belonged. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’
‘Since British Telecom don’t seem to be able to connect us, I thought I’d better come round personally,’ Carol replied, pulling up a chair. ‘I left a message on your machine at home this morning. I assumed you’d already left for work, but you weren’t here either. I tried again around four, but there was no reply from your extension. At least, I assume that’s why the switchboard operator said, “I’m putting you through now,” and I ended up in a black hole. And, of course, now the switchboard have all gone home and I never thought to ask for your direct line.’
‘And you a detective,’ Tony teased.
‘That’s my excuse, anyway. Actually, I couldn’t face another minute in Scargill Street.’
‘Want to talk about it?’
‘Only if I can talk with my mouth full,’ Carol said. ‘I’m starving. Could you go a quick curry?’
Tony glanced at his computer screen, then back at Carol’s drawn face and tired eyes. He liked her, even though he didn’t want to get close, and he needed her on his side. ‘Just let me save this file, and I’m out of here. I can come back later and finish this.’
Twenty minutes later they were attacking onion bhajis and chicken pakora in an Asian cafe in Greenholm. The other customers were students and those of the terminally right-on tendency who hadn’t quite adjusted to the fact they were no longer studying anything except political correctness. ‘It’s not exactly Good Food Guide, but it’s cheap and cheerful, and the service is quick,’ Tony apologized.
‘Fine by me. I’m more egg on toast than Egon Ronay. My brother got the gourmet genes in our family,’ Carol said. She glanced quickly around her. Their table for two was less than a foot away from the next. ‘Did you bring me here deliberately so we couldn’t talk about work? Some psychologist’s ploy to refresh my mind?’
Tony’s eyes widened. ‘I didn’t even think of that. You’re right, of course, we can’t talk about it in here.’
Carol’s smile lit up her eyes. ‘You can have no idea how much pleasure that gives me.’
They ate in silence for a few minutes. Tony broke the silence. That way, he stayed in control of the subject. ‘What made you decide to be a copper?’
Carol raised her eyebrows. ‘Because I like oppressing the underprivileged and hassling racial minorities?’ she tried.
Tony smiled. ‘I don’t think so.’
She pushed her plate to one side and sighed. ‘Youthful idealism,’ she said. ‘I had this crazy idea that the police should be there to serve and protect society from lawlessness and anarchy.’
‘It’s not such a crazy idea. Believe me, if you dealt with the people I used to handle, you’d feel relieved that they weren’t on the streets.’
‘Oh, the theory’s fine. It’s just the practice that’s such a bummer. It all started when I read sociology at Manchester. I specialized in the sociology of organizations, and all my contemporaries despised the police force as a corrupt, racist, sexist organization whose sole role was to preserve the illusory comfort of the middle classes. To some extent, I agreed with them. The difference was that they wanted to attack institutions from the outside, whereas I’ve always believed that if you want fundamental change, it has to come from inside.’
Tony grinned. ‘You little subversive, you!’
‘Yeah, well, I guess I didn’t realize what I was getting into. David knocking out Goliath was a piece of piss compared with trying to change things in the police.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Tony said with feeling. ‘This national task force could revolutionize the clear-up rate on serious crimes, but the way some senior officers carry on, you’d think I was setting up a scheme to allow paedophiles to retrain as child minders.’
Carol giggled. ‘You mean, you’d rather be back in the locked ward with your nutters?’
‘Carol, sometimes I feel like I’ve never left. You’ve no idea what a refreshing change it is to work with people like you and John Brandon.’
Before Carol could reply, the waiter arrived with their main courses. As she spooned out lamb and spinach, chicken karahi and pilau rice, Carol said, ‘Does your job create the same problems with having a private life as the police service does?’
Instantly defensive, Tony answered with a question. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Like you said earlier, you get obsessed with the job. You spend your time dealing with shitheads and animals – ’
‘And that’s just your colleagues,’ Tony butted in.
‘Yeah, right. And you come home at night after dealing with broken bodies and fractured lives and you’re expected to sit down and watch the soaps and act like normal people do.’
‘And you can’t because your head’s still plugged into the horrors of the day,’ Tony finished. ‘And with your job, you have the added complication of shift work.’
‘Exactly. So, do you get the same problems?’
Was she asking out of idle curiosity or was this an oblique way of finding out about his private life? Sometimes Tony wished he could just switch off the part of his head that had to analyse every statement, every gesture, every intricate piece of body language and just revel in the pleasure of eating dinner with someone who seemed to enjoy his company. Suddenly aware that he had left too long a pause between the question and the answer, Tony said, ‘I’m probably even worse at switching off than you. Men generally seem to get much more obsessive than women. I mean, how many female train spotters, stamp collectors or football fanatics do you know?’
‘And that interferes in your personal relationships?’ Carol persisted.
‘Well, none of them have ever gone the distance,’ Tony said, struggling to keep his voice light. ‘I don’t know if that’s down to the job, or to me. Mostly, the last thing they’ve screamed at me as they walked out the door hasn’t been, “you and your bloody nutters”, so I guess it must be me. How about you? How do you handle the problems of the job?’
Carol’s fork continued its journey to her mouth and she chewed and swallowed her mouthful of curry before she answered. ‘I’ve found that men aren’t very sympathetic towards shifts unless they do them too. You know, you’re never there with the tea on the table when they’ve got to rush out to that vital squash match. Add to that the difficulty of getting them to understand why the job drives you inside your head and what are you left with? Junior doctors, other coppers, fire fighters, ambulance drivers. And in my experience, there aren’t many of them who want a relationship with an equal. I guess the job takes too much out of us for us to have much left over. The last guy I was involved with was a doctor, and all he wanted to do when he wasn’t working was sleep, fuck and party.’
‘And you wanted more?’
‘I wanted the occasional conversation, maybe even a movie or a night out at the theatre. But I put up with it because I loved him.’
‘So what made you end it?’
Carol stared down at her plate. ‘Thanks for the compliment, but I didn’t. When I moved up here, he decided that driving up and down the motorway was a waste of good shagging time, so he dumped me for a nurse. Now it’s just me and the cat. He doesn’t seem to mind the irregular hours.’
‘Ah,’ Tony said. He had heard the real pain under the surface, but for once, all his professional skills didn’t seem adequate to the response.
‘How about you? You involved with anyone?’ Carol asked.
Tony shook his head and carried on eating.
‘Nice bloke like you, I’d have thought you’d have been snapped up ages ago,’ Carol said, the tease in her tone covering something Tony wished he was imagining.
‘Ah, but you’ve only seen the charming side. When the moon’s full, I sprout hair on the palms of my hands and bay at the moon.’ Tony leered melodramatically at Carol. ‘I am not what I appear to be, young woman,’ he growled.
‘Oh, Grandmamma, what big teeth you’ve got!’ Carol said in falsetto.
‘All the better to eat my curry with,’ Tony laughed. He knew this was the point where he could have moved the relationship forward, but he had spent too long constructing his defences against precisely these moments of weakness to let them down that easily. Besides, he told himself, he had no need of a relationship with her. He had Angelica and bitter experience had taught him that was all he could handle and still function.
‘So how did you get into this soul-destroying line of work?’ Carol asked.
