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  ‘I’ll go get my sleeping bag,’ Colin said.

  And with that she couldn’t argue.

  No Rod in her bed tonight. A good job he’d chickened out, really, considering that Colin was occupying the living room. Perhaps Sue had told him. Not warning him off – no, she couldn’t have guessed – merely passing on news about two of his squad. But Kate would have liked a phone call. Some reassurance that – well, she didn’t know what she wanted. Clearly things had gone pear-shaped when she’d carried on to Lichfield and Mrs Coutts; but Ford had at very least connived with her. If he’d insisted on turning back, she’d have had to go. But Ford had not only continued to drive her, he’d worked with her.

  No. She mustn’t try to blame anyone except herself. She deserved a flea in the ear from her boss. But not silence from her lover.

  Whisky; a warm bath, complete with aromatherapy oils Colin had conjured from somewhere; homoeopathic sleeping pills courtesy of Stephen, who’d joined her and Colin in a balti – she ought to sleep, oughtn’t she? Just as she was resigning herself to a night of insomnia, however, the phone rang. Rod.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’d no idea it was so late. I’ve been busy setting things up for tomorrow. I promise you, you’ll be quite safe, whatever happens. And we’ve no reason to believe they’ll do anything. But you – Kate, you must promise me you’ll pull out if anything worries you. Anything at all.’ His voice gave little away until that last sentence.

  She might as well be honest. ‘I’m scared, Rod. And what really scares me is I don’t know what I’m scared of. It’s one thing looking down a barrel of a gun and working out a strategy. It’s quite another—’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’m sure I shall have a perfectly normal lesson.’ No, that didn’t sound right. ‘Rod – what about Jason, my coach? He’s a nice kid—’

  ‘I’m coming round—’

  Oh, yes! ‘You can’t.’

  ‘Don’t you want me to?’

  ‘Of course I do. But you’ll fall over Colin if you do. Maybe literally.’

  She was surprised when he laughed. ‘Only Colin? Well, maybe I can go to bed a slightly happier man. But if you can’t sleep. If you want me – to hell with everything. Just phone and I’ll come. Promise?’

  She promised.

  Some of those vans would be concealing her colleagues. Some might be concealing other people. But she must do as she’d done before. Simply trust the organisation. Trust Rod. Who would have come round if she’d asked.

  The lesson went surprisingly well. OK, her knees were sore, and the palms of her hands quite painful. But she could ignore that. So her forehands were good, the backhands – oh, yes, there must be other backhands to investigate – pretty efficient. Her serve had improved beyond measure. But as the end of the lesson approached, everything went to bits.

  ‘Kate – are you OK?’ Jason came to the net and peered at her.

  ‘Fine. No. Not fine. I’m scared. And I tell you, I don’t know what I’m scared of.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Let me pay you now. Then just scarper. Don’t wait for me. Don’t try to leave the building with me. Understand?’

  ‘No – I—’

  ‘Just do it anyway. Just look as if you’re in a hurry, pack your things, wave me goodbye. And go.’

  ‘Are you sure? – there’s a good five minutes—’

  ‘Same time next week? OK? Now, go!’

  Shaking his head, he gathered his gear – mobile phone, drinks bottles, huge bag – more slowly than she thought she could endure without screaming at him. At last. Now to her own kit. Just the tracksuit to pull on. Racquet and water into the bag. And walk towards whatever it was that was waiting. In the foyer? In the car park? Or just in her mind?

  One familiar face: the woman on Reception was the one who’d been helpful – was it only a week ago?

  She smiled at Kate. ‘Same time, same court next week?’ she asked, activating the computer. She was a pretty kid. Fine blonde hair, in a straggly bun. Good skin. Good features. A book on child psychology to read when things were slack.

  ‘Please. A coaching session with Jason. Shall I pay now?’ Kate heaved her bag on to the counter. Fumbled for her purse.

  Slowly, slowly fumbled for her purse. Because there was someone behind her. A man in a tracksuit – she could see his reflection in the office door behind the computer. A man in a tracksuit with a drinks bottle. Which he was casually opening as he waited.

  This bottle wouldn’t have juice.

