Fifty-five
‘I hope that my wife is getting on all right with your cousin’s wife,’ said Stevie Steele, as he and Ray Wilding stepped off the Heathrow Express at Paddington Station and headed for the taxi rank.
‘I’ve told you, it isn’t possible not to get on with Margot: she doesn’t allow it.’ The sergeant shook his head. ‘I still can’t get over Maggie’s bombshell.’ He laughed. ‘The faces in that room must have been a picture.’
‘They were, and I suspect that my jaw dropped furthest of all when she came out with it.’
‘You had no idea?’
‘Not that she was going to announce it there and then, I hadn’t. I knew that she had it in mind, but I thought she was still thinking it over, and that she was going to wait till the baby was safely delivered to make a decision.’
‘How long will it take you to stop thinking of her as a chief superintendent?’
‘God,’ Steele exclaimed, in disbelief. ‘You’re some machine. Do you see me as a common man version of Prince Philip, walking three paces behind his wife? Maggie stopped being a senior officer as soon as she walked in the front door. I haven’t thought of her that way from the day we started living together . . . and since before that, if you really want to know.’ He flagged down a taxi. ‘Charing Cross police station,’ he told the driver.
‘It’ll take me a while,’ Wilding continued. ‘I’ve known her for a while too, and I’ve never been able to imagine her as anything other than a police officer. It’s one thing talking idly about giving up; I can imagine her doing that, in her condition. But for her actually to go through with it, to me that’s incredible.’
Steele sat silent for a while, as the black cab pulled out into the Saturday-morning traffic. ‘When I think about it, Ray, I have to confess that I find it remarkable too. Not that long ago we were talking about when the time would be right for her to move up to assistant chief, and whether she should move force to achieve it. Then all of a sudden there’s this sea change in her, leading up to her announcement last night.
‘I thought I knew her, better than I’ve ever known anyone in my whole life. I thought she’d never be able to surprise me again, and then she went and proved me wrong. I told her as much last night. She was sorry, you know, guilty that she hadn’t told me what she’d decided in advance, but when she said that she did what she did on the spur of the moment, she wasn’t kidding.’
‘Did anybody try to talk her out of it afterwards?’
‘Brian Mackie did. He pleaded with her to take longer to think about it, and not hand in her resignation straight away. He told her that replacing her permanently would be a big problem for him, one that he’d rather put off for the moment. He even said he’d been thinking about letting Neil McIlhenney gain a year’s seniority, but the DCC told him to forget that, pronto. He said that he wasn’t pulling Neil out of CID.’
‘The DCC,’ Wilding exclaimed. ‘Was he there?’
‘Of course. Mags used to be his exec, remember.’
‘How did he take it?’
‘He was great. He was the only one of us that didn’t bat an eyelid. He told her that she hadn’t made a wrong move in all the time he’d known her, and that if that was what she’d decided, she’d leave with his blessing. They’ve always been close, those two.’
‘You don’t mean . . .’
‘Don’t be stupid; of course I don’t. They’ve seen a lot of action together. It’s the same with her and Mario, and big Neil too. There’s some serious history there, and I’m not just talking about her first marriage. I don’t think I know all of it, but if she doesn’t choose to tell me, that’s fine.’
‘So who is going to take her place?’
‘I reckon that Mary Chambers will carry on, for a while at least; they might bring Alastair Grant up from CID in the Borders, or they might even look outside our force. Time will tell. The only thing that’s certain is that it won’t be you or me.’
‘Maybe it’ll be Griff Montell,’ Wilding muttered.
Steele smiled. ‘Somehow, I don’t think so.’
‘Why do you say that? Is he in bother over that run-in with Special Branch?’
‘Not at all. Forget it, Ray, I didn’t mean anything by that. Griff’s okay; he just needs a crash course in tact and diplomacy, and I think he has one coming.’
