Power Shift Read online

  Chapter 2

  ‘Before you ask,’ Euphronia Hale said, as Kate carried two baguettes bulging healthily with salad across to the table the WPC had grabbed in the café window, ‘Neil Drew wasn’t after your job. Nor was he backing any of his mates to get it.’

  ‘So why’s he so angry? And resentful?’ Kate wave aside Euphronia’s purse. ‘On me. I’ll be treating everyone the same. Even Neil. Especially Neil.’

  ‘And will you be asking him the same questions?’

  ‘I should have asked him before I asked you,’ Kate observed, trying not to flush. It was her first major failure as manager. Although Euphronia nodded, she didn’t seem to be scoring any points. ‘You should.’ She shrugged wide shoulders. ‘But he might not have told you. In fact, he’d have denied everything and blustered and got more and more hostile. That’s why I’m telling you, not because you asked. Another thing, you’ll hear people talking about “Ronnie”: that’s me. I don’t like the name, but it’s better than my given one.’

  ‘So you’re happy for me to call you that?’ Euphronia-Ronnie shrugged. ‘Till we all come up with something better. I’m working on it, gaffer. Not ‘ma’am’, I notice.’ She picked at a shred of lettuce.

  ‘Kate when we’re off duty. And only “ma’am” if I’m bollocking people. I’ve had some good gaffers here in Brum. Both genders. I’d like to become one myself.’ Ronnie chuckled quietly. ‘You know, some of the lads—and lasses—reckon you’ve only got the job because you’re sleeping with Top Brass. I don’t think they’re right.’ With a woman like this perhaps you could afford to be honest. You couldn’t afford to be anything less. ‘I’m in a long-term relationship with a superintendent. But I came into the service on the accelerated-promotion scheme, so I don’t think sleeping with Rod has much to do with it.’

  ‘Might even have slowed you down a bit?’ Ronnie looked at her over the top of her baguette. ‘You know, people thinking if you’ve got personal commitments you won’t be able to cut the mustard?’

  Kate shook her head. ‘I honestly don’t know.’ And then her phone went.

  ‘Sergeant Drew here.’ His voice was tinnily formal. ‘I’ve just had a call from the Chinese elders wondering where you are.’

  She was on her feet. ‘It’s never three already?’

  ‘It’s thirteen hundred. Ma’am.’

  ‘Where’s the meeting?’ She scribbled on the napkin Ronnie shoved her way. ‘Let them know I’m on my way. And we’ll talk about why you told me three, not one, when I get back.’

  Ronnie was on her feet too, wrapping both Kate’s and her own baguette in a spare napkin. ‘You’ll never be able to park there. I’ll drop you off.’ They were both puffed by the time they reached the car park, Ronnie especially having no breath to talk. Kate, too, would have to up her fitness levels. Ronnie extricated her car, a handsome number distinctly smarter and newer than Kate’s, with apparent ease. ‘This bloody traffic gets worse every day. Look at it!’

  Kate looked. She wasn’t sure whether it would have been possible to make much more progress in a response vehicle, flashing blue light notwithstanding. ‘You’re sure I wouldn’t be faster on foot?’

  ‘Probably. But you’d arrive hot and bothered, and that’d show disrespect. Big on respect, the Chinese.’

  Kate nodded, dabbing powder. And a smear of natural lipstick. At least her eye makeup hadn’t gone to that mysterious place where it always seems to go. And the bloody hat would cover a multitude of sinfully dishevelled hair.

  ‘The problem with Neil,’ Ronnie said slowly, but quite deliberately, ‘is that he doesn’t like people to know in case they feel sorry for him and try to take over work he should be doing.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘Wandering wife. Leaving him with the kids.’

  ‘How wandering? Permanently?’

  ‘Worse. From time to time. Poor bugger just gets things sorted and back she comes. Creates a few weeks’ mayhem. Spoils the kids rotten. Gets everyone thinking everything’ll be OK, then she ups and offs again. And when she’s off, he’s mum and dad and psychotherapist and everything else to those girls. But he’ll never let on.’

  ‘How does he survive?’

  ‘You’ve just seen.’

  ‘How do you know all this if he won’t talk?’

  ‘I know one of the teachers at their school. Quite well. An absolute flutter, his wife, she says. Completely destabilises the kids when she comes and when she goes. And Neil, come to think of it. Now, do you know anything about this afternoon’s do?’