  The bag! ‘Get down,’ Kate yelled. She threw the bag hard at the girl who screamed. And whirled back herself to elbow him hard in the guts as the liquid flew in a silent and sinister parabola.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  ‘Amateurish from start to finish,’ Rod was saying coolly.

  No one else in the tennis centre was cool. There was a mass of frantic activity from police and paramedics. Even the Fire Service was involved, mopping up the acid. The receptionist was having hysterics. Good old-fashioned hysterics. Kate herself had never indulged in them. But she would have liked to now. Jason, the man whom she’d trusted enough to want to protect, had tried to throw acid in her face. Indisputable. OK, he’d missed. And by some miracle had missed the receptionist – what was the girl called? Sylvie? – had missed Sylvie too. But he’d tried. Tried to burn her face, her eyes, with acid. He was in tears now. He wasn’t confessing, so much as blabbing. He was pouring everything out. Non-stop. To a ring of interested listeners. Blackmail, coercion – the words flew from him.

  Did she want to howl like Sylvie because Rod had let her down? Not just as a man but as a colleague, whose terrible error of judgement had let Jason approach Kate again. Except, for God’s sake, he’d seen Jason teaching her kindly and patiently for nearly an hour. No. She couldn’t blame Rod for that. Nor, come to think of it, for putting professionalism before concern for her as a woman. No, as a policeman he had to detain the accused, supervise the whole operation, in fact.

  But he hadn’t spared her a single word.

  The word he threw her back at Kings Heath nick was, ‘No.’

  ‘He’s mine, Gaffer. I’ve earned him. And he knows it.’

  ‘You should be having medical attention,’ Rod said. ‘Shock. Bruises.’

  ‘Mark and I have earned him. We deserve him. We wasted all that time talking to that poor bastard Parsons. It’s only right we get a chance at a real scrote.’ Except it wasn’t a scrote, it was Jason.

  ‘But you know Jason White. You’re involved.’

  ‘I shall know him even better when I’ve had a nice long talk to him. Me and Mark.’

  He dropped his voice. ‘Even if I give you a direct order, in this mood you’re quite capable of disobeying, aren’t you?’

  ‘It’s not a mood, Gaffer. It’s a simple case of me and Mark being the best ones to do it.’

  ‘I don’t need to remind you about procedures.’

  ‘No. You don’t. Nor to remind me that he’s only the very bottom of Coutts’ heap.’

  Kate had given Jason a cup of drinking chocolate. She knew it was much less good than the cup he’d organised for her back at the tennis centre the morning she’d found Rosemary’s body. She was still in her tracksuit, but acid had splashed back and burnt his: he was in a paper overall. Jason’s solicitor – a mousy young woman whose severe black suit and even more severe bun made her look about thirteen – looked askance at Mark, a perambulating carrot in bright tan trousers and green shirt. Mark inserted the tape and did the introductory spiel.

  ‘Jason,’ Kate said quite kindly, when he’d finished and sat down, ‘what on earth has happened? I thought we were well on the way to being friends. I like you. You’re a brilliant coach. What’s gone wrong?’

  The solicitor shot out a warning hand.

  Jason ignored it. He was under control now, but very near to tears.

  As Kate suddenly found she was. She swallowed and sat on her bruised hands.

  ‘I’ll tell you everything. Everything I know,’ Jason sa
id, pushing his hands through his hair.

  ‘That’s a very good idea,’ Kate said, settling into the grey anonymity of the room and trying to be as neutral as the furniture.

  ‘Mrs Coutts and my mum are old friends. Go back forever. Though they don’t get on so well these days. Mum doesn’t make the fuss of herself that Mrs Coutts does – face lifts and implants and what not.’

  Whoever had done them had done a good job, hadn’t they?

  ‘Mrs Coutts says Mum’s let herself go … I know Nigel. Not all that well. We went to the same school, but he was way above me. Five or six years. And he was clever. I just scraped along. I was good at tennis, that was all.’ He paused to sip the chocolate, more, Kate thought, to have something to hold in his hand than because he wanted to drink it. ‘The trouble is, when you’re a kid, you think you know it all. And I – well, to be honest I had a dabble with some of these performance enhancing drugs. Only they weren’t.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I bought a – a substance – from a friend. It was supposed to build muscle and endurance. In fact, it gave me a bad trip. A dreadful trip.’ He shuddered. ‘Anyway, whatever I’d taken wasn’t the sort of thing the Lawn Tennis Association would have approved of. And I’ve always sort of had it hanging over me. Know what I mean?’

