‘There’s nothing there. How dare they?’
‘The press dare, believe me. Then they’ll root – really root – for anything. Anything. If you’ve something in your background, they’ll find it. Your family, your parents-’
I must have clicked my tongue.
‘Bob – I’m telling you as a friend. This could get very, very much worse.’
This time he hung up.
I was summoned to an emergency meeting of the Police Authority. Winston Hart was at his pontificating worst. He kept lifting his chin to ease his neck from the too-tight collar of his shirt and touching his moustache as if checking it was still there.
‘We’ve had a letter from the Home Office stating that the Home Secretary no longer has faith in you. We’ve had another letter from the Police Federation stating that they are unhappy with your conduct. I don’t, to be honest, understand why you haven’t already resigned.’
I forced a smile. ‘I feel I can best meet my responsibilities by staying in post until I can find out what has happened.’
‘Had you not, by your public declaration, already prejudged the investigation, that might have been possible. However, your position is now clearly untenable.’
Hart had a mobile phone on the desk in front of him. It rang. He picked it up without apology and looked at the number on the screen. He put the phone to his ear then wordlessly passed it across to me.
It was Simpson. There was no preamble.
‘They’re authorized to give you a generous settlement. It won’t be leaked to the press. You can walk away with it. But you have to resign before you leave that room. If not, the Home Secretary’s letter will be leaked and worse will follow. Take your life back, Bob, I beg you.’
I handed the phone back to Hart. He started to smirk but stopped when he saw my face. He seemed to rear back in his chair as if he thought I was about to launch myself over the table at him.
I was tempted. I did want to hit him but I never would. Well, not never, just not now.
I was seething.
I didn’t want to go, was stunned by the speed with which the media had turned against me. My every instinct was to stay and fight. But what concerned me was the thought of reporters dragging my immediate family into it. What family doesn’t have its skeletons hidden in the closet? My mother was dead, but I couldn’t put Molly, the children and my father through that.
I stared at Hart but I think he could see in my eyes that he had the upper hand. I dropped my gaze.
‘I’ll resign.’
The press discovered I was staying at The Ship. They besieged me. I was wondering where to go next when family friends phoned to invite me to house-sit their farmhouse near Lewes whilst they went off to Spain for a month. I was touched by their thoughtfulness and accepted with alacrity.
I spirited myself out of The Ship and disappeared from view. Except that after two days I resumed my habit of early morning swims at the sports club I used in Falmer, on the Brighton University campus. Nobody else I knew was a member and I always kept to myself, so I had no worry about being tracked down there.
However, I reckoned without Sarah Gilchrist. At the start of the next week she doorstepped me in the club car park.
I was halfway from the club entrance to my car when I heard her call out. She was standing beside her dark blue Volkswagen Polo. She was in jeans and a fleece. Her hair was down. I have to say, she looked beautiful. However, my immediate response was anger.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘There’s no press,’ she said, twisting her mouth into a grimace, giving a little shrug. She’d guessed what I was thinking: that this was some kind of photo set-up.
I looked round at the other parked cars. She started to walk towards me. Usually she had a rangy, easy lope. Today she moved stiffly, awkwardly.
‘I hope they paid you well. Have you any idea what you’ve done to my wife?’
She stopped ten yards or so away from me.
‘What I’ve done? She’s not my bloody wife.’
I shook my head, exasperated with her, with me, with the whole mess.
‘I shouldn’t be talking to you. The investigation.’
I was aware of movement to my left. I glanced over at a woman walking up from the club, her wet blonde hair plastered to her skull, her gym bag over her shoulder.
‘It wasn’t me.’
‘They quoted you,’ I said.
‘Hardly. You know I don’t talk like that.’
‘I don’t know you at all.’
Gilchrist walked over to me and looked down.
‘Sir, I’m truly sorry it got in the newspapers – but it wasn’t me.’
I took a deep breath. I realized my fists were clenched. I flexed my hands.
‘You can call me by my name,’ I said quietly. ‘In the circumstances.’
She nodded.
‘How did you know I’d be here?’
She shrugged.
‘I didn’t really. I just took a chance.’
‘You must have told somebody,’ I said.
I was watching the woman unlock her car and sling her bag in the back seat. She was a swimmer too. We often shared a lane but never acknowledged each other, in the water or out of it.
Gilchrist cleared her throat, perhaps to draw my attention back.
‘Somebody I thought I could trust,’ she said.
I could smell her musky perfume.
‘On the force?’
She sighed.
‘Doesn’t matter. He betrayed me.’
She had kind eyes. I’d always felt they would be a problem when she had to deal with hard cases. They’d see her eyes and think they saw weakness. I didn’t know her well enough to know if she was weak. Hell, I’d only spent one drunken night with her.
‘They made up your quote?’
She sighed again.
‘That first time. Then they phoned me, said they’d got the story, said they’d do a real number on us unless I spoke to them. I panicked.’
The woman was in her car, moving out of her space.
I put my arms around Gilchrist.
‘It’s OK.’
She was stiff inside my embrace. I released her.
‘It’s not OK,’ she said, pulling back. ‘It’s fucking awful. You’re screwed and, frankly, I’m screwed.’ She looked fiercely at me. ‘Again.’
My turn to step back.
‘Are they giving you a hard time in the office?’
Police officers are essentially tribal.
‘I’m suspended, remember? The shootings…’
‘What the hell happened in there, Sarah?’
She dropped her eyes.
‘Sarah, I really need to find out.’
‘Why bother?’ Her voice was harsh.
‘So many reasons.’ I gripped her arms. I felt her muscles bunch. ‘Please.’
She shrugged me off.
