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  Nothing. She left a message saying she’d buy some food and start cooking it. Perhaps tonight was the night to be a bit more adventurous—except that Rod might faint with shock if she were.

  Rod sank on to a kitchen chair and, smiling almost absently, reached without comment for the glass of wine she’d poured as soon as she heard his car. There was, however, an alertness about his eyes that told her not to interrupt his thought processes with cooing questions The smell of the steak would disturb him soon enough anyway. For all she’d hoped to conjure something exotic, all she’d managed was a ready-made sauce to pour over it OK, she’d added some mushrooms, not quite as an afterthought And baked a couple of potatoes, on the grounds that salad was a bit miserable on a night when the temperature was already around the minus 5 degree Celsius mark. But when she triumphed with perfectly steamed broccoli and carrots, she positively preened. She’d have welcomed an official fanfare to bring Rod to the table: she always feared he rated her gastronomic aspirations not much higher than she rated them herself.

  ‘Ta-ra, ta-ra!’ She made her own.

  ‘Wow!’ he obliged her. ‘This looks good. And tastes good.’

  Almost apologetically she said, ‘I decided to go organic for the meat. And the sauce.’

  ‘And it shows. And the wine—hmm. It must have cost you a week’s pocket money. Which reminds me, you keep on paying for food and groceries. We ought to have some system, sweetheart. I can’t have you paying for everything.’

  ‘Come on, since when did you let me pay for a meal out or contribute to your mortgage?’ She hoped the tone was jokey, but she wanted to make the point. And a lot of others. But was this the time?

  ‘But you’re already maintaining a house. Kate, my lovely Kate, I was wondering—’ He took her hand, and smiled into her eyes. ‘Hell and damnation!’

  The phone was ringing. And his pager joined it in an infuriating duet. All it needed was for his mobile to ring, too.

  Kate took the phone. It was for him.

  He raised comic eyebrows and covered the mouthpiece. ‘So much for the romantic evening.’

  Was that what he’d been thinking about so deeply? She’d assumed it was work. She waited for him, hoping that the food she’d so anxiously prepared wouldn’t congeal on the plate.

  He was very brisk, cutting the call with little of his usual politeness. He smiled and picked up his knife and fork. ‘Goodness knows when I shall eat anything as good as this again, so I’m not hurrying. That call—they’ve come up with what looks like an interesting job and it was about that. I’m not sure whether it’ll involve an MIT at this stage but…’

  ‘So why contact you?’

  ‘Because I asked them to. Sorry. Guilty as charged. Kate, this must sound completely mad. Pat the Path wants me to have a look at a stiff.’

  It must be serious if Pat was still working at nine at night.

  ‘Pat’s a mate of yours, isn’t he? Do you want to come too? Not much of a date, but…’ His eyes said lots of things his mouth didn’t.

  She hoped hers did too. ‘I’ll get my coat.’

  ‘No. The stiff won’t be going anywhere fast so let’s finish this first. Far too good to waste. Thank goodness the wine’s got enough character to survive recorking.’

  ‘I’ve got the weirdest theory about something,’ he said, starting the car. ‘But what I’d really like you to do is bring me up to date on that poor little prostitute you acquired the other day. Didn’t you say she’d come up to the market via lorry? What’s the latest in her saga?’

  Kate threw her hands in the air. ‘Saga, indeed! For a start, it took me an hour, literally, to get from Scala House to Ladywood nick—’

  ‘Ladywood? But Pornography and Paedophilia, or whatever they call themselves these days, are based in Digbeth.’

  She explained about her fears for their safety. ‘I know it sounds silly but—’

  ‘It doesn’t sound silly to me at all. Not if you’re up against an international gang of people-traffickers.’

  ‘Better traffickers than traffic—at least this morning’s. All that time absolutely wasted sitting in a car.’

  ‘And all you can think of is the heaving in-tray. Poor you. But I think I may know what caused the jam. That’s why I want to talk to Pat Duncan.’

