Power Shift

by Judith Cutler

  At this point what appeared to be a coachload of rowdy young men erupted into the canteen. ‘Hang on. I need to go somewhere quieter.’

  ‘I’ll ring back, shall I?’

  ‘No. Just hang on. Keep talking—think of a recipe for three for tonight. Anything. There. I’m just leaving the canteen now and—ah! Blessed silence. Now, young Natasha and her aversion to Mihail. Shoot.’

  ‘Ready? She recognised him, Kate. No, no, not as one of the gang. As one of her clients, if that’s the term. That beautiful young man is into S and M big-time, partner willing or unwilling. One of the worst she ever had, she says.’

  ‘And when was this?’ Her pulses might be racing but she had to ask the right questions and get accurate answers.

  ‘In London. Three weeks ago. You remember those awful bruises she showed us? She claims he inflicted them. But, of course, you can’t be sure.’

  ‘Get what’s left of them photographed as evidence. Find out if she told him how old she was. Find out if she said no. Beautiful or not, I’d like him sent down for sex with a minor.’

  ‘Very well,’ Meg said, her voice clipped.

  A penny dropped. ‘Jesus, Meg, this is your area, isn’t it? Not mine at all. You’re the expert. I’m so sorry. I really am.’

  Meg’s voice lightened a mite. ‘That’s OK. Nice to know I can set everything in train, anyway.’

  ‘Meg, you’re the bloody expert. I’ve no idea of the procedures. Please, please, forgive me. I’m such a control freak.’

  ‘Time you had a rest, then. Got things back into perspective.’

  ‘That’s just what this friend of Rod’s said. And now I’ve got to cook him tea and I’ve no idea…’ ‘A nice Sunday roast,’ Meg said crisply. ‘You’ve got time to go to Tesco or somewhere. And you’ll find the cooking instructions on the Cellophane wrapper.’

  ‘You’ve saved my life. Now, Meg, I’m really sorry but I need one more bit of info from Natasha. I need to know what she was doing between the time she escaped from the lorry till the time she asked me for help.’

  ‘Oh, I can tell you that. She was busy earning money the only way she knows. And deciding, by the way, that she doesn’t like Birmingham men.’

  ‘That’s not a fat lot of use, is it?’ Smith demanded, as Kate regaled the team with the news of Mihail’s sexual practices. ‘We’ve wasted a whole morning following up this suspicion of yours.’

  ‘With respect, gaffer, just because Natasha recognises him as a punter doesn’t mean he’s not involved with the gang as a whole. And I’d have thought a brief discussion about paid sex with a minor would be a useful lead-in. It’s not many students who can afford a weekend down in London picking up toms.’

  He stared at her without speaking for a long moment, then turned to Zayn and Dave. ‘OK. That’s your Sunday afternoon buggered for you, lads. Go and talk to him again.’

  Eid. How could she wangle it that Zayn could get home in time for some of his family celebrations? ‘Good officers as they are, gaffer, would we do better to ask one of Meg Walker’s colleagues from Paedophilia and Pornography to sit in with one of them? They’ve got the experience and—’

  ‘Where do you get experience from if you don’t practise, eh, Power? I can see you’re practising to take over my job. Or are you after your sugar-daddy’s?’

  ‘I’m after nailing a pervert. That’s all.’ She picked up her folders again and returned to her reading. Only when he grabbed his coat and headed out of the room did she make a move. Catching up with him a few yards down the corridor, she said,

  ‘Sir, you can be as rude as you like to me, but leave my partner out of it.’

  ‘Your partner, now, is he? Partners are what people have in the lower ranks, Power. I thought Mr Neville was a detective superintendent. People at his level don’t have partners, do they?’

  ‘I’m not talking about sharing a rapid-response vehicle. I’m talking about sharing a home.’

  ‘Oh, you mean he’s fucking you. There you are. A sugar-daddy. Now, what does having a sugar-daddy make you, Power?’

  ‘A bloody fine cop, with or without Neville,’ Oxnard bellowed, emerging from the men’s loos still doing up his flies. ‘Power, you’ve worked eight hours already on your rest day. Get your stuff and go home. That’s an order.’