  ‘I was going to mug up as soon as I got back from lunch. Who am I taking over from?’

  ‘Dave Bush. Sergeant Bush. Looks like an overgrown student. He’s on annual leave—nothing dodgy about his health. Good old-fashioned cop, despite his fancy title, field intelligence officer. He’s really doing his homework—he knows the people who own and run the casinos, the gambling clubs, the restaurants. You name it. Rumour has it he’s even learning Cantonese so he can talk to people better—or at least impress them that he’s trying.’

  ‘Like learning a little Greek when you pop off to Crete.’

  ‘Exactly. Only, knowing Dave, he might make it quite a lot of Cantonese. There you are—over there. That new building with all those small windows. Cherish House.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Seriously. Because that’s what they do. They may need an old folks’ home for their oldies, but they treat them right, cherish them.’

  It was a good job, Kate reflected, that she’d had no more than a bite of her baguette. The community leaders awaiting her politely at Cherish House had provided nibbles more delectable than any she’d ever come across, and she regretted that manners and a burning desire not to make any more gaffes prevented her grabbing fistfuls. Or did she dimly remember that eating a lot was a sign of good manners in some cultures? Why hadn’t she taken the time to brief herself properly? You simply couldn’t cruise through meetings like this with a smile and shiny buttons. The best she could do was continually apologise for Sergeant Bush’s absence. It seemed he was more alert than she: he’d already written to apologise, and had e-mailed his good wishes for the reception this lunchtime. Kate had an idea she and Bush would be able to do business.

  Meanwhile Mr Choi, a sleek fifty-year-old with an English accent as pure as her own, was apparently to be her escort. She hated the clichéd thought that he was impenetrable, but forced herself to admit that he was. While quietly dressed and almost self-effacing, he couldn’t have been taken by the most naive person as a nobody. No, Mr Choi was Someone, just as the chief constable or a prominent industrialist was Someone. She must ask Dave Bush about him.

  Now he was presenting her to a question-mark-shaped woman with ravine-deep wrinkles. At a hundred and two Mrs Peng was the most senior of the cherished seniors. All Kate could do was smile and bow over the claw of a hand. She was hard put to it not to curtsy. She told Mr Choi that her great-aunt was eighty-five, but Mrs Peng, receiving the information with a sharp nod, didn’t seem overly impressed. She was the only resident who made an impression on Kate: the rest passed in a blur of handshakes and platitudes. Goodness, was this how the Queen felt?

  But the Queen knew what was expected of her and, if she forgot, could rely on a quiet prompt. Kate blundered on, waiting for—something? A speech? An adjournment to a meeting room to get on with some unspecified nitty-gritty? Or should she make her excuses and beat it? Perhaps they’d stop circulating food and wine as a signal. At last, feeling unbearably gauche, she drew Mr Choi slightly to one side.

  He responded to her enquiry with what seemed like unfeigned laughter. ‘My dear Inspector, this is what that admirable novelist E.M. Forster would have called a bridge party. The representatives—in this case in the singular, alas—of law and order meeting the natives.’

  Kate had never liked Passage to India, but clearly it would have been a terrible lapse of etiquette to embark on a discussion of the book’s literary merits. />
  ‘To be fair, this is perhaps more of a celebration than that implies. A celebration of our successful co-operation. Cherish House itself. The youth project your colleagues and mine initiated. The continued work for New Year and other festivals.’

  Kate nodded and smiled as if none of these projects was news. Of course, she’d heard of the street procession for the Chinese New Year, but had never yet been able to see it for herself. But she’d no idea how well the police and the Chinese community were working together. To her shame, all the Chinese connections her brain would make were with tongs and triads, table tennis and takeaways.

  So if this was no more than a social event, how long ought she stay? Mr Choi had given her no hint, but he was so suavely polite that she suspect he wouldn’t have turned an immaculate hair if she’d been supposed to do no more than appear, eat a spring roll and flit. To her enormous relief her phone rang.

  Ronnie: ‘Better get yourself back here, gaffer. Can you walk or shall I send a car?’ For all the world as if they had a limo at their disposal!