  ‘It must be urgent if he’s working on it at this time of night.

  ‘Oh, bless him, he’s rushed it through as a favour. He’s off skiing this weekend and doesn’t want a backlog.’ His voice changed. ‘I suppose your grotty knee doesn’t ski?’

  ‘I’ve never asked it.’

  ‘It might prefer swimming? In a warm blue ocean?’ He took advantage of a red light to squeeze her hand.

  ‘I could ask it.’ To think she’d been feeling tired and miserable earlier!

  ‘I thought Christmas somewhere wonderful—two lots of annual leave permitting.’

  And her heart sank again. ‘As long as Aunt Cassie’s alive, Christmas is a Birmingham event,’ she said flatly.

  ‘Of course it is. I’d forgotten. Hell—that gravel-spreader’s going to spray my nice new bonnet. Let’s just pull over until he’s gone. We could play courting couples.’

  Stopping illegally in a bus lay-by he kissed her roundly. ‘What about New Year? Or do you always have to spend that with Cassie, too?’

  ‘No I always offer, of course, but she’s never once let me. She used to worry about messing up my social life. I’m not so sure she’s quite so aware of my social life, these days.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t write her off—she still seems to have a full quota of buttons to me. Usually,’ he conceded, puffing back on to the main road. ‘I admit her conversation’s not what it was, but that’s because she’s getting institutionalised. And also because she’s more preoccupied with topics most people don’t air quite so freely.’

  ‘Like bladders, bowels and haemorrhoids,’ she observed drily.

  ‘Quite. I promised to get stuff off the Internet or all three. I must get round to it.’

  When had he promised that? Ah, possibly when she was having that skirmish with Graham—another problem to resolve.

  The Broad Street traffic was as slow as in the rush-hour, complicated by clubbing pedestrians swarming all over the road.

  ‘What was that you said about this morning’s hold-ups?’ she asked.

  ‘Ali. A lorry hit the central reservation at speed and jackknifed, if you recall. It caught fire before the driver could be rescued.’

  ‘Witnesses? Quite a major accident, after all.’

  ‘Plenty to see what happened but not why, of course. Except for one observant HGV driver who came forward to say that he was sure he saw the passenger running away from the scene. And an equally observant firefighter thought the driver looked unnaturally passive—indeed, dead—as they tried to release him. And one of his colleagues detected petrochemical fumes inside the cab.’

  ‘Not just from the vehicle itself? Are you talking murder and arson? That this passenger did something to cause the driver to crash?

  ‘Let’s see what Pat the Path has to say.’

  Kate and Pat the Path, who was known to the rest of the world as Patrick Duncan, had now been friends long enough to have forgotten the little hiccup of a not very romantic interlude in their past. Kate had never mentioned it to anyone, and she was fairly sure Pat wouldn’t have, unless he cared to tell stories against himself. Extremely embarrassing stories, too, involving sex and motorcycle leathers.

  He usually greeted officers attending postmortems as if they were honoured houseguests. This time, however, since, as he told them, he’d already given a detailed explanation to the officers currently in charge of the case and he had a new CD of Bach trio sonatas calling him, he was more eager to get to the point than usual.

  ‘But I wasn’t expecting to have the pleasure of your company, too, Kate.’

  ‘She’s working on what I think may turn out to be another aspect of this case.’

  Kate d
idn’t so much as blink, but still had no idea what the hell he meant.

  Pat raised an amused eyebrow. ‘So there’s nothing in the rumours about you two?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘Are congratulations in order?’

  ‘I didn’t say that either. But we’re here on duty now.’

  Whatever Pat meant to say, he merely led the way into his lab and turned to the current occupant of his table. ‘Which concerns this gentleman.’

  ‘Quite.’

  She was used to the sights and smells of the dead, but had never dealt well with victims of fire. She mustn’t gag. She must try to think round the smell and sight of a charred human being, spread out like a three-D jigsaw. Not neatly, this time. The corpse was grotesquely drawn up, the flesh burnt away unevenly. No. Mustn’t think about the smell.