  And one she was glad to accept. She’d been aware of tears of rage and frustration pricking her eyes, and no way could she let herself down by sobbing. The fact that Oxnard was ordering Smith into his office was a bonus.

  All she had to do now was get home, with or without Howard as armed escort. Curiously, dressed for the outside, he was lounging against the office door as she turned towards it, jangling a set of car keys.

  ‘Thanks. I’m afraid I’ve got to stop off at Tesco for some food.’

  ‘There’s nothing I like better than trolley-pushing.’ He grinned.

  He certainly seemed happy to park their trolley at the end of aisles while Kate made swift diving forays for whatever she needed. She was just reaching for a packet of breakfast cereal—they ought to offer a visitor some choice, after all—when her mobile rang. She jumped so hard the whole lot toppled around her. But it would have been worth a veritable avalanche.

  ‘That you, gaffer? PC Kerr here I mean, Helen. The one with the bab.’ She sounded perky enough but, knowing Helen, that might be the result of some mistaken desire to please.

  ‘How are you, Helen?’ She bobbed here and there, trying to rescue the cereal packets.

  ‘I’m fine, gaffer. They’ve let me come home, like.’

  ‘The baby?’

  ‘Looking good, thanks. You know they even let me see it, on this scan thing. Any road, all the pain’s stopped, so they said how I could come home, so long as I promised to take it easy. So if you wouldn’t mind me doing light duties…’

  ‘Helen, I shall mind very much if you don’t take at least three days sick leave. Helen, can you hear me?’

  ‘You’re breaking up a bit but I can still hear you, gaffer. OK, I’ll do what you say ‘cos that’s what the doctor said too. Ta-ra a bit. See you Thursday.’

  Only if you’re well enough…’ But Helen had cut the connection and there were still a dozen or more packets to retrieve.

  The evening was calm—relaxing, even. The lamb was cooked perfectly, crisp on the outside and pink within, the potatoes equally crisp and just as succulent, the vegetables al-dente, as Rod preferred them. She’d even dredged up a memory of some of Aunt Cassie’s Sunday stand-bys—onion sauce, and then, for pudding, apples stuffed with mincemeat and baked. Howard proclaimed himself a custard-maker beyond compare, and Rod—back well in time—opened the wine and carved. It would have been, as Kate wryly observed, a perfect evening had not the host, the hostess and even the guest, fallen asleep in turn.

  Chapter 24

  Howard insisted that there was nothing he wanted to see more than. the MIT’s outpost in Scala House, and that seven in the morning was an ideal time. He was also positive that by eight thirty he’d seen enough, and that Kate’s team had seen enough of her to know that she was still in charge When she opened her mouth to argue, he added, ‘And it wouldn’t do any harm to show your face to Smith before you go off to Lloyd House for that meeting of yours.’

  ‘To provide him with another opportunity for rearranging it by biting off my nose,’ Kate said bitterly, gathering up the sheets of statistics she’d just printed off.

  ‘Well, in his terms you do shove it in,’ he said mildly. ‘Though not in anyone else’s,’ he added quickly. ‘He’s just a lazy sod who’s been promoted beyond his ability. In an ideal world Rod could quietly arrange to have him moved back to normal CID duties, but now, Of course, doing anything like that would be seen as dodgy.’

  ‘Sugar-daddy defending his tart.’

  He looked at her sharply.

  ‘That’s how he described us.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘But I think Chief Superintendent Oxnard, who overheard him, m
ay have said something,’ she added, managing a smile. ‘Which won’t, alas, help my relationship with Smith.’

  ‘Just go in there and do your job,’ Howard said. ‘The sooner it’s all sorted, the sooner you’ll be out of each other’s hair.’

  She contributed very little to the briefing meeting, having nothing new to report.

  Zayn, looking distinctly jaded, asked for permission to involve one of Meg’s colleagues with a further questioning of Mihail, managing to phrase the request as if Smith hadn’t gone off at the deep end the previous day when faced with Kate’s suggestion. Kate awarded him bonus points for his tact.

  She was setting off for her Lloyd House meeting, avoiding the

  issue of who should escort her by telling no one she was leaving, when she ran into Graham. Had he been less busy, she’d have suspected him of lying in wait. But grown men didn’t do things like that. Even when they greeted their former lovers with the words, ‘I have to see you. Urgently.’

