Power on Her Own Read online

  ‘Oh, I just gave up. Actually, I’ve started a one-woman hunt for that safe-house, Colin. And what better time to crawl round the streets of suburbia than five?’

  He glanced about him. ‘What are you on about? Oh, some of you may be able to manage on Thatcher-rations of sleep – I need my eight hours before my brain gets into gear. And I went clubbing last night. In Manchester.’

  ‘And you say you haven’t got stamina! Hey, you can join my football team.’ She too looked around. No one in the office. ‘Look,’ she said, dropping her voice, ‘I ought to tell Graham what I’m up to. Why don’t you come along when I tell him? What have I said?’ She stared. Her hand gripped his forearm.

  Colin put his arm round her, steered her to the corner of the office. ‘Sit.’ He remained standing, so he could see over her head. ‘You obviously haven’t heard. No, don’t look like that. Nothing major. You know that motorway pile-up – Wednesday, was it? – on the M6. Well, Graham was in it. No, no!’ He took her hands. ‘Nothing serious, I promise. Listen – would I lie to you? It’s just bruises. He was trying to get someone out of a car when someone hit about five cars back. So most of the impact was absorbed by the other vehicles. But even though it means him having to spend a few days with Mrs H, he’s got to take time off.’ His voice changed. ‘So put your dosh in the envelope, there’s a good girl. And – Good morning, Sir!’ He straightened.

  Kate got to her feet, turning as she did so. ‘Morning, Sir.’

  Cope nodded. ‘Tell you what, Power. If you want to do something useful, you can drop the envelope round to the DCI.’

  She nodded. ‘What d’you want me to buy, Sir?’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, how should I know? Just give him the money!’

  She looked at Colin, who took her cue. ‘I wondered about a book, Sir,’ he suggested. ‘I know he likes walking – maybe –’

  ‘Got that, Power? Get the man a book on walking. And drop it round. But maybe first you’d better grace us with your presence in the Incident Room. There’s been another development. If you’re interested, that is.’

  He stomped off. Colin held Kate back. ‘The trouble is with Cope, you never know what his motives are. Does he think going to see Graham is a penance? Or does he suspect you like Graham and relishes the prospect of your being at the receiving end of Mrs H’s ire?’

  ‘Ire? That’s a very literary word! Sort of thing I came across in Shakespeare once. Colin, if you hear anything else –’

  They were by the door. No, Cope wasn’t lying in wait for them. She stopped. ‘I’m not having an affair with him, Colin. Hang that on the grapevine, will you, and hang a few fairy lights round it, just so everyone sees.’

  The development was small, but Cope was right to regard it as serious. A paperboy from Hockley had told his teacher he thought a man had been following him during his evening round on Wednesday. Kate and Colin were to go to the school to do a repeat of Monday morning’s activities. No argument with that. Nor with the news that surveillance was now extended to this school. Yes, it had been scaled down at the first.

  Kate and Colin set off. The brightness of the recent days had been replaced by a steady drizzle. The windscreen wipers smeared screen-washer backwards and forwards, with little effect.

  ‘Time you got some new blades,’ Colin said. ‘And putting this through a car-wash wouldn’t do it any harm. Come on – there’s one over there.’

  ‘No. We might miss assembly. On the way back – promise.’

  They watched the giant rubber rollers gear themselves for action, and braced themselves for the noisy impact.

  ‘A bit more work for someone there,’ Colin said, releasing his seat belt and stretching. ‘Ever thought of applying for training to work with kids?’ He skewed round in his seat to look at her.

  The car started to shake under the blue and red rollers.

  ‘Oh, I always thought of it as Women’s Work,’ Kate said dourly. ‘In any case, I’m not sure I could hack it. Jenny’s nightmares are bad enough. Dealing with kids who’ve been raped or buggered – no, that’s too tough for me. Give me a good clean murder any day. Or a spot of fraud – now, that could be interesting.’

  ‘Take years off your life – just think of the paperwork, Kate, and all those years the trials take.’

  ‘With the inevitable “not guilty” verdict, because the jury can’t understand all the evidence. OK. You’ve convinced me.’

  ‘In any case, it’ll be desk work for you, won’t it? This accelerated promotion scheme – you’re not destined to spend the rest of your life legging it round the streets. You’ll be organising the rest of us.’

