Since then, nothing. So I’m worried. Now we’ve had this Romanian child turn up: she came in some container lorry, she says. In the cab, not in some airless compartment, at least. So that’s two things possibly involving the market. Would either of them be what Mr Choi was talking about?’

  ‘Wouldn’t have thought so. Not one torn, anyway. If it was coachloads of illegal immigrants coming to work in the ware houses and restaurants round here, that’d be more his line.’

  That had been more or less Jill Todd’s opinion. Perhaps she should have believed her. ‘You wouldn’t fancy an act of personal sacrifice, would you, Dave?’

  His eyes widened.

  ‘Go and drink China tea with Mr Choi and dig as deeply as you can. And when you’ve finished with him, get out there and talk to as many other people as you have time to. But, Dave,’ she called him back, ‘for goodness’ sake take care. We’re enough people short round here already without losing you’ She grinned ironically.

  He managed to grin back, flapping a bony hand in acknowledgement.

  She was suddenly hungry. Hell, she’d forgotten to have any lunch. Stupid, stupid, stupid, especially as she’d passed so many places where she could have picked up a sandwich; she could even have joined her colleagues in the canteen at Digbeth nick. But it was three already: she’d be eating with Rod at seven or thereabouts. Was it worth bothering now?

  An extra-loud rumble told her it was. Selfish as it might seem, she’d take the long way round.

  It was her patch, after all, and any time spent where locals could see her and, better still, talk to her was more than justifiable—a positive investment in good policing. The fact that it was a dazzling afternoon, with the sort of cloudless sky that presages a hard frost, was a bonus.

  As she pushed open the outer door on her return, she could hear the phone. She ran back up the stairs, clutching her BLT. The caller wanted Sergeant Bush. Feeling a complete idiot, she ran to his office and yelled. OK: the call to the switchboard hadn’t worked. Should she sit and take any calls while she ate?

  She mustn’t. She wasn’t the office junior. She was the gaffer. And gaffers didn’t sit trying to answer the phone while chewing an unmanageable baguette. Gaffers sat in the privacy of their own rooms, drumming the desk and wondering furiously how long they were going to be without clerical back-up, and phoned Personnel to demand instant action. Only lowly cops worried about how long the poor woman was going to be ill.

  So this was what management did to you.

  Management also made you cunning. Her colleagues with the National Crime Intelligence Service must have information on Romanian prostitutes and their Albanian pimps. How could she access it Of course, it was none of her business Not really. As and when Phil Bates was finally declared a missing person, investigating his absence would be more than likely taken away from her and her colleagues and made the responsibility of a murder-investigation team. One of Rod’s MITs. And although there was no competition between her and Rod, and he would almost certainly have nothing to do with the day-to-day running of the case, she still wanted to have done as much as possible before handing over ‘her’ case She owed it to the Scala House people. Uniformed officers always felt their CID opposite numbers had a bob on themselves Worse, when a CID officer messed up, part of the disciplinary action against him—usually involved a return to the uniformed ranks. OK, there was more supervision there—but also the distinct impression that the ranks were second rate, not premier league No, mention to Neil Drew or Dave Bush the possibility of outside ‘help’ and they’d work round the clock to avoid it.

  If God helped those who helped themselves, she had an idea of whom she might be able to call on for help And it would kill several birds with one stone Graham Harvey had a friend quite high up at NCIS Having someone she could talk to unofficially was almost worth the lunch
Graham was bound to press her to accept She might have avoided it today, but he wouldn’t let go, would he?

  ‘Geoff French?’ His voice sounded tinny over the phone. ‘Yes, I’m sure he’d help. Mention my name.’

  ‘Oh, I will—never fear. Thanks, Graham. Now, your letter.; The other one’s turned-up—stuffed into a bin in the ladies’ loo. But there’s no sign of your yet. I’m hoping that’s in the bin too.’ Irretrievably. Talking to him on the phone was much less hard than face to face. Perhaps she had an extra nanosecond in which to react; perhaps she was simply less aware of a body with which she’d been so intimate.

  ‘Had the other, one been read?’

  ‘Possibly. The envelope had been resealed.’