  I can’t stop, Graham. I’m due for a meeting with the ACC in seven minutes. Unless you want to walk with me?’ Perhaps she wasn’t as brave as she’d thought.

  ‘I…no, I’ve got a meeting myself in a few moments. What time are you free?’

  ‘Twelve-ish, I suppose—I can’t see us getting away with much less since the home secretary’s got a finger in the pie. I must dash.’ She turned and strode away. As she ran down the stairs, she realised it wasn’t the best of endings for their conversation: she ought to have told him simply that she didn’t know when the meeting would end, which was at least as close to the truth as the answer she’d given. No time to worry about that now. She ought to be arranging in her head the answers to the questions she was expecting.

  As it was, her guess wasn’t far out. They’d finished by eleven forty-five, gathering like children round the window to watch—wet snow falling. Kate fought down a rush of panic: what if they didn’t get the case sorted quickly? What if she couldn’t shop for Rod and buy him the best presents ever? And all the Christmas trimmings? Their first one together ought to be special.

  Did she dare nip off to the shops before returning to Steelhouse Lane? It would only take half an hour or so to nip into Rackham’s and melt some plastic—that was what Oxnard had advised for her weekend, after all. And she’d seen nothing untoward so far: the world hadn’t ended because she’d walked a couple of hundred yards on her own this morning. Bidding her colleagues a cordial goodbye, she headed for the foyer.

  ‘Kate! Kate Power!’

  ‘Graham!’ Her astonishment was genuine. He had never risked pursuing her like this when they were together: why should he draw attention to himself now it was over?

  He was inches from her, his face as anxious as she’d ever seen it.

  ‘Whatever’s the matter?’

  ‘I just want you to come and have a drink with me, that’s all.’

  ‘I’m not supposed to stray—I’m at risk, remember. Like you. Neither of us is supposed to be wandering round unaccompanied.’ She. got no response, so added, ‘Did they find anything under or in your car?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Somehow, hunching into his raincoat and gripping his briefcase, he had propelled them both into motion. ‘Waste of time.’

  Letting her exasperation show, she asked, ‘You didn’t go away for the weekend?’

  ‘We had an important event at the church—we were even ,on TV.’

  ‘You or the church? My God, Graham, and you were supposed to be keeping a low profile: did they actually show you?’

  ‘I can’t imagine that people like that would be watching TV.’ Which implied that he’d been on camera. ‘They gave us quite a lot of footage, actually, with shots from several angles. It was an important event, after all., The dedication of an extension into the old car park, with a full-size carillon.’

  The car park. Pray God the camera hadn’t loved his car!

  She took a deep breath. ‘That’s those bells you play using a keyboard?’

  He managed a self-deprecating smile. ‘Not quite as hard as playing the organ. Do you ever play these days?’

  She shook her head. ‘But everyone would hear you, not just the congregation. Oh, I’d love to have a go! Hang on, we’re heading away from Steelhouse Lane.’

  ‘I told you. I just want you to join me for a drink. For auld lang syne, if you like.’

  She wasn’t sure she did like. But she had to eat somewhere, and the longer she was out of Smith’s hair the better. ‘Got anywhere in mind?’

  ‘There’s a place in St Paul’s Square. Quiet.’

  She’d eaten there often when she’d been in Fraud. There were plenty of individual eating areas, made semi-private by little balustrades and sets of steps.

  She huddled into her rain-jacket, pulling the hood up tight. Why hadn’t she had the sense to bring an umbrella and gloves? Because she hadn’t intended to come this far, that was why, having spent so much of the weekend being rushed from car to entrance to car again. At least he was setting a cracking pace: perhaps he was afraid his wife would spot them from the top of a bus…

  So early in the lunch hour the pub was a haven of quiet and warmth. He established them at a table to the left of the door, claiming with his case and coat the seat facing into the room. She’d known other officers do that—some sort of instinct she didn’t seem to have inherited—so she was happy to sit with her back to the bar. But he seemed inseparable from that case: there were so many stories of officers leaving sensitive stuff around that she simply picked up her bag and asked him what he wanted.