  ‘Like the Sword of Damocles?’ Mark suggested.

  Jason shook his head. ‘If you say so. Anyway, somehow Nigel found out. And so did his mother. Oh, about two years ago. It was ancient history then. But not to her. Or to me when she’d finished.’

  ‘Two years ago? Has all this been brewing that long?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Not exactly. She rang me just before a big tournament and told me to lose it. And threatened to go to the LTA if I didn’t agree.’

  ‘Losing a tournament? Are you saying Mrs Coutts was into match-fixing?’ Mark put in.

  ‘I don’t see her as part of a gambling syndicate,’ Kate said.

  ‘No. No, I don’t think it was like that. I think – she just likes bossing people around. Manipulating them. Just because – because that’s what she likes doing.’

  ‘And did you lose this match?’

  ‘I told her I didn’t have a prayer anyway. In the first round I was up against a guy with a huge serve. OK, she said. So I could save the favour for another day.’

  ‘Favour?’ Mark asked.

  ‘Her word for blackmail,’ Kate suggested.

  Jason nodded. She told the tape-recorder he’d nodded.

  ‘How did you get on in the tournament, as a matter of interest?’ she asked.

  ‘Went out in the first round. That big serve. But she said she’d tell everyone I’d blown it deliberately if I didn’t agree to help her again. I told her to get lost. Said I’d go to the police.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And she laughed. She phoned me last week to tell me what she wanted me to do … to do to you. I said I wouldn’t. Honestly, Kate. I tried and tried. I even said I’d go to the police. And then she said nasty things happened to people who went to the police with silly stories.’

  Kate flicked a look at Mark, who nodded. The nod said, ‘Rosemary Parsons.’

  ‘Did she give you any idea of what might happen?’

  ‘Not until after Rosemary died. And then I knew all right. Kate, there was no one on duty that night who should have been there. She must have tipped them all off to do things. Like me playing in Handsworth. You’ve got to talk to everyone else. She’s got so much power that woman. Sorry.’ He managed a feeble grin.

  ‘Be my guest,’ she said, grinning back.

  ‘Any idea how she got it?’ Mark asked.

  ‘She’s – just … When Nigel was at school, he was never – you know, into rebellion. Mum used to tell me what a good boy he was, how obedient. Not like me. I reckon he was afraid of her. And maybe other people are too.’

  ‘So when Rosemary died you got a fair idea of what happens to people who get in her way?’

  ‘Not just a fair idea. Chapter and verse. How this woman was being a right pain and how she’d been making allegations to the police and look what had happened.’

  ‘Was she specific in what she said?’

  He shook his head. ‘She just said, look what had happened. That’s how she does it, see. She tells people what to do, and they do it.’

  ‘The entire Tennis Centre staff?’

  ‘No. Just the one drawing up staffing schedules. One or two others. That’s all she’d need. She’ll have found out their weak spots. Organised her friends or – or other people – to play that night, so you wouldn’t get witnesses.’

  Kate straightened. ‘I’d like to take a minute’s break here,’ she said. She signed off the tape-recorder and smiled at Jason. ‘Thanks. You’re doing very well.’ Outside the interview-room door, she turned to Mark. ‘Whoever’s talking to Crowther needs this. Can you tell Rod? Get him to pass it on?’

  ‘Me tell Rod?’

  ‘That’s what I said, Constable,’ she said. And then shook her head. ‘Sorry, mate. Shouldn’t have snapped. But I’d still prefer you to tell him.’ And she retired to a lavatory to think.

  ‘So you were scared by Mrs Coutts’ threats?’ Kate prompted Jason, as they resumed their interview.

  ‘Yes. Funny,’ he said, picking at a spot near his ear, ‘how you get to call all your mates’ mums and dads by their first name. Nice and casual. Like it is with my coaching these days. I mean, you’re Kate. And Rosemary was always Rosemary, never “Mrs Parsons”. But Mrs Coutts was always Mrs Coutts. Always Mrs Crowther, rather.’