  ‘Better send the rapid-response vehicle,’ Kate snapped, for Mr Choi’s benefit, not Ronnie’s. But she doubted that he was taken in.

  ‘So what was all that about?’ Kate demanded, as Ronnie brought a mug of tea into her office. One of these days she’d have to tell them how she liked her brew, which wasn’t strong and milky.

  ‘I looked in the diary. It said thirteen hundred to thirteen forty-five. So I thought you might need rescuing. Dave knows the drill you see. The guy before him used to spend whole afternoons with the godfathers.’

  ‘“Godfathers”? You mean I’ve been hobnobbing with…’

  ‘Oh, yes. Dave’ll fill you in when he comes back. I won’t spoil it for you. But there was a phone call from Tim Wilde—he’s our tame geek—and he said he could come in this evening to show you the ropes if that’d help. About eight, he said.’

  ‘Wonderful. I take it it’s his own time?’

  ‘Actually he’s on the night shift, so he shouldn’t be here till ten. But he said most folk couldn’t deal with IT when the sun had gone beyond the yardarm.’

  ‘Nor can I,’ Kate lied. After the last IT course she’d been on, she’d just have to pretend to be an apt pupil: not for anything would she put off a willing worker. ‘How do we contact him?’

  ‘E-mail. I’ll tell him yes, shall I?’

  ‘Please. And is Sergeant Drew anywhere around?’

  She wasn’t looking forward to this. To bollock or to offer a sympathetic ear? He’d almost certainly respect her more. if she tore him off several strips. So would most officers of his age. What would Sue Rowley do? But Sue had both age and experience on her side, and could turn on that quasi-motherly exasperation she used to speak to her teenage kids whenever she wanted to put miscreants in their place. Kate couldn’t do motherly, not without sounding like a cross between Mary Poppins and a football manager.

  It seemed that Neil Drew wasn’t anywhere around. He’d gone out of radio contact. This wouldn’t be school-run time, would it? Someone would have to collect the kids, and if the wife had gone walkabout again presumably it had to be Neil. And he could have gone with her blessing so long as she’d known in advance. Sod the bloody stupid man. She’d kill him!

  Except that—she slapped her forehead—she was back in the world of shifts, wasn’t she? Neil had been here well before seven and could go off at two, quite legitimately. It wasn’t like CID, where you worked flexible days but were expected to come in and leave at whatever times the boss chose. Another little gradient on the already steep learning curve.

  So what the hell had Ronnie Hale been doing hanging back after hours briefing her and making her tea? Being a good colleague, that was what.

  The damned lunchtime drinkies had made her miss the start of the two till ten shift. Hell. Looking like a PC Party-goer was the last thing she wanted. OK, there was no reason why she couldn’t simply walk round and introduce herself informally. Jesus! More faces after the kaleidoscope new ones this morning and at lunchtime. Then there’d be the night shift. The way she was feeling, Tim the Geek would find her a far from apt pupil.

  Time for a prowl, then, and another cup of tea. Ronnie’s brew had been so strong she felt as jumpy as if she’d had three black coffees. DO Graham Harvey had always drunk much healthier herbal brews to preserve his blood pressure. She’d never liked them much, but they were better than twitchiness. Maybe she could find other caffeine-free alternatives.

  The tiny kitchen wasn’t as clean as she’d have liked. A few weeks as a professional cleaner had given her a taste for taps without any slime even at the back and for regularly wiped work-surfaces She might have to have a word with the contract cleaner. While she was at it, she’d check the loos, both women’s and men’s. That meant a chaperon. The only uniformed officer she could see was a slightly built Asian of about her age, chewing his ballpoint over a mound of files. Heart swelling with fellow-feeling, she tapped lightly on the frame of his open door and grinned, gesturing him back into his chair when he leapt with alarmed precision to attention, gabbling name and number.

  ‘It’s OK. You’re not in a POW camp. You must be Zayn Ara? Kate Power.’ She leant across the desk to shake his hand.

  Mistake. He didn’t know whether to stand or stay sitting, and compromised with an awkward bend, which couldn’t have done his back any good.

