Power on Her Own Read online

  ‘Fresh bagels, cream cheese and smoked salmon, rounded off with a couple of glasses of white wine. Perfection.’ Giles sat back smoothing his stomach. ‘But you must have the last bagel, Kate. Paul tells me you were ill before you set out.’

  ‘It’s ever since Robin’s death,’ she said quietly. ‘My partner. In both senses. Police and private. We were on a job. It was all set up, supposedly. We were just going into this warehouse. But we didn’t know about the shooters. Until someone took out the windscreen of one of our cars. The driver lost control and slammed Robin and me into a wall. I was very lucky. Robin pushed me, so all I got was a dislocated knee. But he slipped sideways – trying to save me, I think – and was completely crushed. Except for his head.’

  ‘My dear.’ Maz took her hand.

  ‘And since then, sometimes – and I can’t even predict when – I think of something about him and I’m sick. Thought at first I might be pregnant,’ she said. ‘But I’m not. Anyway, tonight I was so pleased with the way my upstairs is looking, I wanted to show him. But I couldn’t.’

  For a dreadful moment she was afraid Giles would come out with the terrible cliché that maybe Robin could see everything, but he simply shook his head and poured the last of the wine into her glass.

  ‘Don’t think I haven’t had support. The squad debriefing, the people in Welfare. Everyone’s given me so much support. They even organised my transfer when I found I couldn’t work with the guy who set up – or do I mean messed up – the operation without throwing up.’ She managed a grim smile. ‘Bit of a bummer, that. Literally sick of the sight of someone!’

  ‘Have you had much support up here?’ Maz asked.

  ‘My DCI’s very kind.’

  ‘To me, that implies not all the others are!’

  ‘They’re having difficulties with what they see as an undeserved promotion. Hell! Excuse me!’ She dug in her bag for her chirruping phone.

  ‘Kate?’ She could hardly hear his voice, it was so quiet. ‘It’s Colin here. Are you tied up?’

  ‘Nothing I can’t untie. What’s up?’

  ‘If I were you I’d get in here fast. Another missing kid. If anyone asks you saw it on TV. I’ll explain when I can.’ And the call was over.

  ‘Another missing child,’ she said briefly to Maz and Giles, who were looking at her with concern. ‘I’m sorry. God knows what time I shall be back. I’ll be as quiet as I can.’

  Giles was on his feet. ‘I’m taking you in. And you must take a taxi back. No point in courting trouble.’

  Chapter Ten

  There’s a moment during the credits at the start of Cagney and Lacey where the two women surge into the office, only to be turned in mid-stride by the Lieutenant who wants them, presumably, to tackle another assignment. Kate was so struck by the similarity she would have laughed. But it was she who was being sent back and Cope who was doing it.

  ‘What the fuck d’you think you’re doing, swanning in at this time? We’ve been sweating our guts out since eight this evening and you think you can come in now. Just get out of my sight.’

  She stood her ground: ‘I didn’t know until I heard it on the News.’

  ‘Oh, she didn’t know until she heard about it on the News. What about the phone call, Miss Power? When you promised you were on your way? Christ, you’re as much use as a chocolate lavatory.’

  ‘Sir –’

  ‘Once more and you’ll get a formal warning. Now just fuck off so I can get some work done. A missing child. And you don’t get here till the others are searching the streets of Newtown.’

  ‘Who phoned me, Sir?’

  He turned on his heel.

  ‘Sir? Who claims –’ But she saw Colin and shut up.

  He motioned her with a jerk of his head into the corridor. She was sure he mouthed loo!

  Shaking with anger, she remembered what he’d said on the phone. She waited between the inner and outer cloakroom doors. Sure enough, there was a gentle knocking.

  ‘Interview room four in five minutes,’ he mouthed.

  ‘Did Selby phone you? Here, might as well sit down. Did he?’ Colin sat too, leaning urgently forward.

  ‘Of course not. It was supposed to be his job, was it?’ Things were beginning to get unpleasantly clear.

  ‘You’re absolutely sure you had no call?’

  ‘What else would you expect?’