  ‘I could end up like Cope!’

  ‘Hardly. He was never going to be a star. Someone thought you would be, though. Inspector within the next two years, eh?’

  ‘I doubt it. Not the way things are going. I need to put in a spot of study, Colin. And that means having a room to do it in. Hell! I just want to get my house straight. Live in it. I’m sick of camping.’

  ‘You and me both, sweetie!’

  Chapter Twenty

  Clutching a card signed by everyone she could find – from Selby to the women on reception – a gift-wrapped set of Wainwright’s Walks and a potted plant, Kate presented herself at the Harveys’ front gate. The house was in the sort of residential area she rather aspired to: no problems parking your car when you had a double garage – no doubt the one that had housed her mattress – and a wide fancily-bricked area in front of the house itself There were some token winter pansies in terracotta pots. She’d rather expected Graham would be a lush lawn man: perhaps the back garden would be more inspired. In any case, this wasn’t the time of year any garden would be at its best. Except she fancied some shrubs, even in her tiny patch, to give all-year colour.

  She pushed open the gate, shutting it carefully – if at some peril to her gifts.

  The house itself was probably late eighties: built for status. Why two people should have decided they needed so much space – Graham had never mentioned children – was beyond her. But the trouble was, of course, that houses tended to get nicer as they got bigger. Like cars. Except at least you could now buy a snazzy small car, like hers. She’d like a house that was the equivalent of a sixteen-valve Fiesta one day.

  The doorbell chimed rather pretentiously. Why was she so judgmental? It wasn’t as if she’d made any particular effort for the visit. Just her usual working clothes – today, given the gloom of the weather, a skirt and waistcoat in a rather nice dark red which set off her hair, come to think of it. A dark jacket. And yes, she had taken extra care with her make-up.

  Movement behind the frosted glass: prepare to meet the dragon.

  If she was a dragon, Graham’s wife looked remarkably human. She was about Kate’s height, dark-haired, though hers was beginning to go grey. Her skin was startlingly clear, setting off good regular features: a classic English rose. She’d age as well as Cassie, with bones like that. She was slimmer than Kate – yes, slender to the point of thinness – and neatly dressed. Her skirt was a good deal longer than Kate’s, but not fashionably long – reaching that unkind spot where the calf is at its thickest. And she wore a twinset.

  Kate smiled: ‘You must be Mrs Harvey. I’m one of Mr Harvey’s colleagues. DI Cope’s sent me to –’

  ‘To pester my husband. Well, I can tell you now, he’s not at all well.’

  Couldn’t she see the armful of presents, for goodness’ sake?

  ‘I’ve brought a card from the squad. And these.’ Kate nodded at her armful.

  ‘You’d better come in. You can have five minutes. This way.’ Mrs Harvey paused: Kate realised she hadn’t wiped her feet, and proceeded to do so, with some fervour, before following her through a square hall into a long living room.

  ‘Come into the lounge,’ Mrs Harvey said, over her shoulder. ‘I’ll get him.’ She disappeared through another door – perhaps one to the kitchen.

  Kate looked around her. Careful good
taste in here: the carpets, suite, curtains and wall-paper all co-ordinated. An expensive looking Afghan rug held the whole lot together with a pattern of the rather acid blues and pinks of the rest of the room on a deep red ground. Kate felt covetous. Her house was too small for anything other than plain carpets, plain walls. She hovered. She hadn’t been invited to sit, and yet to look at the pictures might be construed as prying. She looked anyway: English landscapes, too pretty for her taste. On the hearth and on what looked like a home for a CD collection were some dried flower arrangements, the sort of thing that came out like the foundations of bonfires if she tried them. These looked like those in the glossy magazines she avoided even at the hairdressers.

  ‘Kate!’

  The voice came from that other door. She turned. Involuntarily she stepped towards him. Graham’s face was puffed to a caricature of itself, with two lovely black eyes. There was a raw-looking bruise down his right cheek.

  As if to give her time, he smiled: ‘You should have seen the others.’

  ‘That’ll teach you to pick on someone your own size,’ Kate said. The presents grew awkward in her arms. ‘We had a bit of whip round for you.’ She realised that Graham had left the door open, that Mrs Harvey was somewhere behind it. Perhaps she was making tea.

