The Deputy Commissioner leaned towards Sharpe and whispered something. Sharpe nodded and said, ‘Step outside, will you, Sergeant.’
Kathy got to her feet, feeling angry and helpless, and made for the door. She stood outside in the corridor for twenty minutes, watching the girls pass up and down with trays of glasses. The muffled roar of conversation from the main hall was louder, and she wondered if the members of her committee were in there, Shazia in her Hijab sipping orange juice, Jay with cropped hair knocking back the champagne. Jay-she remembered their broken date for Saturday night, and thought she must contact her, wondering what she could possibly say.
Just then, Commander Sharpe stuck his head out of the door and called her back in.
She took her seat, unable to tell from their expressions what they were thinking.
‘As I understand it,’ Sharpe began, ‘there is absolutely no physical evidence to support anything that you’ve told us, Sergeant.’ He raised an eyebrow, inviting a reply.
‘No, but a forensic examination of Ms Diaz’s house…’ She stopped, seeing him shake his head.
‘DI Gurney has just phoned in. When he arrived at the house he found it ablaze. The fire crews should be there by now, but it seems likely that the building will be completely destroyed…’ He paused while Kathy absorbed this, thinking with a sense of shock how final this was, the destruction of his first house, a sign to her and everyone else that the game was over now.
‘… And that being the case, there appears to be no possibility that any kind of corroboration for your story will ever be forthcoming. Am I right?’
‘It’s possible. But we do know what Verge looks like now.’
Sharpe winced, as if he still found this too much to swallow. ‘Correction-we know what Diaz looks like. We only have her word for it that she is, or was, Charles Verge.’
‘George Todd knows.’
‘Maybe, but will he tell us? Not likely, I think. And so we have decided that it would be damaging and highly irresponsible to make your suspicions known beyond these four walls.’
He saw the protest flare in Kathy’s eyes and said coldly, ‘Do you want to remain in the service, Sergeant?’
She took a deep breath, feeling the colour burning in her cheeks. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘I understand that DCI Brock has told you in no uncertain terms how ill-conceived and dangerous your behaviour has been. By rights you should be the subject of a disciplinary review. However, in light of the somewhat extraordinary circumstances, and the accommodating attitude of the Spanish authorities, we shall say no more. You will tell no one, repeat, no one, of the events of the past seventy-two hours, is that clear?’
‘Yes, sir.’ They just want it all to go away, she thought, just as Luz Diaz had known they would, and for a moment she felt a flicker of sympathy for the stiff men in front of her, imagining them trying to explain to a roomful of incredulous reporters that, yes, Charles Verge was actually alive, but he’d turned into a woman and had disappeared, yet again.
They got to their feet, and as he passed her, the other senior officer, who had so far said nothing to her, murmured, ‘Never mind, Sergeant, it was a great story. I look forward to hearing you present your paper to the conference tomorrow.’
Panic seized Kathy. ‘Oh no. I won’t be doing that.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘Well, in view of what’s happened…’
‘Nothing’s happened. Isn’t that what we just agreed? Of course you must do it. Robert’s out there somewhere. I’ll tell him you need to speak to him, shall I?’
31
If all the humiliations of the past days, this, Kathy thought, would be the worst. She hadn’t taken in a single word of the previous speaker’s address, and now they were breaking for twenty minutes for tea before it was her turn. She felt a kind of paralysis invade her thoughts as she headed for the toilets.
Robert had had a copy of her speech all ready for her in the pocket of his imposing double-breasted suit. In her absence, the committee had worked long and hard at refining it, he said, and when she read it she could believe that was true. Whatever fresh or original ideas might have been contained were now so buried under convoluted clauses and mind-numbing platitudes that they were well and truly-she felt qualified to use the word-castrated. Jay’s radical thoughts, which Kathy had promised herself would get a mention, had been completely erased. Reading it, she wondered who would be the first to fall asleep with boredom during her presentation, the audience or herself. But that was no contest-terror would keep her awake.
As she gripped the tap at the washbasin she remembered some research that she’d read, about people who would rather go into combat than stand up and speak in public. Oh yes, she thought, and yanked the tap so hard that a jet of water shot out of the basin and splashed all over the front of her suit. She was mopping it with wads of paper towel when a uniformed woman came in to tell her it was time to take her place on the podium.
She took her seat, aware that she still hadn’t really made up her mind whether to include the additional pencilled notes she’d scribbled on page four, and again at the end.
She was conscious of her name being announced, of applause, and of herself rising to her feet and floating towards the podium. Address a point a few feet above the head of the last person at the back of the hall, Brock had advised, but when she lifted her gaze she was blinded by the spotlights. She began reading from her script, and was suddenly very grateful for Robert’s competently constructed sentences and anodyne turns of phrase. Her voice made strong and sure by the amplifiers, she began to feel that she might after all make it to the end before her heart gave out.
Then she came to page four and the margin notes, and felt sufficiently confident to abandon Robert’s script. She was aware of her voice changing as she began to ad lib. And she was also aware of a change in the silence of the audience, which had become intense, especially when she repeated some of Jay’s slogans, ‘male army of occupation’, ‘militaristic structures and mind-set’ and ‘degendering the service’. Like a tightrope walker she kept her eyes fixed on Brock’s neutral spot between the lights, certain that she would fall if she once looked down into the sea of pale faces.
She reached the safety of page five, and sensed the audience relax again as her voice took on the mechanical rhythm of reading once more. And soon there was only one page left, and she found herself wading through Robert’s rather overblown summarising paragraphs, and, below them, her second set of handwritten notes.
‘…But although these processes and procedures may offer an important framework to embrace diversity, there is a danger that we end up viewing diversity as no more than a series of stereotypes,’ she improvised. ‘Every active officer knows that each crime and each criminal is unique, and that stereotypes can be dangerously misleading.’ The most fundamental stereotypes of gender, class and race became meaningless, she argued, in the fluid dynamics of the times, in which the criminal personality might flit from type to type, evolving like a virus to confound the overly rigid systems of law enforcement crime strategies.
So there, she thought, and gathered up her papers and sat down. There seemed to be some applause, then someone else was speaking, and Kathy took a deep, deep breath of relief.
Afterwards, Robert came up to her. He was beaming with what looked like amusement.
‘Well done, Kathy. That went down well.’
‘Did it?’
‘Oh yes. And I think you were right to spice it up with a few off-the-cuff thoughts of your own. Senior management likes to sniff a radical thought from time to time. Makes them feel they’re in touch.’
‘Really?’
‘Certainly. The DC thought it was very good. The last bit, against stereotypes, was especially brave.’
‘Was it?’ Actually, Kathy had felt she’d been stating the obvious.
‘Well, I mean, look around you. Every person here represents some stereotype or other. Look at the members of your committee. If there were no stereotypes they’d have no constituencies and they’d all be out of a job!’ He chuckled contentedly. ‘So it gives them a bit of a buzz to hear somebody saying stereotypes are dangerous. Of course,’ he said, bending closer to whisper, ‘they haven’t had your recent experiences, seeing how easily someone