  I’m actually looking for someone to escort me to the gents’,’ she said, laughing with what was rapidly becoming an embarrassment to match his. ‘If I’m going to run a tight ship I’d like to make sure it’s shipshape.’ Hell, why had she embarked on that particular image? ‘Seriously,’ she continued, ‘as the new officer in charge I want to make sure everything’s as it should be’

  ‘I hear you’ve already sorted the second car,’ he said, getting to his feet properly this time. ‘Yes. It should be here first thing tomorrow. They wanted to give us one with “Courtesy Car” splashed all over it,’ she added. ‘Haven’t Them Upstairs already mooted that idea? Sponsored cars, like sponsored traffic islands.’

  ‘Lovely idea! Let’s think. Sponsored speed cameras. Cells courtesy of Dolphin Showers. Desks by MFI.’

  ‘Inspectors might have one from IKEA,’ he mused. She had a feeling this lad should go far. The loos were no better than average. ‘What about the locker rooms?’

  ‘My mum would say it was like my bedroom. Lots of fluff underneath the lockers. Only it’s my wardrobe, of course.’ He blushed, as if recalling their difference in rank again ‘You sort your bedroom, I’ll sort this You’re not married, then’ They stopped by the kitchen She filled the kettle He grimaced. ‘I’m what you might call on the shelf, aren’t I?’

  ‘Can blokes be on shelves?’

  ‘My mum reckons I threw up my best chances while I was at uni. All the girls that are left are too plain or too dim, she says.’ She’d have liked to ask what he thought, but probably inspectors shouldn’t be gossiping with their constables about their marital status. In any case, their roles reversed, enquiries like that might be construed as racist or sexist. ‘Tea? Coffee?’ He shook his head politely. ‘It’s Ramadan, gaffer.’

  ‘And you’re working full shifts without—heavens, Zayn, I take my hat off to you.’ She remembered another Muslim colleague’s needs. ‘What about prayers? ‘I take Fridays off as annual leave if the shift roster doesn’t give me time off, which it mostly does. And, of course, working nights helps. And it’ll be Eid, soon.’ A phone rang. ‘Mine! Excuse me, gaffer!’

  The only other person around was their clerical support, deep in transcribing some policy-meeting notes, which, she told Kate with a straight face, she’d find she needed the following day. Mrs Kathleen Speed. In this relatively egalitarian set-up, she seemed more a Mrs Speed than a Kathleen. Nothing to do with her age, which was probably not much more than fifty, more the effect of a tight bun and pursed mouth.—In the meantime, there was plenty of stuff in Kate’s in-tray, which had materialised
on her desk while she was out. Someone had stuck an adhesive label over her predecessor’s name—Mrs Speed, perhaps. Cases she knew nothing about; meetings to schedule; most of all a huge file crammed with government papers outlining the latest Home Office initiatives. She flicked through them, attacking the margins with a magic marker, which had arrived as part of the stationery complement at the same time as the in-tray. Mrs Speed was clearly worth cultivating. ‘Here’s the list of e-mail addresses you’ll use most often,’ Tim Wilde, tall, blond and scrawny, said, passing her a sheet. ‘This is such a small unit it’s rare to be able to talk face to face with people you need, so we do it this way.’

  ‘Hang on. As it’s a small unit surely I should be able to talk to everyone directly.’ He laughed. ‘Small but chaotically formed. Take yourself. You’re on shifts—yes? So you want to talk to, say, me? About some IT problem? But I’m on a different shift. You could leave a note and I could leave a note in return, or you could e-mail me, so we’ve both got copies. It’s the system Inspector Twiss set up when he. discovered he was Mr Meetings.’

  ‘Am I about to discover I’m Ms Meetings?’

  ‘I wouldn’t bet your pension you’re not. Anyway, assuming you know all about e-mail?’

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘Good. Well, this is how you organise the shift roster—just a matter of putting the info in and pressing a few buttons.’ Kate pressed experimentally. ‘What about making changes—if someone needs a dental appointment, say, and doesn’t want to sacrifice annual leave?’

  ‘Most people here seem to have a good set of teeth.’ He grinned, showing his own. ‘But it can be done.’

  ‘Who does it? Can people change it themselves?’

  ‘Only sergeants. I believe they’re supposed to consult with you first. Do you want me to change it?’

  ‘So it’s a free-for-all? No, thanks. In fact, until I know everyone, I’d rather they all had to come to me first. Even sergeants. Not because I don’t trust people, Tim, so that I can get to know them and any problems they may have regarding time off and so on.’