Power Shift

by Judith Cutler

  Mr Choi himself was present to hand her carefully out of the car and to escort her through his restaurant to a private room. Mr Smooth. Mr Cunning. And maybe—though a title was never used—Mr Sarbut.

  Beside him, dapper in what was clearly a very expensive suit, she felt ugly, bulky. It didn’t help having to wear a jacket draped across her. shoulders. Why could Frenchmen do it as a mark of supreme style? All she looked like was a refugee from a charity shop. She also felt clumsy: how on earth could she manage lunch without knocking something over, or dropping food down her top—not even her best top, since she couldn’t get it over her hand.

  In fact, lunch rattled along, if such a formal little meal could rattle. Choi produced an astounding range of food, none of it in large portions. He quickly realised that however adept she might be at using chopsticks—and the truth was, not very—she found it hard to stop her little rice bowl whizzing round the plate it was standing on. At a nod from him, all the bowls disappeared, and everyone ate off a plate, with a fork or spoon.

  If only etiquette permitted a post-prandial zizz. But despite the extensive discussion of English idioms and homonyms and antonyms and then, as a little respite, place names, she had to stay on her toes. And, since Dave was now excusing himself, on her toes meant alert, wide-awake, on the qui vive, and any other synonymous idioms.

  She leant forward, attractive woman talking to interesting man. She smiled. ‘Mr Choi, a few days ago you passed some information to Dave which neither of us—well, I appreciate your tact and diplomacy, but could you spell it out? You see, I’m afraid my boss may be about to pursue someone entirely innocent.’

  He pursed his lips. ‘I could hardly spell it out to one of the perpetrator’s colleagues.’

  Dear God! Her hand flew to her mouth.

  ‘I thought you might make the appropriate deductions, dear Inspector. Let me give you chapter and verse. I have a witness to the murder in the wholesale market. There are—very pressing—reasons why he didn’t come forward. To cut a long story short, Inspector, the man who killed your colleague was a police officer himself. He did the deed—’

  ‘How?’

  ‘According to the witness, there was a fierce argument. The officer struck his colleague very hard, and as he fell he hit his head. At first it seemed as if he’d try to administer first aid. But suddenly he gave up, and loaded the corpse without let or hindrance into the crusher. He switched it on. Then he proceeded on his way.’

  The blood on Neil’s cuff the morning he’d reported a knife attack! Oh, God.

  ‘There, you have it in a nutshell.’

  She could feel the colour coming and going in her face. Making a huge effort, she said, ‘This witness, would he be in the country illegally?’

  ‘That is a fair deduction. I think if you wanted him to testify officially he would demand indemnity.’

  ‘I’ll have to talk to my superiors.’ And to the people at Digbeth, where Neil claimed he’d taken the youth who’d tried to knife him. Please, God, let their records show he had.

  ‘This has been a great shock, Inspector, and you are very far from well.’ He put his hand under the table. The waitress appeared with a selection of brandies and liqueurs. He took the brandy and waved away the others, pouring three small tots into huge glasses. ‘Medicinal, Inspector.’

  She waved the bandaged hand as if it were a comic appendage, not really part of her. ‘I shouldn’t.’

  ‘Medicinal. I insist.’

  She succumbed. It was the sort even Rod kept for special occasions only. She told herself that she wasn’t really on duty.

  Dave returned as unobtrusively as he’d left. He had no hesitation about the brandy either. ‘My day off,‘he announced, smiling equally to both.

  Kate thought of TOIL and Dave’s post-exam celebrations and the job ahead of her. Dave looked at her hard. Did he think she was pissed or something? She smiled and touched her watch. Let him initiate what she suspected would be a long and complex series of farewells and thanks. He did. It was.

  Thought you were going to pass out back there, Kate,’ Dave observed, pulling the car into the traffic. It had been valeted.

  ‘I nearly did. The heat. The food. The brandy. Especially the brandy.’ She let her eyelids droop. She didn’t want him to ask about her conversation with Choi.

  ‘Still not over that anaesthetic, see?’

  Anaesthetic? That was what she needed. She was in a haze of pain. Nothing to do with her hand. The agony of knowing she had to investigate an officer she’d come to regard as a friend.

