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  ‘Yes. Mark merely ran the whole shebang,’ she said affectionately, ‘while his chief went to meetings.’

  ‘Meetings! Don’t get me started! Anyway, I was one of those most in favour of setting up a small team to investigate cases we’d never closed. Got my own way, too, backed by the commissioner, I gather; I had a good team, led by a DCI and with all the resources of teams working on active investigations. But then the economic climate changed … I didn’t want the valuable work they were doing to be lost in the chase for efficiency and targets and all the other crap. So I suggested we parachute in people on short-term contracts. A couple of times we used an agency. Then I remembered Mark and found that you were free too – which is how you come to be sitting here wearing clothes some of which still have the store labels on them.’

  Caroline got up from the table and returned with a pair of scissors, dealing with first Fran and then Mark, ostentatiously laying their price tags on their place mats.

  Smiling her thanks, Fran resumed her questions: ‘So you weren’t drawn to this case for any pressing reason? No one outside the force asked you to look into it?’

  ‘No. Absolutely not. We’ve nailed a rapist; tracked a fraudster to Spain and extradited him; linked a murder to a killer doing a natural life term. But this is the only one that seems to have caused any problems. And the only one with any connection to me having the carpet pulled from under my feet. I called you; we agreed terms; I told the boss; he seemed delighted; I got the chop.’

  ‘Was it something we said? Or the way we said it?’ Mark asked whimsically. ‘Or the very fact that someone – anyone – was going to ask questions?’

  ‘I simply don’t know. Of course, some of my colleagues left in post might fight less vigorously to support the investigation. Resources; staffing: those sorts of things.’

  ‘People like ACC Colin Webster?’ A man who left his name off the list of investigating officers.

  ‘People like him.’

  ‘And who might they be fighting for these resources? The chief constable? Andrew Barwell? Or this new police and crime commissioner of yours, Sandra Dundy?’

  ‘Commissioners! Don’t ask …’

  For the next few minutes, they engaged in a pleasurable and wordy discussion about the whole concept of elected commissioners, capping each other’s horror stories of politicos who were milking a profitable cash cow. From time to time they’d admit that X was honest, that Y was really shaking up a force that needed it, but the verbal hunt for possibly corrupt commissioners was much more fun.

  ‘But what about yours in particular? Who backed you, you said?’ asked Mark, still chuckling at the report of one outrageous piece of behaviour. Now perhaps he might get information that would substantiate Downs’s allegations. ‘How have you got on with her?’

  Gerry’s face went entirely blank. Studiously blank.

  Mark tried to keep any excitement from his face. Downs had said he had nothing on Gerry, but there was no point in giving information away.

  Gerry declared, ‘Police and crime commissioners do not meddle in individual enquiries.’

  ‘Of course they don’t,’ Fran said cordially. ‘But –?’

  ‘They’re duly elected public servants, responsible for conveying the will of the electorate to the force. They can appoint and dismiss chief constables,’ he parroted.

  ‘Can and do,’ Caroline pointed out. ‘I can think of a number of decent chief constables whose faces didn’t please the new commissioner. Some went quietly.’

  Gerry nodded. ‘At least one endured the most horrible humiliation before a very public sacking.’

  Damn: the conversation was drifting away again.

  ‘Is your chief expecting that sort of fate? Or any other of the senior team, for that matter?’ Fran thought of the anxiety on Webster’s face.

  Gerry frowned. ‘I wouldn’t know. They play their cards very close to their chests, some of them, and don’t even like being asked what time it is, to be honest. Greg, our previous chief, was very much more accessible. I could have asked him if there was anything wrong. Come to that, he’d have told me. Do you remember him, Mark? Greg Orford?’

  Mark nodded enthusiastically. ‘I remember. A decent man. Very keen on alternative medicine, of all things. Planned to set himself up in practice as an osteopath or something. But Barwell? I’ve seen him around, looking harassed, but never exchanged a word with him. I’ve had no reason to, of course.’