The two officers sat back in the spacious cab, enjoying the view as the driver took them on a tourist route that led round Marble Arch and down Park Lane, past Buckingham Palace, then up the Mall towards Trafalgar Square. Their destination was Agar Street, just off the Strand. When they arrived they were both taken by surprise: Charing Cross police station was a fine white building with a pillared entrance.
‘Holy shit!’ Wilding exclaimed, as Steele paid the driver. ‘This isn’t like any nick I’ve ever seen. It looks more like a fucking bank.’
However, inside it was very much a working police office. They stepped through the high double doors into a public reception hall. The inspector walked up to a divider behind which a sergeant and a constable were on duty. ‘Morning, sir,’ the senior officer, a black woman, greeted him. ‘How can I help you?’
‘DI Steele and DS Wilding, from Edinburgh,’ he glanced at the name-tag on her tunic, ‘Sergeant Baptiste. We’re here to interview a prisoner.’
‘Yessir,’ she replied smartly. ‘I was told to expect you. Hold on and I’ll buzz DI Stallings.’ She walked back to her desk, picked up an intercom and spoke into it. ‘She’ll be right down,’ she called out.
Steele thanked her. They glanced around the entrance space as they waited. ‘Probably goes all the way back to Sherlock Holmes,’ Wilding murmured. ‘Maybe even before him.’
‘I don’t recall Sherlock being a serving officer,’ the inspector commented quietly.
As he spoke a door opened: a dark-suited, dark-haired woman appeared and headed in their direction. She looked at the visitors appraisingly, until her eye settled on Steele. ‘Inspector,’ she guessed correctly, offering a handshake. ‘Becky Stallings; good to meet you.’ She nodded to Wilding. ‘You too, Sergeant. Welcome to Charing Cross. Come on, our guest will soon be ready for you.’
There was a stairway behind the door; Wilding took in his surroundings as they climbed. ‘This beats Queen Charlotte Street,’ he said, as they reached the top. ‘Must be a cushy number being posted here.’
‘Come and join us,’ said Stallings, ‘when there’s a big demo in Trafalgar Square, and the place is full of anarchists, or even when there’s a celebration there and we get more pickpockets than we can process.’
‘I’ll do that,’ the sergeant replied, ‘if you come and join us when Rangers play at Easter Road.’
She smiled at his comeback as she opened a door and showed them into her office. ‘We’re going to have to wait for a bit,’ she told them. ‘Barker wants his lawyer present when you see him, and he’s not here yet. Saturday morning, too: he’ll be pissed off.’
‘We’ll be sure to apologise,’ said Wilding, cheerfully. As he spoke, he glanced casually at Stallings’s hands and saw no jewellery. ‘You must be pissed off too, Becky,’ he continued. ‘It’s Saturday for you as well.’
She shot him a severe look. ‘Yes, it’s ruined my whole weekend,’ she said drily.
‘Maybe we could all go and grab some lunch when we’re done here.’
‘Yes, Sergeant,’ she said, ‘and then we could go shopping in the West End. You could buy a present for your wife.’
His expression turned mournful. ‘I don’t have one. I used to, but she left me for some bastard of a car salesman. She said she couldn’t stand my working hours, but he works every bloody Saturday.’
‘Ah, that’s too bad,’ said the Londoner; she seemed to loosen up slightly. ‘It’s not just the lawyer,’ she said. ‘Home Office security division want to sit in too.’
‘Why?’ asked Steele.
‘Because of the civil-service involvement, or so they say. So far, Barker hasn’t named anyone else he might have corrupted, but they want to be around if he does.’
‘I don’t actually give a damn about civil-service corruption,’ the Scot confessed. ‘We’re after a multiple murderer, and so, it seems, is Barker. Has he said anything so far?’
‘No. Hamilton, his lawyer, won’t let him. He’s waiting to see how much of a supporting case we can compile, to back up Dailey’s confession.’
‘How are you doing on that front?’