  ‘Not a motherly sort of woman?’ Mark suggested.

  ‘Cruella de Vile, more like. And if she finds out I mucked up this morning—’

  ‘“Mucked up”?’

  He squirmed. ‘I was supposed to make sure you got it full in the face. Go round and stand behind the desk and let you have it. In the face. But I couldn’t. Not after yesterday.’

  There was no need for the recorder to tape all his sobs. Kate paused it. The solicitor looked anguished, but didn’t seem able to do the obvious thing: put her arms round Jason and hug him. Kate would have. Would have even now. If ever anyone needed forgiveness, Jason did.

  When he’d collected himself, she restarted the tape. ‘After yesterday?’

  He looked up, tear-stained, anguished. ‘Your fire,’ he whispered. ‘Your fire.’

  She could feel the colour draining from her face. ‘My fire?’

  ‘I had to, Kate. I had to. But – to be honest, I was wetting myself. Like I was this morning. And I couldn’t do it. Not properly. God, what a waste of space! Can’t play tournament tennis, can’t say no to burning someone’s house, can’t say no to burning someone’s face. And Kate – I really like you, you know.’ He produced an angry, watery smile.

  She tried to smile back. How convincing her effort was, she didn’t know. What she did know was that Rod would go into orbit if she continued with the interview now. And, more to the point, she didn’t know if she could stay in the room with Jason and pretend what he’d said didn’t matter to her.

  She told the tape-recorder she was taking a break.

  If she wanted a bolt-hole, she couldn’t find one. The best she could manage was the canteen, empty but for a huge TV screen purveying some sporting fixture the far side of the world. Mark looked for a way of switching it off, even turning it down, but shrugged and settled for getting her coffee.

  ‘Well?’ he said, unwrapping a Kitkat and giving her half.

  ‘Well, what a God Almighty mess,’ she said. ‘Poor kid.’

  ‘Poor kid my arse. Your house and your face might never have been the same again.’

  ‘Not to mention that pretty kid Sylvie’s face,’ she added. ‘But how do you resist a monster? That Blakemore guy – assuming he did start those warehouse fires – couldn’t resist her, and he was a grown man. I wonder what she had over him?’

  ‘Jason’s not a baby. He’s a grown man too.’

  T
wenty-four? Twenty-six? That’s all. I wonder who did over Stephen Abbott’s flat? I think you should stick with Jason, and I’ll get Rod to allocate someone else to partner you.

  ‘You reckon Jason’s not above a bit of breaking or entering?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’d guess someone else did that: Jason would be coaching on a Saturday morning. Nothing to say he couldn’t cancel a session, of course. If forced. God,’ she slammed her hands hard on the table, hurting them and slopping the coffee. ‘To take over a decent man’s life like that. Not to mention her own son’s.’

  ‘And I’ll bet she can afford the trickiest lawyers in town,’ Mark agreed. ‘OK, Kate, are you going to talk to Rod Neville or am I?’

  She grimaced. ‘Better be both of us,’ she said.

  Rod was on his own in his gold-fish bowl. He didn’t seem to be in smiling mode, so Kate nodded briefly back and outlined their progress.

  ‘But I don’t think I should continue now, sir. I’m beginning to lose my grip. Mark now – if you could find someone else to partner him—’

  He looked at his watch.

  ‘A break won’t come amiss now anyway. Don’t want to be seen to bully White, do we? And I was minded to call the team together. There are other developments we should be sharing.’

  Mark flushed: ‘I think Kate should be taking a sickie, sir.’

  ‘What you and I think, and what Kate thinks are entirely different matters.’ He produced a sudden smile. ‘But I don’t think I could force her to miss this meeting.’

  The rest of her colleagues seemed more subdued than she’d have expected on a successful day like this. More apprehensive. And there was a distinct avoidance of eye contact. Not just between them and her, but amongst all of them.

  There was no sign of Nigel Crowther.

  At long last, the door was flung open and their senior colleagues strode in, for all the world like schoolteachers out to impress dilatory kids. Rod headed straight for the far end of the room and the table kept by common consent for him and Ford. Ford, on the other hand stopped in his tracks, scanning the room.