  ‘You’d have to book a week ahead, and then expect to have your meeting cancelled at the last moment while he battles with the latest crisis. They call him the Invisible Man. Not original, but accurate. To be fair, I wouldn’t want his job. He spends most of his time haring round the area we police. Correction: we’re supposed to police. Geographically speaking it’s huge. Look at it on a map. The logic behind the merger was that we were both forces with expertise in rural crime, so a lot of things were duplicated. Anyway, it’s not my problem. Not any longer.’

  ‘Nor is the commissioner,’ Fran pointed out. ‘I’ve seen her just a couple of times: very smart. Once she seemed inclined to be friendly until it dawned on her what job I was doing, if not who I was. But there’s not much of a biography of her on the West Mercia website, though they pretty well give the chief constable’s shoe size there’s so much detail, and Google doesn’t come up with anything special. Which is odd, given her position. All over the country other candidates seemed to have their pasts examined with bizarre thoroughness; didn’t one withdraw because he’d allegedly smoked pot forty years ago? But she seems to have escaped any sort of trial by media.’

  ‘Possibly because she came in on a second election: her predecessor managed to crash a police vehicle he had no right to be driving and resigned PDQ. So she came in as the proverbial breath of fresh air.’ Gerry looked across at his wife, who was clearly trying to catch his eye: ‘OK, coffee in the living room?’

  Mark had a sneaking suspicion that the change of location was supposed to indicate a change of topic. However, he was determined to finish this one, bad manners or not. He bided his time, waiting till they were all seated and served. The coffee was as feeble as the food had been. ‘I can see Fran’s itching to get her hands on your porcelain, Caroline, but I’m desperate to get some line on Dundy. The only opinion I’ve so far managed to elicit was one-sided in the extreme: she’s a fiend in human form, lying, cheating, driven by a desire to make money, power-mad. I’d really welcome something more considered.’

  Her hand on the display cabinet door, Caroline paused. ‘I’ve met her socially once or twice. She actually seemed a very nice woman. OK, her politics may not be mine but she struck me as decent and well-meaning. She’s also very bright. I know you’re no keener on entrepreneurs than on politicians, Gerry, but she set up her own sportswear business from nothing, always buys British products when she can and recruits local workers for her shops.’

  ‘Sounds like an ad for UKIP,’ Gerry grumbled.

  ‘Or a stand against sweated labour and economic migration,’ she retorted. ‘A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work; does that sound familiar? Now she sponsors sports like cricket and football, with the emphasis on involving girls both during and after school. She stood on a Can Do platform, Fran. Yes, she had the Tory ticket, but that doesn’t necessarily help anyone these days.’

  Fran nodded. ‘She’s achieved a lot for a woman still in her forties.’

  Caroline continued, ‘She’s married. No children. She’s a good advert for her own sporting philosophy – very fit, not a gym bunny but plays a lot of tennis and swims. A really good role model for women.’

  ‘And she turns her back on her career and stands as police and crime commissioner on what seems to me a good salary but must be peanuts to her. I wonder why.’

  Caroline’s laugh was dry, ironic. ‘Not a very sisterly question, Fran.’

  ‘Actually, I was thinking about her altruism. All that commitment and drive; yet changing something as huge a
nd amorphous as a regional police force must be like pushing a pea uphill with your nose. Why take it on? And at such a difficult time? Next time I run into her in the Hindlip Hall ladies’ loos I must ask her. And, come to think of it, ask her how she manages to walk in those high heels of hers. I’m sorry: we’ve talked nothing but shop and all that china and porcelain is waiting for me.’

  Mark raised a finger. ‘I’m sorry. Just one more question, then I promise not to utter another word of shop. Is there still a Mr Dundy and what does he do?’

  ‘Dundy’s her maiden name. No idea what her husband’s called. I think he’s a lawyer of some sort.’ End of discussion. Definitely, this time. ‘This is my favourite, Fran.’ She produced a tiny handle-less cup on its saucer. ‘When tea was so expensive that you locked your caddies, you needed cups this small.’

  It sat like a flower on Fran’s outstretched palm. She ran her finger delicately round the rim. ‘I wonder how many lips sipped genteelly from here. I know a woman back in Kent who collects spectacle cases. Sometimes they come with the spectacles still inside. There’s a pair I can actually read with. And you think, what was this woman’s life like compared to mine?’