  Chapter 26

  ‘No record at all of a knife attack that night? You’ve checked and double-checked?’ Kate’s knuckles were white on the phone.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ The Digbeth sergeant to whom she was speaking was clearly offended.

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s just I know how chaotic paperwork can get if you’re pressed for time. Thanks, Sergeant Field.’

  She replaced the handset as if it were fine china she was afraid of breaking. She was certainly afraid of breaking Neil Drew’s career, not to mention his family life. Damn it, the man’s whole life. And all on the say-so of an illegal immigrant who might be making the whole thing up to get an excuse to stay here by invitation. Please God his allegations wouldn’t square with what the forensic team had found and Neil would be in the clear.

  She made herself another black coffee, turned up the central heating in an effort to stop dithering with cold, and dialled Oxnard’s number. As he picked it up, she remembered that the man she should have called was Smith: it was his case, after all. Too late. This conversational wheel was now in motion, just as the legal ones soon would be.

  ‘This bloodstain you saw when you were debriefing Drew—’

  ‘Was on his shirt-cuff, gaffer. And I should imagine the shirt is long since gone…wouldn’t you?’

  Oxnard sighed heavily, not just because he was clearly uneasy in Rod’s easiest of chairs. He looked at Smith, equally tense, trying not to fiddle with ornaments as he ricocheted round the room. ‘It’s going to be a very messy business. We’ll have to ask all sorts of questions about Drew’s relationship with Bates. Apart from this sodding illegal, it’s all a matter of circumstantial evidence and—’

  ‘There’s a possibility of a confession,’ Kate put in. ‘I’m sure Neil’s an honest man at heart.’

  ‘He hasn’t shown any signs of confessing so far?’ Oxnard asked Smith. ‘When you spoke to him the day we brought the MIT in?’

  ‘And I told you to go easy on him because he was always tired out.’ Kate buried her face in her hands. The texture and smell of the bandaging were so alien she pulled back immediately. ‘If it is him I reckon it’ll be to do with his kids. Dave Bush said he was frantic about getting cover for Christmas Maybe Phil reneged on a deal they’d made and Neil just flipped.’

  ‘It’ll be over to Forensics, anyway.’ Oxnard sighed. ‘Even if he’s thrown away a shirt, he’ll have spatter marks on his jacket or whatever he was wearing. Sponging won’t have shifted them. Thank God for science.’

  Or not.

  At last Kate had to break the silence. ‘There’s another problem about our witness. The immigrant or refugee or asylum-seeker or whatever There are strong suspicions that Mr Choi is involved in a number of illegal rackets…’

  His eyebrows rose. Smith was more interested in a framed Saxton map in the far corner.

  ‘You ought to talk to Sergeant Bush, our field intelligence officer. He’s just been stood down from the MIT and is back on regular duties. I believe Sergeant Todd may have some information, too.’

  ‘“Believe”?’ Smith whipped round. ‘You should know, Inspector!’

  Oxnard, purple with embarrassment, muttered something.

  ‘It’s not Sergeant Todd’s relationship with Rod that’s prevented me speaking to her, Chief Inspector. It’s the fact I’ve hardly been at Scala House.’

  ‘E-mail? Never heard of e-mail?’

  ‘The w
oman’s on sick leave, Smith.’

  ‘But he’s right, gaffer. Either I’m working with the MIT or I’m running a nick.’ That was right: strong and assertive. So why did she have to add, ‘At the moment I don’t seem to be able to do either very well.’ And why, for God’s sake, did she have to burst into tears?

  Oxnard patted her shoulder awkwardly. ‘It’s the anaesthetic, Power.’

  Bloody anaesthetic!

  Oxnard sent Smith off to make tea for them all, and came to sit beside Kate. ‘How far do you want to be involved with talking to Drew?’

  ‘Not at all, the way I feel now. On the other hand, he might find it easier to talk to me. And a confession might stand him in better stead than having MIT thumbscrews applied. But it’s not easy. I can’t just drive over and ask to meet his kids and say to them, “By the way, I might have to arrest your dad.” Any moment now she’d weep again.

  ‘Your office would be better. A simple end-of-shift debriefing. We’d be in the incident room there, ready to take over.’

  Was that someone at the front door? No? And if it had been, whoever it was had gone away.