  Graham reached for them.

  She could see how blood-shot the right eye was. ‘Whatever happened?’

  ‘There was this pile-up. Mid-afternoon, Wednesday. Broad daylight. You’d expect the fog to have cleared by then. But just north of Stafford – yes, I was nearly home! – it came down like a hand. I mean, I was cruising at seventy – no problem. Anyway, I saw the crashes in front. I managed to get on to the hard shoulder, call for assistance. I was trying to help this teenager in a beat-up old van when there was another series of crashes. And the car behind shunted into this kid’s van.’

  ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘I managed to get him out before the fires started. And a few others. Didn’t realise I was hurt until the meat-wagon people told me to get in.’ He took the pot plant. ‘This must be terribly hard for you, Kate,’ he said, his voice gentle. ‘After –’

  After Robin. After her own injuries. That was what he meant. She straightened and passed him the books. He looked around helplessly. This was not a room you just dumped things in.

  ‘Is there a mat we could put that plant on?’ Kate asked. ‘Or the hearth –?’

  But the marble of that was polished. No, not even a newspaper she could spread.

  ‘Maybe the kitchen,’ he began.

  ‘Your five minutes are up, I’m afraid.’ Mrs Harvey had materialised. ‘Doctor’s orders, dear. You know what he said.’

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t realise.’ Kate was still holding the card. ‘I’d forgotten this. Look after –’

  ‘I’ll look after him, all right.’ Mrs Harvey took the plant, sniffing disparagingly. Or perhaps it was just to see if there was any scent. Not with hot-house azaleas, though. There never was.

  Kate headed for the door. Graham followed. She turned: ‘I could do with some advice. There’s a major problem at work.’

  ‘Well, you’ll just have to solve it without him, won’t you?’ Mrs Harvey said. ‘Can’t you see he’s sick?’

  ‘I’ll be in on Monday,’ Graham mouthed.

  She opened her eyes extra wide, pulled a face: would he be fit?

  He managed a smile – not a wink. ‘Thanks for coming round,’ he said. ‘Send everyone my thanks. Tell them I’ll be back as soon as I can be.’

  ‘When the doctor says it’s all right,’ Mrs Harvey’s voice over-rode his.

  ‘Goodbye then.’ She peered round his shoulder. Mrs Harvey regarded her. ‘Nice to have met you,’ Kate said, like a kid at a party.

  On impulse, she went home, not to the Manse. Thank God for chicken tikka naan. She ate it on her lap in her bedroom. Then, slowly at first, and then maniacally, she started to clean her windows. Her bedroom. The back room. The bathroom. The landing. The front bedroom. She might even do those downstairs. The new doors. The windows. And at last, opening the front room door – the room that was to be her dining room – she was hit by the smell of paint. Primer to be precise.

  She sat down on a pile of cardboard boxes – her kitchen in chrysalis form – and stared. Someone had started to rub down and prepare the bay window.

  How long she’d been sitting there she’d no idea. At last it dawned on her that the phone was ringing, and she sprinted to it.

  ‘I was afraid you might be at the Manse,’ Graham said.

  ‘I come home sometimes.’

  ‘Not often. I tried to get you a couple of times. How are things?’

  ‘Cope’s weird. Sent me on a wild-goose chase to Devon. But I’ve got this bee in my bonnet, Graham. I haven’t dared tell anyone yet.’ She trusted him to interpret her silence correctly: that she knew she could trust him.

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘One day – just after I started – I was very late in –’

  ‘I bollocked you, if I remember rightly.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call that a bollocking. Anyway, on the bus on my way in I overhead these two women talking about a house in their cul-de-sac. Seems the people using it went to ridiculous lengths to maintain their privacy. Graham, it’s the longest of shots – but I want to find that house. May be nothing to do with this case.’

  ‘May be everything in the world to do with another one. OK, Kate. Find it. Kate. Before I forget. If ever the phone rings back immediately after I’ve put it down, ignore it. You can always one four seven one it. And I’d be grateful, if you ever phone me here, if you dial one four one first.’ His voice writhed with embarrassment.

  She didn’t need to ask why. God, another conspiracy. Just so she could talk to her boss. All that just so she could talk to her boss.

  ‘This house, Graham. It might take a long time to find.’ She told him what she was looking for.