  ‘Shit! Kate, he’s trying to drop you in it all the time. You’re going to have to do something.’

  ‘Is it him or Cope I’ve got to watch?’

  ‘Cope?’

  ‘I’m not exactly his blue-eyed girl, Colin. And don’t forget how he accidentally pulled the plug on my lap-top. And I’m sure he’s grassed me up to Graham.’

  ‘Who has a soft spot for you.’

  ‘Don’t you bloody start!’

  ‘Start what?’

  ‘Oh, this rumour about me and Harvey, of course.’

  ‘Ah. That rumour. Well, there’ll always be rumours when two adults spend time together. The question is, friendship or sex? Gay or hetero?’

  She looked at him, unable to keep the question from her eyes. ‘Being gay can’t be very comfortable in the Force.’

  ‘Nor is it. Not when everyone thinks being gay equals being a paedophile. But I like you, Kate, and I don’t want to work with you just for camouflage, just in case any nasty little rumour monger suggests that. And I want to help you sort out whoever’s trying to shit on you from a great height.’

  She took his hand and squeezed it lightly. ‘Thanks. And thanks for – for trusting me.’

  He smiled.

  ‘And while we’re at it, thanks for phoning. What the hell can I do, Colin?’

  ‘Well, there’s always the Skilled Helper option. You could go and pick up a phone and talk to someone now. A senior woman who’d listen to you.’

  ‘Or?’

  ‘Or you could document every single thing that goes wrong and talk to Harvey about it – when he gets back. In your position I’d do that. Evidence, Kate, that’s what you need.’

  ‘Evidence such as a print-out of all the phone calls going through the switchboard between the hours of – say seven and nine?’

  ‘Evidence such as that. But it’d be my guess that you couldn’t get that yourself. You’d need to ask Graham to authorise it.’

  ‘When does he come back?’

  ‘Next week. But it’d be my guess that Cope will try and nail you for that disciplinary before then. So watch your back.’

  ‘He’ll have to work bloody fast. OK, Colin: advice time. What would you do?’

  ‘Just keep your nose clean – what else? Look, Cope’ll be after me if I don’t go back now. Wait another couple of minutes and then come up too. Get your things and scoot if that seems appropriate. Or occupy yourself with whatever you were supposed to be doing earlier today. I don’t know. Play it by the proverbial ear.’

  She’d rather be working. That was easy. Just in case a job needed doing and there was no one else available. So she waited a count of a hundred, and went slowly back upstairs.

  She’d almost expected it: the file of material she was preparing on the missing cars had gone from her desk. Despite herself, she quivered with anger. All those hours’ work casually purloined. Something else to record in her log for Graham Harvey. Colin came into the room with Cope. With a witness, she might risk it.

  Standing to the sort of attention he’d demanded before, she coughed. ‘Sir!’

  ‘I thought I’d told you to fuck off home.’

  ‘I thought you’d want this first, Sir. It’s what I’ve been working on today.’ Bending, she unlocked her desk, and fished in the drawer she’d ear-marked for personal things – photos, tights, tampons. There was the missing file’s duplicate. Smiling, she passed it across. ‘Sir, I know you’re busy, but I wonder if you’d just check it’s OK. Only I’ve been having trouble with my computer, and I’ve lost some information. I might not be able to run off another copy.’ She d
idn’t catch Colin’s eye. Later on, if he wanted to be a witness he could: she didn’t want to implicate him at this stage, not with Cope’s sharp little eyes missing nothing.

  He flicked open the file. She watched his eyes flickering down the page.

  ‘What’s this stuff down here?’ He jabbed a stubby forefinger.

  ‘That? Oh, that’s just the file number, Sir. How it’s saved on my hard disk.’ And on a floppy disk in my desk, and another at home.

  ‘I thought you said you were having trouble with the computer?’

  ‘I did, Sir. Perhaps it just needs servicing or something.’ Or perhaps I’m assuming you know very little about computers. If she hadn’t been standing rigidly upright, she’d have crossed her fingers.

  ‘Hmph. I thought you’d been on all these courses – don’t come cheap, you know.’

  ‘No, Sir.’

