‘Some people are just—’ she shrugged. ‘Forgettable, Bill.’
‘Ha, ha,’ he said sarcastically as he let the door swing closed behind him.
‘She was forgettable, though,’ Carol said. ‘I think she did it deliberately. Melting into the background so people would forget she was there and say something they didn’t intend to.’
Chris nodded. ‘She was a good interviewer. Different to Paula, but maybe just as good. But what was her surname?’
‘Hallam. Kay Hallam.’
‘That’s it, now I remember. It’s funny, isn’t it? You’d think after an experience like that, we’d all have stayed in touch. Kept an eye on each other’s careers. But soon as the first court case was over, they all scattered to the four winds. It was like they didn’t want any contact to make it easier to erase the whole thing from the memory banks. Then when we all met up for the appeal and the second trial, it was like a bunch of embarrassed strangers.’
Carol nodded. ‘Like when you run into people at a wedding or a funeral that you were once close to, but it’s been so long it’s too awkward. You can’t recover the way you were but you both know it used to be different and there’s something painful and sad about it.’
It was hard to say who was more surprised by Carol’s comments. They had worked together for long enough for Chris to know just how rare it was to hear Carol Jordan speak so clearly from the heart. Both women guarded their privacy, deliberately avoiding intimacy. Close as this team was, they didn’t socialise together. Wherever they opened their hearts, it wasn’t in the office.
Carol cleared her throat. ‘Kay sent me Christmas cards for three or four years, but I think that had more to do with wanting to be sure I would give her a good reference than a desire to stay in touch. I’ve no idea where she is now, or even if she’s still a copper.’
Chris tapped the names into her smartphone. ‘I’ll get on to it. Maybe the Federation can help. At least they should be able to tell me if they’re still serving officers.’
‘Will they give out information like that?’ Carol said.
Chris shrugged. ‘They’re supposed to be our union. You’d think they’d want to protect us.’ She gave a wicked grin. ‘Besides, I have my little ways. They might not be as pretty as Paula’s, but they get results.’
Carol threw up her hands in surrender as Chris swung round and started hammering the keys of her computer with the force of someone who had learned her skills on a typewriter. ‘I don’t want to know any more,’ she said. ‘Talk to me and Tony when you’re done. And Chris …?’
Chris looked up from the screen. ‘What?’
‘Don’t get so wrapped up in this that you forget to watch your own back. If Vance has got a list, you’re on it too.’ Carol stood up and made for the door.
‘So, with all due respect, guv, where exactly are you going all on your lonesome?’ Chris called after her.
Carol half-turned, a wry smile crinkling the skin round her eyes. ‘I’m going to Northern Divisional HQ. I think I’ll be safe there.’
‘I wouldn’t bank on it,’ Chris muttered darkly as the door closed behind Carol.
It was unusual for Vanessa Hill to be at a loose end at lunchtime. Just because food was a necessity, there was no reason not to use eating time purposefully. So working lunches were a perennial feature of her calendar. Either out with clients or in the office with key personnel, planning campaign strategies and assessing potential markets. She’d been running her own HR consultancy for thirty years now and she hadn’t become one of the leading headhunters in the country by accident.
But today she was stranded. The insurance broker she was supposed to meet for lunch had cancelled at the last minute – some nonsense about his daughter breaking her arm in an accident at school – leaving her in the centre of Manchester with nothing to occupy her until her two o’clock appointment.
She couldn’t be bothered sitting in the pre-booked restaurant alone, so she stopped outside a sandwich bar and picked up a coffee and a filled roll. She remembered passing a car-wash with valet on her way to the restaurant. It was about time the car had a good going over. There was a time when she did that sort of thing herself on the grounds that nobody else would do it as thoroughly, but these days she preferred to pay. Not that it represented any compromise on standards. If they didn’t do it well enough, she simply insisted they do it again.
Vanessa drove into the valeting bay, issued her instructions and settled down in the waiting room, where a TV high on the wall provided a rolling news channel for its customers. Heaven forbid that anyone should be thrown on their own resources, Vanessa thought. She unwrapped her sandwich, aware of being studied by the fifty-something bloke in the off-the-peg suit that hadn’t been pressed this week. She’d already dismissed him as pointless in a single sweep of her eyes when she walked in. She was practised at sizing people up more swiftly than clients often believed possible. It was a knack she’d always had. And as with all of nature’s gifts, Vanessa had learned to maximise it.
She knew she wasn’t the most beautiful of women. Her nose was too sharp, her face too angular. But she’d always dressed and groomed to make the most of what she had, and it was gratifying that men still gave her the once-over. Not that she was remotely interested in any of them. It had been years since she’d expended any time or energy on anything that went beyond flattery or flirting. Her own company was more than adequate for her.
As she ate, Vanessa kept half an eye on the screen. Lately, the news had felt like a daily retread. Middle East unrest, African unrest, government squabbling and the latest natural disaster. One of her employees had been making everyone laugh round the water cooler the other morning, doing an impression of an overly religious neighbour delivering doom, gloom and the four horsemen of the apocalypse over the dustbins. You could see her point, though.
Now the newsreader seemed to perk up. ‘News just in,’ she said, her eyebrows dancing like drawbridges on fast forward. ‘Convicted murderer Jacko Vance has escaped from Oakworth Prison near Worcester. Vance, who was convicted of the murder of a teenage girl but is believed to have killed many more, disguised himself as a prisoner who was booked on a day’s work experience outside the prison.’
Vanessa harrumphed. What did they expect? Treat prisoners like it’s a hostel and they’ll take advantage. ‘Prison officials have declined to comment at this stage, but it’s understood that former TV presenter and Olympic athlete Vance hijacked a taxi that had been hired to take the other prisoner to his workplace. Over now to local MP, Cathy Cottison.’
A plain woman in an unflattering neckline appeared on St Stephen’s Green outside Westminster. ‘There are