  He flushed. ‘But I asked you.’

  ‘You can get the next one. Lager? And what’ll you eat?’ There was a wide choice from a separate counter.

  He tucked his case under his coat. ‘I’ll get the drinks. An egg sandwich for me.’

  She had a vivid memory of the tidy, underfilled sandwiches his wife provided: failure to eat them no doubt resulted in some terrible punishment, as he hardly ever forwent them to eat or drink with his colleagues. Had she really once tipped them into his bin?

  They’d scarcely made the merest gestures with their glasses when he put his down and burrowed for his case. Opening it he produced a handful of familiar items: books and tapes she’d given him.

  ‘What are those?’ she asked stupidly.

  ‘I want to give them back,’ he said, his face falling into its most stubborn lines.

  ‘I don’t want them back! For God’s sake, Graham, why not take them to a charity shop if you don’t want them?’

  ‘Because I want you to know that I don’t want you to contact me again,’ he said, wooden as if over-rehearsed. His eyes slipped from her face to some point over her shoulder.

  So this was all for someone else’s benefit, was it? For his sake—he had to go on living with his wife and a silent lie would cost her nothing—she said quietly, ‘I won’t contact you again, Graham. In fact, it’d be better if I went now, wouldn’t it?’ She picked up her bag and got to her feet. Yes, she was face to face with an older, tighter-lipped version of herself. Flavia.

  ‘Giving him all these things! How dare you? You whore!’ Flavia reached past her, grabbing a tape and tearing it from its case. She tugged at the brown plastic, looping it out and cascading it on to the table. ‘There!’ She plunged the rest into Kate’s glass. ‘That’s what happens to anything else you give him.’

  How did the woman manage to keep her voice so low? Kate was sure no one else had an inkling of what was going on. What next? For everyone’s sake she mustn’t let rip with the tirade that was bubbling up inside her.

  ‘Have you returned everything?’

  Graham pointed dumbly to the pathetic little heap.

  ‘As for you, Miss Power, you will make no attempt to take your relationship with my husband beyond the purely professional.’ Flavia gathered herself together and headed for the door. She turned to look at them, and took a pace back. She had to raise her voice this time. ‘And I’ve no idea why you shoul
d choose to put a tail on me, Miss Power—I believe that’s the correct term, isn’t it?—but I’d be very glad if you told him this instant to desist and leave me alone.’ She turned and marched out.

  There was an instant’s perfect silence. The whole pub had listened to her last lines. Kate turned to Graham, all her fury that he should expose her to this flaring to the surface. But even as she opened her mouth to berate him, she registered Flavia’s words. A tail?

  She was on her feet and out of the door. A tail could mean only one thing. And might end in a horribly predictable way—with a slit throat and a car in flames—if the Albanians really thought Flavia was Kate. She’d no idea if Graham was following her. Digging for her radio she switched it to alarm mode: it would convey to the control centre every sound she made—at the moment flying feet and screams of ‘Flavia! Stop! You’re in danger! Great danger!’

  Flavia must have heard. In fact, she turned and shrugged a middle-class equivalent of two fingers before resuming her walk to the family car, the one that Vladi’s people had seen outside Ladywood nick. Kate sprinted, her elegant civilian shoes slipping and sliding on the slushy pavement. Even her skirt was too tight for a proper running pace.

  Flavia had reached the car. There was a man the far, side, apparently reading the parking regulations. If Flavia pressed her zapper, all the doors would be unlocked.

  ‘Flavia! Stop! Listen to me!’

  Flavia stopped a foot from the car, her hand behind her, thumb already on the zapper, no doubt.

  ‘Please—I beg you—come back and talk to me. To us.’

  The man reading the notice had a hand in his pocket. He looked along the street. Checking that an accomplice was ready? Another man was sliding towards him, and there was certainly the sound of an engine being gunned.

  Kate wasted a valuable second. Yes, Graham was there. ‘Get some back-up. For God’s sake, man!’

  Fatal. Flavia had bent to open the door. The man darted up to the passenger door, forcing his way in. Kate ran. She found herself in front of the car, hands on its bonnet. A knife was already at Flavia’s throat, exposed by a vicious tug on her hair.