  ‘Other people’s lives! That’s why I took up archaeology!’

  ‘And why I,’ said Mark truthfully, ‘became a police officer.’

  SEVENTEEN

  Back at Edwina’s, the torrent decidedly abated, they had risked parking in the lee of the house. There was nowhere else for the car after all. To their relief they found that Sergeant Cole or the Environment Agency had managed to stem the cascade – presumably they had some giant spanner to close the floodgates. They’d also organized reinforcements to the sandbag dam and brought in a pump to clear the water in what had previously been their bedroom. The corridor to the outside world was no longer a minor river, though not all the water had gone. Fran did her best to sweep it out, but neither had the energy to attack the residual mess in what had been their room.

  Meanwhile, the washing machine having completed its cycle, Mark reloaded it with soaking bed linen. Edwina wasn’t as ruthlessly green as Mark, owning a state of the art tumble-dryer, something he eschewed. Looking almost shifty, he put in the items they’d really need for the next day and set it off, standing back as if it were a petard that might explode in his face.

  Trying not to laugh, Fran installed them in their new room, one on the first floor. It wasn’t as spacious as the alternative, and the smell of paint lingered. But since Mark had dumped in the other one what he’d retrieved from the flood, it was the obvious option. It was a matter of minutes to make up the bed. Would hanging their new clothes in the wardrobe somehow provoke further meteorological retribution? She hoped not.

  The trouble with sleeping the sleep of the just was that you didn’t want to surface knowing that your new day would be spent pursuing the unjust. But the central heating hummed away, and it was Fran’s turn to get their tea. She also applied herself to transferring the newly washed sheets to the dryer she’d just emptied; there was nowhere else, after all. The little patio garden was still awash; anywhere requiring you to don wellies to hang out washing was a non-starter in her book. There was the other part of the garden, more a small orchard, but the wind was hammering that so hard that the sheets would soon have been in the next county – Shropshire, she presumed.

  Meanwhile, there was something else on her mind: the afternoon’s activities. What did you wear to a football match? Something warm and weatherproof was the obvious answer. No doubt Birmingham shops would provide the solution. No lie in for them this morning, then, especially as they might be involved in arrangements for getting Edwina home. But their phone call to the hospital elicited the information that she was more than capable of organizing this for herself and had already drafted in a friend to collect her at twelve. As for the annexe room they weren’t even to consider trying to tackle it. All they had to do was leave the central heating on. Silently Fran added another task: that fine bed linen would have to be ironed, wouldn’t it? A job for Sunday.

  All Joe Swallow’s organization came together beautifully. Yes, they could park in a reserved space; yes, the welcoming girl in Reception was expecting them: would they sit in the corner for a moment with some of the kids who’d be mascots for the afternoon?

  Mascots? It meant nothing to Fran, but it clearly meant a lot to the boys and girls, aged from something like six up to a tall eleven dressed from head to toe in blue and white.

  A dapper man sporting a stylish hat appeared, looking around with a quizzical smile.

  Mark got to his feet. ‘You wouldn’t be Joe’s mate, would you?’

  ‘Alan Cleverly at your service. You must be Mark and Fran. I’ll rescue you from all this enthusiasm, shall I? Come on, we’ll find a coffee. Let’s take the lift.’

  He ushered them into a restaurant overlooking the ground and sat them down at a table where their conversation wouldn’t be overheard.

  ‘I know a lot of the old Baggies players,’ he said, pouring coffee. ‘That’s what the fans call the Albion – the Baggies. And of course these guys know others I don’t. But I’m afraid Phil Foreman was never in my circle of close acquaintances. For various reasons,’ he said meaningfully. ‘Look, Joe told me you were football virgins,’ he added with a disbelieving smile.

  ‘We’ve got no Premier League club in Kent,’ Mark confirmed. ‘And it’s a long time since either of us was on Saturday afternoon duty at the Gillingham ground.’