  ‘That’s a hell of a risk, if I may say so,’ Smith declared, slopping tea from the fistful of mugs he’d brought through on to Rod’s carpet.

  ‘You mean he might attack me?’ Perhaps there was some warmth in his heart, after all.

  ‘I meant you might start snivelling and blow everything.’ He plonked the mugs on to an occasional table, slopping even more.

  Kate got to her feet and, without speaking, headed for the kitchen. She returned with wet cloth. She slung it on to the floor. ‘Give the spots a scrub before they stain, will you? And the table. You’ll leave white rings otherwise.’ She found some mats. She glanced up under her lashes. Yes, he was certainly thrown by her sudden rush of domesticity. And it was always good to have a senior officer brought to his knees.

  As Smith dabbed at the table, she said, ‘You see, we all do things we wouldn’t dream of doing outside our own home. When do we start, gaffer?’

  ‘You don’t, Kate, I’m afraid.’

  They all swung round. More tea landed on the floor. Smith bent with the cloth.

  Rod shook his head. ‘Sorry. I’ve just had Personnel on the phone. They say that she cannot and must not work while she’s officially unfit to work. And there’d be nothing like her name on a record of someone’s arrest to prove she was breaking the law, would there?’

  Furious, Kate turned on him. ‘And why, may I ask, should they phone you?’

  ‘Because you’d left the answer phones on—yes, here and in Kings Heath—and your mobile was switched off, so they couldn’t get through to you. It seems your friend Mr Choi grassed you up.’

  ‘Mr Choi? But I thought we were getting on so well,’ she said stupidly.

  ‘So you were. So well that he phones the chief, no less, to see if he could give you a present as a sign of his appreciation for what you’re doing to clean up prostitution in the area.’

  ‘Bollocks he does!’

  ‘No, honestly, Smith, that’s what he said. The chief said it wasn’t a good idea till the case was over. Sorry, Kate, no present and no more work, not until you’re signed off.’ He wandered out, returning with a mug of coffee.

  ‘There’s got to be a way round this,’ Smith said.

  ‘Why should there be? You’ve got a whole MIT raring to go. And, as you said, Kate might lose her cool and cry’

  Despite the heat erupting from the radiators, the atmosphere fell to sub-zero At least she could do something about the central heating She stepped into the hail and tweaked the thermostat Leaning against the doorjamb, she said, ‘I suppose the chief wouldn’t know if I shoved my three-penn’orth in now Right,’ she continued, addressing Smith, ‘I’d like your assurance, that you I won’t indulge in a home arrest. It sounds as if Drew’s kids have had enough without seeing their dad arrested in a dawn raid And make sure you’ve got Social Services alerted before you even try passing the time of day with him at Scala House they’ll need to be collected from school or put to bed or whatever. And can we get the pressure off Madame Constantinou? If I were her I’d be putting the words “lawyer”, “sue” and “West Midlands Police” together in the same sentence. Oh, and one more thing. The price of my silence,’ she suddenly found herself in the middle of a smile, ‘about this afternoon’s little get-together is regular updates.’

  Rod showed his colleagues out and sank beside Kate on the sofa ‘I know you’ll hate me for saying it, but I think Personnel were right Looked at from the view of cold economics, the sooner someone’s fully fit the sooner they can get back to work properly. Getting a colleague to confess to you isn’t the best way of building a trusting team, either.’

  Reluctantly she nodded She snuggled her head on to his shoulder. She was almost asleep. ‘I’m not up to it, you know,’ she said, in a rush ‘I nearly dozed off at Mr Choi’s restaurant—it must have been all the exertion of having my hair cut’ She sat up. ‘I’m scared, Rod. I wasn’t all emotional like this when I had my knee operations. Not the second one, at least.’

  ‘The first was after.’

  ‘Yes, after Robin was killed. I was entitled to feel a mess, then.’ Anyone would, seeing her lover killed before her eyes ‘But I’m happy now—never been happier. So why should I be like a damned watering-can?’

  ‘The business with Flavia Harvey must have been upsetting.’

  ‘You mean in the pub or in the car? The first, yes, I suppose it was almost funny. Why haven’t the press got hold of it? It’d make a lovely story.’