  ‘Right. Now you’re here, get on the blower to the lads: I’ve sent out a radio call but there’s still some not answering.’

  ‘What shall I tell them, Sir?’

  ‘To fuck off home. They’ve found the kid. Looks like it was all a false alarm. Looks like he was playing up. Well, he won’t play up no more.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Because he’s run under the wheels of a bloody juggernaut heading for Spaghetti Junction, that’s why. Chasing a fucking football.’ He turned away. She was sure he was in tears.

  Perhaps she was mistaken. He was facing her again. ‘Tell you what, Power. You can do something useful for a change. You can go and tell the parents.’

  There was no point in arguing. In vain to point out that they’d be expecting the friendly face from the local nick, the kindly man or woman who’d taken down details and been bright enough to bring CID in quickly. They’d get Kate and – yes, Colin was grabbing his jacket and coming too. At least they’d have someone from Family Support with them by now, someone to turn to when she’d delivered the news and had left for home.

  The parents – Janice and Alan Butler – were doing their best with a modern terrace in a tired council estate. They’d put up hanging baskets of winter pansies, and when the security light came on, Kate could see the wallflowers waiting in neat rows to greet the spring. They might have to wait a long time.

  Alan Butler let her in. He’d found some manual work somewhere in this city of a thousand dying trades: there was oil round and under his finger nails. He sat heavily, covering Janice’s red-tipped fingers with his ham of a hand. They broke the news. The woman sergeant who was supporting them found tissues, made the right noises.

  ‘Chasing his ball?’ He repeated at last, picking out from all Colin’s words the one thing he seemed able to take in. ‘A ball?’

  ‘Seems like it, Alan. You know what kids are like. And – Colin hesitated, as if groping for the right words – ‘the only consolation is that it would have been very quick. He wouldn’t have known, wouldn’t have suffered.’

  Kate opened her mouth to ask something, and closed it again. Very gently, she picked up a framed photo of a toothy eight-year-old. ‘That’s him?’

  No one seemed able to say the boy’s name out loud. Danny. Danny Butler.

  ‘I told Lesley, here,’ Janice began, gesturing vaguely at the sergeant. ‘He was going to need a brace, see. In a few years.’

  ‘Lovely hair.’ It was classically golden and curly. Those big blue eyes and he was a ready-made cherub.

  ‘Took after Alan’s Dad, you see. Oh – I haven’t offered you a cup of tea. Don’t know what I’m thinking of.’

  ‘Would you like one?’ Lesley was on her feet.

  ‘Oh, I never drink tea at night. Stops me sleeping.’ And then she realised she might have a much greater reason for not sleeping, and at last she burst into tears.

  Alan stared at her helplessly.

  ‘I think we should call your GP – your family doctor,’ Lesley said. ‘Get something to help her sleep. Help both of you sleep. Why don’t you give me the number?’

  Kate held Janice’s shaking shoulders. Damn Cope for dropping this on her: all she wanted to do was sit and cry with her. Cry for Danny, cry for Darren and cry most of all for Robin. And then, as if a voice called her from a distant planet, she remembered that something had worried Alan.

  ‘Alan: this ball. You seemed surprised he was playing with a ball.’

  ‘His ball’s there.’ He pointed to a stack of plastic boxes – Lego in one, books in another, videos in a third. Top but one basket held cuddly toys, the topmost a ball. ‘Don’t tell me he’s been thieving again!’ He half-rose, as if to yell the question at his son. He subsided. ‘Only there was some trouble, see. They thought it was clever to nick things. These kids of eight and nine, shoplifting. Little cars, sweets. I made him take me with him to each shop and give them the cars back. Took his birthday money to pay for the sweets. Don’t tell me he’s been and nicked a bloody football.’

  The front door bell. Kate responded to the chimes: a sari-wearing Indian woman in her late fifties with the kindest eyes Kate had seen for years. She carried an old-fashioned doctor’s bag.

  In the end, Colin ran her home.

  ‘But it must be miles out of your way. Where is it you live? Blackheath?’

  ‘What’s a couple of miles at two in the morning when it’s pissing down and a kid’s been killed?’

