“Old army saying, Doctor,” Sharpe said in her ear, taking her arm and gaining access to the other side of the busy, downtown intersection. “If it moves, salute it. If it doesn't move, clean it.”
“Is that where you feel the investigation is? A standstill? Or are you saying that you've washed your hands of it?”
“I don't know a blind thing about it… The man on the street in bloody Bloomsbury knows more about the case than I do. Says so in the London Times. Damn all.”
“Isn't that Erin Culbertson's newspaper?”
“She's not to blame.”
“I've met her, you know.”
“Really?”
'Twice now.”
“She's bright.”
“Agreed, and pretty.”
“From Bloomsbury,” he finished.
“Bloomsbury?”
“West Central London. I should hang it all, go to the BM, perhaps.”
“The BM? As in bowel movement?”
He laughed. “British Museum. I should step out of it and leave it to the whole boiling lot of them, and place myself in a fucking museum is what.”
“What's happened?”
“They're after me, pure and simple.”
“The press you mean?”
“No, the department, the Yard. Boulte in particular. I'm certain of it now.”
She joked. “I hadn't noticed any animosity there.”
This made him laugh. “You realize that sometimes paranoia is dead on, but sometimes we do nothing about it for too long a period before heeding its advice, and intuition often knows more than we do, but then it's too late.”
“I'm sorry you're having problems, Richard.”
“Simple matter really. Boulte doesn't want to take responsibility for a botched job, and since I'm nearing retirement, why not put me on the outs? I should just bugger off to Brighton seashore and put my legs up a bit there. I swear, I didn't know that Stuart Copperwaite wore brothel-creepers.”
Jessica tried to slow him, to get him to explain, stopping him amid the bustle of the London streetcorner, asking, “ 'Brothel-creepers'? Copperwaite?”
“Sorry, they're crepe-soled suede shoes. No bubble or squeak to them. How to blindside a fellow inspector, all that, and when I think of how much I've taught that young pup…”
“Whatever did he do?”
“I have it on good authority that he's buttered his eggs with that bumble!”
“Bumble? Buttered eggs?”
“Bureaucrat, Boulte. They're having crumpets and tea together, and have been regularly. His put-downs against Boulte have been a ruse. He's been put on me from the beginning as a watchdog!”
She immediately realized that it had been Copperwaite then and not Erin Culbertson who had informed Boulte of their affair. “Have you talked to Copperwaite about it?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“He denies it, of course, but well, this may be a lot of bumf. but my theory is that Boulte and the public prosecutor-”
“The public prosecutor?”
“Lady you met when Boulte rammed Periwinkle and Hawkins down our collective throats.”
“Oh, yes… I recall.”
“Prosecutor and Boulte want to dispatch me from the Yard altogether, and they're mucking about the garbage to do so…”
“Perhaps, then, you should confront your superiors.”
“That's bloody candyfloss, and you know it.”
“Candyfloss?”
“A flimsy idea. Look, the cat's among the pigeons, and if the powers that be wish to catch you out, then they will manufacture it, if they must. In my case, they needn't manufacture a thing.”
“Thanks to me,” she muttered.
He immediately grasped her hands and shook his head in a vigorous denial of this. “No, not at all. Certainly it's hurt Boulte's ego to learn that you and I, that we… However, there's no law says we can't fraternize in the fashion of two consenting adults. There's no standing rules in the Yard against it, either. We modernized along with the Catholic church recently, you see. So he can't touch me there.”
“But he could put it out for the court of public opinion.”
“Yes, well, he may save that up as his trump card, but I rather doubt he'll take that gamble.”
Jessica looked past him, her head spinning until she finally focused on a chimney pot, a pipe added to the top of chimneys. They were everywhere, all over London, ubiquitous for city dwellers whose homes spewed the remnants of their coal-burning fires, in shops and in homes. But this particular one had a red-legged crow sitting atop it, and at first Jessica thought it an ornamentation, but then it cocked an eye at her, flapped its wings and gracefully, thoughdessly eased skyward.
Sharpe followed her gaze as she watched the bird, now a black dot in the distance. “A chough, we call them,” he informed her. “So, where shall we go for a bite?”
“I thought you had a place selected?”
“I want to be democratic. That way is Fleet Street, where the pubs are filled with newspeople and photomakers. If we stay put, the pub we enter will be full of bankers. And that way”-he pointed in the opposite direction-”will take us to Grub Street. Just the opposite-where starving artists, actors, and writers live in garrets and fill the pubs by day. If we walk out of the City, this way”-again he pointed-”then we can go to where I had planned.”
“I'll risk your judgment.”
Jessica had learned that the City, as Londoners called the financial district, was roughly the equivalent of Wall Street in New York, with some five thousand residents during business hours scrunched into one square mile of territory.
“This is one hell of an unholy dog's breakfast. This thing with Copperwaite being sucked into becoming a stoolie for Boulte and our Miss Prosecutorial Bitch… A true unholy mess,” Sharpe muttered, as much to himself as to Jessica, as they picked their way through the crowd. He was holding her hand now, taking charge and going straight for the place of his choosing. “Doom perhaps for me and the case, unless you stand firm, Dr. Coran. Doom… how ironic. Did'ya know that the painting of the Last Judgment over here is called Doom!” He laughed hollowly at the thought. “Are you sure you want to be seen with me, Jessica?”
“Don't be silly.”
“He who sups with the Devil, must use a long spoon.”
They passed pedestrian walkways, went through lights, crossed into narrow lanes, rushing past fascinating, quaint little shops she would have loved to browse, until they found a lane so small that Jessica could not imagine how cars passed one another until she saw some do so.
Another step around a comer and they found a quiet, even peaceful shop-lined street with outdoor cafes and art galleries.
“Maybe it's Copperwaite that bothers me most. The fact someone you trust can so quickly be at your back with the cutlery.”
“I've had it happen to me. I know the feeling,” she commiserated, still wondering if it were true.
“Cupboard love's what we call it over here, Jessica-sucking up. Sucking one's way to the top. But perhaps the whole thing's a blessing in disguise, heh? A real curate's egg.”
She'd heard this expression before-something both good and bad at once.