  ‘So at least you know it’s a round ball, not an oval one. Well, that’s a start. So you’ve no idea what a modern football ground is like? Well, let’s take a look round the ground while we talk.’ Alan’s eyes twinkled with obvious pride in the place. ‘I usually give a history of the club and the players, but that might not mean much to you.’ He gestured: the restaurant was already filling. ‘Early birds, come for a bit of atmosphere.’

  ‘You start them young,’ Mark said.

  ‘Ah, those mascots. And why not? We’re a club that values kids. Later on I’ll point out the academy, and tell you what we do in the community. Ready? And then I’ll introduce you to the guy who’ll be your host this afternoon, someone who knew young Phil better than most. No, you’re not sitting on the terraces: you’re in a hospitality suite.’ Waving away their surprised thanks, he set them in motion. ‘One thing you need to know is that the Baggies have a reputation for being decent people. Some clubs are proud of being hard, with hard fans. Not the Baggies. We pride ourselves on being family-friendly. Decent folk like to have decent players in their team. They don’t think it’s clever for them to collect yellow cards, let alone red ones. So though they’d be the first to say that Phil Foreman was a terrific striker, they didn’t like his tactics. Broke an opponent’s leg once, just because he could. That sort of man.’

  Mark nodded.

  ‘Presumably we’re actually under one of the stands here?’ Fran gestured at the thickly carpeted corridor, which reminded her of one in a well-managed hotel.

  ‘Quite. Let’s find a window so you can get a better sense of where you are. There! Over there we’ve got an indoor pitch, a gym, of course, an all-weather pitch – and it’s not just our academy and the players that use the facilities, it’s the community too. We’ve got really good links with players with disabilities.’

  Fran nodded with genuine admiration. ‘It’s like brand new shiny jewels set in an old tired setting!’

  ‘Yes, poor old West Bromwich like all our industrial heartland has suffered in the recession. Not pretty, is it?’

  ‘But all those trees.’ She hoped she managed to sound pleased rather than disbelieving. Success. She was rewarded with a charming smile.

  ‘We’ve got a whole urban forest of them these days. But they say that when a Black Country native’s been away, he knows he’s back when he sees poplars and blue engineering brick.’ His pride and pleasure mirrored Ted’s their very first night. ‘Let’s have a look at the media centre – not as huge or
space age as the one at Lord’s, but state of the art, believe me.’

  They even saw the home dressing room – but were fiercely denied access to the away one. Finally they had a look round at pitch level. ‘Up there’s the sort of place you’ll maybe be familiar with: the police command centre.’

  ‘All I can say is that it wasn’t like that in my day,’ Mark said, bracing himself against a rain-bearing gust of wind.

  ‘This is the highest Premier League ground in the country,’ Alan explained as they huddled against it, ‘just as Edgbaston is the highest test cricket ground. We’re on the Midlands Plateau – that’s why we’re not so bothered by floods as the folk in the Severn Valley. And the next high point as you look east is the Urals.’ He gestured as if to conjure distant mountains.

  Mark was peering at something altogether closer: the pitch. ‘It’s so lush,’ he marvelled. ‘I wish I could have a lawn transplant.’

  ‘You’d have to mow it every week by hand,’ Alan retorted, ‘and be prepared to wave it goodbye at the end of every season. This’ll be a ploughed field by the end of May – and within weeks it’ll be playable again. Now, Fran, you look frozen. Would you like me to take your photo under the Albion badge? Inside, then …’

  Their photos duly on camera, he took them briskly along, pointing out en route the academy he’d mentioned. They climbed to a much higher level, that of the executive suites, which Fran would have called hospitality boxes. But this one was certainly no box. It was a room ready to feed sixteen in some elegance, and Dean Redhead, whom Alan introduced as their host, was on hand to greet them, exchanging a few minutes’ chat with Alan about the prospects for the game before the older man bade them farewell.

  ‘This has been such a treat,’ Fran declared, beaming with pleasure as she shook his hand. ‘I’d simply never expected anything like this.’

  ‘Not if you’ve not been to a ground since Gillingham’s twenty or thirty years ago,’ Alan agreed. He shook hands with Mark. ‘Enjoy the match – probably more than we West Brom fans will, to be honest.’ He tipped his hat and was away.