  Rod made fewer bones about his revulsion, covering his lower face with a clean, neatly-folded handkerchief. After a moment, he passed it to her, producing a less pristine specimen for himself.

  ‘Here. This is the interesting part,’ Pat announced, gesturing with a scalpel.

  ‘In layman’s words, remember, Pat,’ Rod said. ‘Kate may still remember her anatomical terms, but I don’t.’

  Pat shook his head. ‘But the classical languages are so beautiful. OK, mate,’ he continued, in a false-Brummie accent, ‘someone slit the poor bleeder’s throat, then doused him in petrol and set fire to him. That clear enough for you?’

  ‘I can see the throat wound. And presumably the pattern of burns…?’ He paused, delicately.

  ‘Most people, if alive, would have made some vain effort to protect the face. So the back of the hands would have been burned more badly than the front. That is not the case with this man.’

  ‘Tell me everything you know about him.’

  ‘Are we still in a jargon-free zone? Male. About five foot eight. Afro-Caribbean. Late thirties. Good teeth—little dental work needed or carried out. One of the fluoride generation. And slaughtered before roasted. Poor bastard. Or lucky bastard. Seen enough?’

  ‘Enough to make me grateful for having our meal before, not after, this.’

  ‘How’s your cooking, these days, Kate?’ Pat asked, with a slight barb. He himself produced tiny cakes, so immaculate in conception and production that they might even have put Women’s Institute prizewinners to shame.

  The evening’s culinary triumph under her belt, she managed a cheerful smile. ‘I could still write a Which? guide to local takeaways.’

  ‘I’m proud to share my kitchen with her,’ Rod insisted. ‘And when you come back from your session on the piste you must come and eat with us.’

  ‘It’ll be a pleasure.’

  An attendant knocked on the lab door.

  ‘Ah. We have to vacate our table. The natives are getting restless. Riots in the waiting room. You must excuse me.’

  Despite Kate’s suggestion that she could take a taxi so that he could go straight into work, Rod insisted on running her home. Which home?

  ‘After all,’ he said, unlocking the car and holding the passenger door for her, ‘we may not be seeing too much of each other for the next few weeks. We’ll both be working flat out, if I’m any judge of things. I want to take advantage of every minute in private.’ He kissed her.

  ‘In private?’ she repeated, as he took his place beside her.

  ‘I think we may be coming across each other at work rather more than usual.’

  ‘Hang on. I thought you were saying that for Pat’s benefit—to explain my presence.’

  ‘In a sense I was. But all sorts of things are circling round my brain at the moment, some so vague I don’t want to say them aloud in case they flit away.’

  ‘Let me say them, then. You have a murdered HGV driver; I have a missing policeman and a loquacious kid. How can either of my problems tie up with yours? Possibly?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. But if there is a connection, I shall find it.’

  ‘What sort of connection? She certainly didn’t kill your chummy and bolt.’

  ‘But she was brought here by someone and escaped from someone.’

  She tapped lightly on his head. ‘Come on, Rod, unless your intuition’s working overtime—’

  ‘All the best cops have hyperactive intuition. And, as I said, I’ve no idea what the connection might be.’

  ‘Whatever it is, keep your sticky mitts—and your sticky MITs—off my nick. And leave me to find out the rest of Natasha’s story.’

  ‘Would she talk to anyone else?’

  ‘Not if I asked her not to.’

  ‘I didn’t hear that.’

  ‘No. And you didn’t hear me say that with my staffing levels I might almost welcome an incursion of fresh troops. Especially if you ended up leading the charge.’

  ‘Things must be serious, then.’

  They drove in silence. Home. His house, not hers.

  Although she had her key ready, he got out with her. ‘Don’t wait up. Promise? We’re both going to need our shut-eye when things get moving.’