  ‘I only wish I could help. But there’s no way I can drive for another couple of days. She’s taken my keys, just to make sure.’ He laughed. An embarrassed schoolboy laugh.

  ‘Any ideas how I could clear it with Cope?’

  ‘You can’t, can you? Because he’d veto it as a waste of time. It’ll have to wait till I’m back, Colin. But thanks for the call. Always nice to hear from you lads.’

  End of call. He wouldn’t win any Oscars for that performance, though.

  The phone rang. And rang. She sat on her hands in her effort not to answer. At last it stopped. It started immediately. She went to the loo. At last, she returned, and checked the origin of her call. Graham’s number.

  Find it, the man had said. She’d give it till twelve tonight. Couldn’t go on too late and risk being knackered for tomorrow’s match, could she? Matches, she corrected herself. She went back upstairs to retrieve warm, sensible clothes – her thickest tracksuit, and warm cords and sweater for the afternoon. There. But it would be so nice to live in just one house. Picking up her coat and the A-Z she let herself out of her house, locking the door behind her.

  ‘You look like you could do with your weekend.’

  Kate jumped. Literally. ‘Mrs Mackenzie! I was miles away! I’m so sorry.’

  ‘That’s all right. House coming on?’

  ‘Slowly. Even when it’s finished, I shall never be able to get it clean.’

  ‘You want cleaners? I know cleaners.’

  ‘Would they want to tackle a job like this?’

  ‘Is the Pope Catholic? You just tell me when. You got a job, they want a job. You got money, they want money. Symbiosis.’ Mrs Mackenzie grinned. ‘Fancy a coffee?’

  All those plans for prowling the suburbs!

  ‘Love one. But –’ she gestured ineffectually at her house.

  ‘My place. I only like grounds with my coffee, not grit.’ She let them in. The house was silent, apart from the irritating tinkle of a central heating radiator. It still smelt of paint.

  Kate followed h
er into the immaculate kitchen. Shedding her coat, Mrs Mackenzie fished beans from the fridge. She pulled a face while she ground them, but then grinned. ‘Got this new espresso machine,’ she said. ‘Black or white?’

  Kate tossed up: which did she need more, a good night’s sleep or wakefulness for her suburban patrol? ‘White, please. Didn’t sleep too well last night. Jenny gets these nightmares and shares them.’

  ‘Jenny?’

  ‘The younger daughter at the Manse. Screams in her sleep, poor little mite.’

  Mrs Mackenzie nodded: ‘My Royston had a phase of that. Never think it to look at him, but he was a timid child. Bullied. That’s one reason we moved churches. Kate – you don’t mind if I call you Kate, do you? I’m Zenia. Seems my parents wanted to call me after some flower and couldn’t bloody spell it. Pardon my French. Don’t swear, except it’s been a bit of a day. Got this woman on the ward – I tell you she hasn’t a bit of skin left on her.’

  Kate looked up sharply.

  ‘Oh, natural causes. Eczema. Only you feel so helpless. Been dabbling in this herbal stuff. Just because it grows natural, they think it must be good. Well, whatever she was on wasn’t.’

  Kate waited. The coffee-maker belched. The smell was making her salivate. ‘You say Royston was bullied? At the chapel?’

  Zenia bubbled the coffee into the tiny white china cups she’d reached out. ‘Help yourself to sugar. Bullied at school – that’s for definite. But there was something at the chapel he wouldn’t ever tell us about. Never has.’

  Kate looked up sharply. ‘Any ideas?’

  ‘None. I looked for the obvious things – including sexual abuse, before you ask. Nothing I could see. Tried to talk to him. Had a discreet word with the officers. Maybe some racism, they thought. It’s a very white, middle-class chapel, that one. And he’s much happier now we’ve left it. Happier! Lord, when was a teenage boy ever happy?’

  ‘How old is he? Hmm, this is good!’

  ‘Fifteen. Working for his GCSEs. And doing well, his teachers say. I suppose it’s best for him to be polite at school, rude at home, if he’s got to be rude. Get a GCSE in swearing, I sometimes think. Bad company. There’s him in the A stream of a grammar school and he chooses friends dropping out of the comp. That’s kids for you. I sometimes wonder if it’s because I work.’