  ‘Because half the lunchtime clientele are cops, maybe, with a. bit of esprit de corps. Actually, given the average officer’s propensity for gossip, it might not have been the best place for Harvey to take you, if he wanted to keep your relationship quiet.’

  ‘I don’t think Graham would have had much choice in the matter, somehow. But why didn’t the landlord squawk?’

  ‘Who knows?’

  ‘You do know, don’t you?’

  ‘Let’s just say he owes me a favour or two. And I’d rather our personal life wasn’t served up as tabloid entertainment, to be honest.’

  ‘Amen. Rod, it was very foolish of me—I’m sorry.’

  ‘If you mean lunching with Harvey, you’d warned me you might—you weren’t exactly sneaking off behind my back. If you mean rescuing Mrs Harvey, I’d think you were actually rather braver than most. And more generous, considering that slitting her throat might have done the world a service. If anyone’s to blame it’s undoubtedly Harvey. If anyone should have undertaken the heroics, it should have been him. But after that mean-spirited little trap he set for you, I shouldn’t think he’s got a generous or heroic bone in his body. Did—’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Did you return his gifts to you?’

  This time she was shocked to find herself laughing: when would her emotions return to normal? ‘Rod, Rod—I must be doomed never to have presents. None from Mr Choi, none from Graham Harvey! No. None. Ever.’

  ‘Would you like a present from me? I can’t say it would make up for your previous lack but…’ He extricated himself from her arms and got up. ‘It’s on the bed, waiting for you. I wanted to surprise you—and not in front of my colleagues. So I let myself in and went up on tiptoe. Amazing what you hear when you come down on tiptoe. Come on, want to see?’

  ‘Nice warm bit of stuff, that. Soft, too. Shouldn’t think it weighs very much,’ Aunt Cassie rightly observed.

  ‘We’ll have to see if Father Christmas has any more like it for you,’ Rod said, treading on Kate’s foot.

  Kate laughed, treading back. Had the pashmina come from anyone else, she would have loved taking it off and wrapping it round Aunt Cassie’s knees—but not a present from Rod.

  ‘You won’t be ruining your first Christmas, coming to see an

  old woman like me?’ The tone was distinctly querulous.

  ‘I can’t see a visit to you
ruining anything,’. Rod said lightly.

  ‘With Kate’s hand still bad we won’t be off skiing, will we?’

  ‘Will they give you a medal or anything?’

  ‘I hope not. I didn’t deal with the situation the way they teach us. I should have talked him out of it.’

  Aunt Cassie cackled. ‘If that Flavia’s anything like her mother you ought to have talked him into it.’

  ‘How din you know it was Flavia?’ The blood rushed to Kate’s cheeks.

  ‘I put two and two together, didn’t I? She’s telling everyone a mad rapist tried to kidnap her at knifepoint and you have your fingers sliced off. Will they join up again?’

  ‘Not nearly as bad as that,’ Kate assured her. What else had Flavia been saying?

  ‘You’re looking pretty peaky. Freshen her glass, will you, Rod?’

  Rod and Kate winked at each other: they both knew the words that would come next. ‘And-while you’re on your feet, you might as well top mine up, too.’

  Rod obliged. Unusually, he topped up his own. He sat down looking the old woman full in the face. ‘Cassie, I think Kate needs a bit of looking after. I’d like her to come and live with me properly for a bit.’

  ‘What?’ She turned to Kate. ‘You’ll be leaving Worksop Road empty?’

  ‘For a while, at least,’ she conceded. Rod reached for her good hand and held it.

  Aunt Cassie settled back in her chair. ‘Well, come to think of it, that might just get me out of a hole. The stock market’s really let me down, and I’m going to be a bit short until it comes back up again. Which it will, you mark my words. Now, if you’re not living there, Kate, my love, we could rent it out for a while. Bring us both a bit of regular cash.’

  ‘You, Aunt Cassie, not me. It’s your house.’

  ‘Which I gave to you. And which you spent a lot of money on. You can’t give it back to me, Kate, you should know that. We’ve got to think of capital gains and inheritance tax.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I’m tired now. We’ll talk about it another day. I’ll get that solicitor on to it. He might as well his corn instead of boring me silly. So, what are you going to do for—Christmas, young Rod?’