‘Did you read the report?’
‘Oh no, it was too long, and he was in a hurry.’
This sounded wrong. Kathy wondered what kind of inquiry they’d carried out. She herself had only seen the summary of conclusions, not the background documents.
‘But he explained what was in the report?’
‘Not really. He said he just needed to get everyone who’d worked there in the past twelve months to sign off on it, and frankly I wasn’t bothered, now I don’t work there any more.’
‘Did he talk about last May, about some work the lab was doing then, on a case for us?’
‘May? I don’t think so. Which case was that?’
‘The Verge case.’
‘Oh, I remember that one! We were all fascinated. Well, everyone was. I remember telling Mum when I was typing up the forensic schedules, you know, about the bloodstains and that.’ Debbie suddenly looked anxious again. ‘That is all right, isn’t it? I mean, we could talk about our work…’
‘No, it’s fine. And did the man who saw you last week mention anything about your work on that case?’
‘No, I’m sure he didn’t.’
‘He didn’t say that was what the report was about?’
‘Oh no. I mean, I wouldn’t normally have signed something without reading it, but he was in a hurry, and since I knew him and everything
… Why? Is something wrong?’
‘There’s been a suggestion that someone made a mistake in the original forensic report for the Verge case, Debbie,’ Kathy said carefully. ‘I just thought he might have mentioned that to you, maybe asked you if you knew anything about it.’
‘A mistake? Oh dear, was it serious?’
‘It caused a bit of delay.’
‘Well, it certainly wasn’t me. I was always very careful, especially with the big cases. I was just a keyboard operator, you see, mainly transcribing reports. All those lists! It would have been easy to skip an item. Some of the girls would copy them by eye, but I had my own method to make sure I didn’t make a mistake. If I couldn’t transcribe electronically, I’d make a photocopy and strike out each item in turn after I’d entered it, to make sure I didn’t miss any. It was slower, but it avoided errors.’
‘And he didn’t ask you about the Verge case, about this mistake?’
‘No, he never mentioned it.’ Then she added plaintively, ‘I am very careful, you know. I’ve learned the hard way.’
‘Okay.’ Kathy got to her feet.
‘That’s all?’
‘I think so. You say you knew this person who came to see you? Someone you’d worked with at the lab?’
‘Yes. He was one of your people, one of the LOs.’
‘Oh, really?’ Kathy felt a surge of shock. ‘Not an Indian guy?’
‘No. It was Paul. Paul Oakley.’
On the way home Kathy stopped for a hamburger. She felt dirty, as if she’d been caught peeping through keyholes. Oakley had obviously engineered some kind of cover-up of his mistake back in May, so that his consulting opportunities wouldn’t now be blocked. He had stabbed Debbie Langley in the back, and she didn’t even know it. He must also have inveigled people still working in the lab to accept the ‘confession’ he’d tricked out of her. Maybe he’d persuaded Leon to help. But it was all internal to the lab, none of Kathy’s business. If Leon wanted to get involved, too bad. It was all too personal, too messy.
All the same, she found it hard to leave it alone. That night, lying awake, she decided that there was one last thing she could do, just to make sure it really was none of her business.
The Crime Strategy Working Party was scheduled to convene at ten the next morning. At nine Kathy was standing in the stark reception area of the Verge Practice offices. She asked for the personal secretary of Sandy Clarke, and gave her name and identification to the receptionist, who entered the details into the computer on her glass table.
Kathy remembered Clarke’s secretary from her visit with Brock two weeks earlier. She introduced herself and followed her to the lift. Close to, her face seemed frozen, and Kathy recalled an article on botox injections she’d read in the paper, but the woman’s eyes showed a glazed immobility, and Kathy decided she might be on sedatives.
‘Had you worked with Mr Clarke for long?’ she asked, and the woman, not shifting her gaze from the flicker of steel passing beyond the glass walls of the lift, gave a little sigh.
‘Fifteen years.’
In her office she offered Kathy the desk diary she had kept for Clarke, and Kathy sat down and began to work through it, taking notes from time to time. As she worked she was aware of the other woman sitting motionless at her desk, watching. The phone didn’t ring.
Eventually Kathy said, ‘There are a number of entries where the names of the people aren’t recorded, just their organisation. I suppose the receptionist downstairs will have a record of everyone who came?’
‘Yes.’ The woman blinked, and Kathy imagined a frozen brain behind the frozen face. Then she added, ‘You can access that on my computer.’ She swivelled in her seat and slowly brought the machine to life.
The firm had an awful lot of visitors, Kathy realised, seeing the names scrolling down the screen, and thinking of her ten o’clock meeting. She began giving the secretary dates and times, checking the column with the names of organisations. Eventually the woman seemed to realise the pattern.
‘These are all visits by the police?’
‘Yes. There’s a mix-up in our records. I just have to check for our reports.’
‘Oh.’ She gave a sigh of deep disapproval and continued to the next entry.
At last, the minutes ticking away, they came to the twenty-third of May, a Wednesday, nine days after Miki Norinaga’s body had been discovered. The name Sergeant Paul Oakley jumped out of the screen at Kathy with an almost physical impact. ‘You remember this one?’ she asked calmly.
The woman thought, then she checked the appointments in the desk diary. ‘I don’t remember him particularly, but I remember that morning, because the next appointment was with the Mayor, and Sandy kept him waiting.’
‘According to the reception record, Sergeant Oakley arrived on time for his appointment, and left forty-three minutes later.’
‘That’s right, he overran his time. You see there… the Mayor arrived ten minutes before your sergeant left, and Sandy kept him waiting…’
Kathy thought she was going to say more, but when she looked at her face she saw tears welling out of her eyes and spilling down her cheeks. The woman just stared back at Kathy, saying nothing.
‘I’m sorry,’ Kathy said softly. ‘But just let me be clear. Sergeant Oakley stayed talking to Mr Clarke in his office all that time, did he? He didn’t go up to check the apartment again, or anything like that?’
After a long moment’s silence Kathy didn’t think she was going to get a reply. Then the stiff lips whispered, ‘That’s right.’
She was late for her meeting, but nobody seemed to mind. The mood had changed, and everyone was cooperative and enthusiastic. They had all prepared their presentations; some on laptops, others on alarmingly thick sheafs of paper. As the first presentation got under way, Kathy’s heart sank. It seemed pretentious to her, and ridiculously remote from the reality of policing. Soon her attention began to drift, and she turned her mind to the problem of what she was going to do about Paul Oakley.
When the afternoon session finally came to an end, everyone except Kathy seemed highly satisfied by their efforts. Robert beamed smugly as he gathered up his papers, and even the reluctant Rex was full of good humour. Kathy hurried to the door, anxious to get back to the office, but she was intercepted again by Jay.
‘Hi. That went really well, didn’t it?’
‘I suppose.’
Seeing Kathy turn to go, Jay added, ‘There’s something I wanted to ask you.’
‘Can it wait, Jay? I need to get back to the office before people leave.’