  ‘So long as you promise to let me warm your hands and feet.’ She reached up to kiss him. And was left in no doubt of his answer.

  However much Kate tried to cut it, she made no sense of Rod and his intuition. At last she gave up trying and headed for bed. After all, whatever time Rod got home this morning, she’d better be at work for six thirty. If there were any connections, which she doubted, she intended, however much she loved Rod, to have done her best to wrap everything up by the time a MIT was brought in.

  If only she knew what she was wrapping.

  Chapter 14

  ‘When I say I want you here at six in the evening, I don’t mean eight the following morning,’ Chief Superintendent Oxnard thundered.

  ‘Sir.’ He hadn’t told Kate to sit down, so she was standing at rigid attention. He was, after all, the commander of her operational unit.

  ‘You come here the other day getting your knickers in a twist when there’s no reason. When there is, you don’t bloody turn up. What’s wrong with you, Power?’

  Still trying to catch her breath—the city centre was already snarled up and, not wishing to be late, she’d simply thrown her car into the first convenient meter space and legged it as fast as she could—she began, ‘Sir, when did you—’

  ‘I’m asking the questions, in case you hadn’t noticed. I suppose you were lying with your legs apart for that miserable-looking DCI down the corridor? Well, I’ve got news for you, Power. At this level it isn’t who you shag but how well you do your job that matters.’ He got up and came round his desk to jab at her chest.

  She must control her breathing—couldn’t risk him making cracks about heaving bosoms. ‘I came as soon as I heard, sir. Unfortunately we don’t have any clerical support at the moment, and messages aren’t getting—’

  ‘It wasn’t a sodding message, Power, it was a fucking order.’ His spittle sprayed her face. ‘You sit on your fanny doing fuck all while we’ve got some snotty-nosed village bobby in Little Piddle under Muck on the phone telling us how to do our job.’ He stomped towards the window.

  Well, it was one way to describe the chief constable of the West Mercia Constabulary, and who was she to object? Or venture to correct him? On the other hand, people said he preferred his officers to show a bit of spirit, so she’d stop offering explanations or excuses. ‘With respect, sir, they didn’t teach ESP at Bramshill, or I’d have been here before you phoned.’

  ‘ESP?’ He wheeled round.

  ‘Extra-sensory perception, otherwise known as mind-reading, sir.’ She took advantage of his momentary recoil to add, more hotly than she’d have preferred, ‘And I got this promotion because I was on the accelerated-promotion scheme, and working bloody hard.’ Denying that she’d had sex with Graham was pointless and, in any case, a diversion from what she wanted to say. And the less said about her current relationship the better. ‘I’m still working bloody hard. I’m starting each morning
at six thirty and finishing well after seven in the evening, then working when I get home. And we haven’t even got a panic on. Yet,’ she added, with an ironic smile. ‘Or is there one now?’

  ‘What have you done about locating Bates? Oh, sit down, woman. Making the place look untidy.’

  She obeyed. ‘I’ve checked with family and friends, none of whom reports seeing him. I’ve checked his personnel records—as you said the other day, sir, he’s never been the most reliable of officers. I was about to ask the Occupational Health people to talk to him.’

  ‘You haven’t already?’

  ‘No, sir. I wanted to make sure,’ she said carefully, ‘that I wasn’t just being a hysterical female and “getting my knickers in a twist” about something no one else saw anything wrong with.’ Like the superintendent himself, for instance. ‘Being new in this post, I—’

  ‘If you’re trying to protect your predecessor, don’t bother He was a fine officer and more than earned his promotion. And, as a matter of fact, he had contacted Occupational Health.’

  So Twiss had shared her anxieties. And Oxnard had been sufficiently interested in what she’d said the other day to check.

  ‘It’s just that they’d done nothing about his request because they reckon they don’t have enough staff.’ Surprise, surprise.

  ‘So he was flaky, no doubt about it. But he’s also missing. So what are you doing about that?’