  ‘I wonder if mine’s been tampered with. You haven’t checked the bin yet?’

  ‘It’s a sealed sanitary disposal bin: there’s no way I can get in.’

  ‘I still can’t think why you had to take it into work.’

  ‘I explained, Graham. I’ve hardly seen my house recently and I wanted to check that I hadn’t forgotten to pay any bills and I was going to have something essential cut off.’

  ‘You should pay by direct debit—much safer.’

  Stop being so bloody didactic! ‘And I’m not so sure it was a good idea to write at all, Graham, knowing that I’m with someone else. He might have been the jealous type.’ She waited: no response. ‘So, what did you say, in the letter?’

  ‘I can’t go into that now. I’m up to my eyes in something for one of the ACCs.’ With a bit of luck that might mean he was too busy for lunch this week…

  ‘OK. Why don’t you phone me when—’

  ‘Oh, Kate…’ He groaned.

  Is he really in pain or is he just giving me,a hard time? ‘Graham, I…’

  ‘I couldn’t go on destroying both our lives, knowing that you’d never get a divorce in a million years, and that if we’d ever got together I simply wouldn’t have been good enough for you. Ever. Come in, someone, anyone—please!

  ‘You’ll meet me for lunch one day? Really?’

  It came out in a rush—he might have heard her sigh. Well, it would get the darned business over.

  ‘As a friend, yes.’

  And poor lonely Graham could do with a friend, couldn’t he? That’s probably what drew him to me—loneliness. Much the same as what drew me to him, come to think of it.

  ‘Friday?’

  ‘Provided nothing comes up—for either of us. Any idea where?’

  ‘I’ll have to think about it. I’ll call you.’

  The poor man hasn’t worked through the implications, has he? Somewhere big and impersonal or small and noisy—above all, somewhere where neither of us is known.

  To her horror—she must be back in management mode again—she was coolly dialling DI Geoff French’s number within five seconds of Graham’s putting down the phone.

  French seemed happy to help, but rather more interested in what she had to offer. ‘How did you say you’d come across this child?’

  She explained briefly. ‘Geoff, this is strictly off the record—right? I’m an absolute rookie in post, and I’ve no idea how many toes I’m treading on simply by talking to you.’

  ‘You used to be one of Harvey’s DSs, didn’t you?’ he asked, a Lancashire accent made thicker by the phone. ‘Well, you’d have done it then without blinking, wouldn’t you’

  ‘I’m back in uniform,’, she said hollowly. ‘Supposed to be running a nick, not sniffing round detecting.’

  ‘Well, you’re still supposed to be solving crime So tell me about this kid’

  She did so, winding up with a rueful admission: ‘There’s lots more to her story yet. We’ve only got her, as far as Italy. Or we had when I left this lunchtime She’s not one for terse narratives she insists we have every gesture, every feeling. And though she prefers a big audience, I simply don’t have time to listen to every chapter in her saga as it unwinds.’

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t. Not if you’re running your own nick. Let me have a transcript of the edited highlights as and when you get it, will you, Kate?’

  ‘If you give me your e-mail address, I’ll get Meg Walker—she’s the sergeant who’s talking to her at the moment—to send you the day’s transcript when she sends it to me.’

  ‘Thanks. If the girl’s telling the truth, she’s probably been involved with some very nasty people. As far as we can see, the Albanians have their own version of the Mafia in Italy, with resultant turf wars. Murder, drugs, illegal immigration, all funded originally by prostitution and vice rackets, now nicely profitable in their own right. They’re infiltrating the States, too, living in places like Arthur Avenue.’

  ‘Sorry—that should obviously mean something.’

  ‘It’s an Italian enclave in the Bronx. The thing is, the Albanians all speak Italian: they pick it up from Italian TV stations hack home. And it doesn’t go down well with genuine Italians in Italy or the States—all these nasty, vicious bastards outdoing them at their own games. There’s a fear they’re infiltrating Soho with hordes—if you’ll pardon the pun—of cheap prostitutes, doing anything anywhere, no condoms. They’ll drum out the local toms in no time.’

  ‘We really are talking big-time here.’