  ‘I wonder what the post mortem’ll show up.’

  ‘Being squashed by very big tyres, I’d have thought.’

  ‘Too convenient. Why should a kid from the same school as young Darren Goss go missing? Same age, same appearance? You know what I’m expecting?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Same anal damage. That’s what I’m expecting.’

  ‘Why?’ He slowed for the lights by the county cricket ground.

  ‘Because – just, because. But I could be wrong. Pray God I’m wrong.’

  ‘Amen. Jesus, what do the bastards get out of it? Shoving their ugly great pricks into innocent kids?’

  ‘And unidentified metal objects? They haven’t found what went up young Darren, have they? Right at the island.’

  ‘No. But whoever put it there was sick, I tell you, Kate, bloody sick.’

  ‘Right. Now, what I want to do tomorrow is check out that football story. Talk to his friends, the school, local shops. See if he really did nick it. Or …’

  ‘Or?’ Colin prompted.

  ‘Or if it came into his possession some other way. I don’t know.’

  ‘I think you do. But I’ll tell you something for free, our Kate. Cope’ll try and block whatever you want to do. A fiver on it.’

  ‘No takers. Tell you what, maybe I could do it without him knowing. Lunch-time or something. Or even do the sensible thing for a change and wait for the PM results.’

  Chapter Eleven

  By nine the following morning, Kate’s common sense seemed to be making a weary come-back. There was no way she could sneak out in her odd spare moments to go and play the great detective. She had work to do here, for a start: someone new to the patch seemed to be making a determined effort to break into all the doctors’ surgeries, pharmacies and even vets’ they could find. What that called for was another morning tapping into databases and liaison with her colleagues in Drugs. But since she was clearly going to spend a good deal of time on the phone, she might as well call Danny’s local nick: find out who’d dealt with the case when the Butlers reported him missing and, more important, who’d attended the fatal accident. The ball business still worried her.

  The constable who’d dealt with the accident itself wouldn’t come back on duty for hours yet, but at least she’d left meticulous notes. Dark; wet road; heavy traffic. A couple of well spoken pedestrians who’d done what little they could but had melted away into the scenery as soon as the paramedics had arrived. No names or addresses. And no ball. She left a message for PC Kaur to phone her. No harm in double checking.

  And then back to the databases, and a couple of promising leads from Leicest
er and Bradford to report to a silent and unappreciative Cope.

  Lunch-time. She looked in Colin’s direction. He was looking as depressed as Cope, not at all as if he’d want to eat out, but certainly as if he ought to. She strolled across.

  ‘A quick half somewhere?’ In spite of herself she grinned.

  ‘What’s up?’

  She threw him his raincoat. ‘Tell you outside.’

  ‘Now. No one’s about.’

  ‘It’s just that I offered you a drink. When I came I hardly dared. I was into whisky in a very big way. And somehow I’ve forgotten I needed it.’

  He looked at her very hard. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I know. Once an alcoholic always an alcoholic. But last night I found myself drinking socially. When you phoned me, I just put down the glass and walked away. All right. One swallow doesn’t make a summer.’

  ‘Depends on the sort of swallow.’

  ‘How about a coffee and baguette?’

  ‘Fine by me. And I’ll show you a suit you should try on in Rackhams.’

  ‘Fine by me. Provided that –’

  ‘Provided what?’

  ‘That you tell me why you looked so miserable back there.’

  ‘Tell you over that baguette.’

  The underpass which had once housed the back entrance to a big department store and now accommodated the Citizens’ Advice Bureau was foul with pigeon droppings: they’d evidently moved there from the Cathedral Close, which was where she remembered them.

  ‘Depressing sort of place,’ she said, forgetting her earlier glee. ‘There are times I wonder why I came back.’

  ‘Oh, but there are the new developments! Come on, pedestrianisation and all that stuff out by the ICC: Birmingham’s really becoming a city!’

  ‘You could have fooled me.’

  ‘You haven’t been to Waterside yet?’

  ‘Not even Symphony Hall.’

  ‘We’ll have to fix that. And you can wear that new suit.’