  ‘Absolutely. So if you go in, Kate, make sure you go mob-handed. They’ve got a reputation for getting very, very violent.’

  The next phone call was to Digbeth, where Meg Walker and Madame Constantinou were still working—just.

  ‘Another five minutes and you wouldn’t have caught us,’ Meg announced. ‘I was just about to take her Christmas shopping with me.’

  ‘Before you do, tell me, has she given any intimation that the people who kidnapped her know she’s in Birmingham?—Any at all?’

  “Any intimation”? Goodness me, Kate, you sound just like an inspector. No, she hasn’t.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said drily. ‘And now I’m going to sound like an inspector again. I want her moved to another safe-house.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I want her interviewed somewhere different each day, which each of you will get to by ,a different route. Call me paranoid, Meg, but I want us all to get out of this in one piece.’

  And then it was on to the computer to e-mail the night relief. No one, repeat no one, was to go alone into the wholesale market.

  Kate waited till after supper before she raised the problem of Graham, prefacing it with the information she’d picked up from NCIS.

  ‘This is all looking very serious, isn’t it?’ Rod agreed. ‘Pity information like that doesn’t percolate down as a matter of course.’

  ‘It may well do There may be a file somewhere in my in-tray. Trouble is, I can’t see my in-tray for the mountain of material I should have dealt with yesterday.’

  ‘All the latest and greatest Home Office priorities.’ Perhaps the silence wasn’t just because he was preoccupied with the washing-up.

  ‘You really don’t mind this lunch business, Rod?’ she ventured. ‘If you don’t like it, just say so. I can simply postpone ad infinitum.’

  ‘That’s not a very satisfactory way out. If you don’t want to meet Graham, that’s a different matter. But you ended the affair very abruptly, from what you said. And he didn’t have a chance to talk things through while you were in Devon. Perhaps a few words of explanation would help him to… come to terms with his loss.’

  ‘You’re not just a teeny bit jealous?’

  ‘Quite enough to boost your ego. Kate, whom do you come home to every night?’ He turned to her. ‘Whose arms are you in now? Well, then…’

  Chapter 12

  ‘This man whose veacle shoold of…’ Kate supposed she should be relieved that Wednesday’s reports from the night relief demanded nothing more serious than a course in communication skills—better still, basic English. What had happened to the spell-check, for goodness’ sake? Even if the perpetrator had been in a frantic hurry to complete his or her paperwork before the end
of the shift.

  They’d all signed off very promptly—yes, all those counted out had been counted in again—but had obviously decided that they had nothing worth a special report So she just needed a quick flash through her e-mails for an update Neither of the two officers patrolling the wholesale market—and this was at four o’clock, when it was at its busiest—had seen or heard anything untoward. The night-security guard, Mack, him of the tightly-laced tea, had been too pissed to say anything worthwhile, though the officer who’d accompanied Jill Todd put in a rider that he might, of course, have been scared. The jury was out on that, then…

  There was a scratch at the door.

  ‘Helen. How are you?’ When Helen made no effort to move, she added, ‘I was just about to get the kettle on Care to join me?’

  Funny she could have sworn the young woman was scared.

  ‘Don’t mind if I do, so long as it’s that herbal stuff of yours.’

  She was still pregnant, then.

  ‘What I was wondering, like,’ Helen resumed, as Kate returned to the room and handed over her mug, ‘was whether Mrs Speed was going to be in today.’

  Kate shook her head. ‘No idea. But it’s a bit early yet, isn’t it?’ She glanced at her watch. Seven forty-five. She looked sideways at Helen. ‘A bit early for you, too. The morning sickness is…’ she floated.

  ‘Well, I thought I could help out a bit if I came in earlier, like. I know it’s a long time ago, but I did shorthand for a bit while I was a nipper. And if her’s still bad—’

  ‘That’s brilliant idea.’

  To hell with the fact that Helen’s phone skills might not have the clipped grammatical perfection of Mrs Speed’s. She was about to say that spending the day sitting still rather than dashing around might be good for an expectant mother, but instead simply waited. If Helen wanted to say something, she didn’t want to wrongfoot her. She leant back in her chair, stirring her coffee, and smiled.