Tracy could hear the shower running upstairs as she gathered together the food for breakfast. A fry-up was the easiest option, she thought, if not healthiest, so she dug out a couple of frying pans and put them on the rings, adding liberal dollops of cooking oil. Cooking wasn’t exactly one of Tracy’s fortes, but she did know how to fry eggs and bacon, and you needed plenty of hot oil to splash over the eggs to get the tops done properly. First she put the coffee on, then she got the bacon crackling and turned her attention to the eggs. But before she put them in the pan, she fed two slices of toast into the toaster, then glanced toward the breakfast nook.
Tracy bit her lower lip as she thought about what to do. Jaff’s hold-all was on the bench behind the breakfast table. If she wanted her mobile back, which she did, now was probably the best chance she was going to get. He probably wouldn’t even notice it was missing. The bacon was spitting and sizzling and the coffee pot making its usual gurgling sounds as it turned water into black gold. Tracy hoisted the hold-all onto the table and unzipped it.
What she saw inside took her breath away, but not so much that she didn’t first reach in and rescue her mobile, slipping it into a zipped pocket of her new shoulderbag. Then she went back to make sure that her eyes weren’t deceiving her. But no. There it all was, laid out for her to see. Wad after wad of twenty- and ten-pound notes, fastened with rubber bands. And mixed in with them, several brick-sized packages of white powder wrapped in plastic. She counted four altogether. Cocaine, Tracy thought. Or heroin. Four kilos, probably. She delved deeper, thrusting her hand between the wads of cash until, underneath everything, it touched something cool, hard and metallic.
It was only when she had her hand around the handle of the gun, still deep inside the hold-all, that she noticed Jaff leaning against the doorjamb, a white towel wrapped around his waist and a sheet of paper in his hand, head cocked to one side, watching her, a curious smile on his lips, but not in his eyes, she noticed, not by a long chalk. Christ, she thought, I should have trusted my instincts and run while I had the chance.
AS ANNIE had expected, Western Area Headquarters was starting to feel like the main concourse at King’s Cross by early afternoon on Wednesday. Chambers was skulking around with his imported Mancunian sidekicks, whom Annie had christened Dumb and Dumber, and several AFOs were wandering around the corridors aimlessly, or cluttering up the small canteen, including Nerys Powell, who gave Annie a conspiratorial smile, then blushed and lowered her gaze as they passed each other on the stairs. Just what she needed.
Banks had once told Annie that Chambers reminded him of the Vincent Price character in Witchfinder General, and when Annie had watched the film with him later, she had seen what he meant. There was no great physical resemblance, of course, but he had that same air about him, the barely controlled pious zeal that hinted he was satisfying unsavory personal appetites through his work, as well as serving public morality.
Annie would catch him staring at her now and then with a strange hungry look in his eyes that was only partly sexual, and occasionally he would go into a whispered conference with Dumb and Dumber, who would scribble notes, all calculated to cause maximum anxiety and paranoia, which it did. She knew that she and Chambers had parted on bad terms after she had told him exactly what she thought of his handling of the Janet Taylor case, and now she was beginning to think that he was the sort who bore a grudge. More than that, he was the type of person in whom slights and grudges fester for years, ultimately bursting out into vengeance.
Superintendent Gervaise had sent around a memo announcing a meeting of all the senior Serious Crimes staff at three o’clock in the boardroom, when they could expect a visit from the ballistics expert who had been working on the gun. Before that, Annie thought, she would take the opportunity to slip away for a quiet lunch and a pint- knowing that it might be her last chance for some time-and she would take Winsome with her. They had a lot to talk about. Winsome had been concluding the paperwork on her investigation into the hit and run, and she needed to be brought up to speed.
The Queen’s Arms was out of the question, as was the Hare and Hounds. Superintendent Gervaise had proved to be rather adept at tracking down the various watering holes Annie and Banks had started using. But with Winsome driving-she refused to drink a drop on duty, and hardly drank much at any other time-the whole of Swainsdale was their oyster. Well, within reason, Annie thought. But at least they could get out of the town center and find a little village pub with tables outside and a nice view. So many had closed down recently, after the smoking ban, the floundering economy, cheap booze shops and easy trips to fill up the boot in Calais. Some of the best pubs in Swainsdale opened for lunch only on weekends, but there were still a few good ones left.
They found a suitable place halfway up a hillside in a tiny village off the Fortford Road. It faced a small triangular green of well-kept grass with a couple of park benches under an old elm tree. The pub had picnic tables out front, where Annie sipped her pint of Dalesman bitter and Winsome her Diet Pepsi as they waited for their food. If any of the other lunchtime customers were astonished at the sight of a six-foot black woman, long legs stretched out, encased in blue denim, they were much too polite to show it, which indicated to Annie that they must be tourists. Locals usually gawped at Winsome.
It was a fine enough day, warm and sunny again, though a few dark clouds were gathering in the west, and the only nuisances were the flies and the occasional persistent wasp. The swallows were still gathering.
Annie admired the pattern of drystone walls that straggled up the hillside to the sere reaches where the limestone outcrops began. To her right, she could see the lush green valley bottom, and the village of Fortford itself a couple of miles away, near the meandering tree-lined river. She could also see the flagstone roofs and the whitewashed facade of the Rose and Crown beside the mound of the old Roman settlement. The Roman road cut diagonally up the daleside and disappeared in the far distance. The air smelled of fresh-mown hay tinged with a hint of manure and smoke from a gardener’s fire. Despite the activity at the police station and the harbingers it brought, Annie nevertheless felt this was a good day to be alive as she breathed the late summer air. All mists and mellow fruitfulness. The kind of day that sticks in your memory. It made her think of the final lines of the Keats poem she had had to memorize at school: “Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft / The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; / And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.”
“Zoo time back at the station, I see,” said Winsome.
“That’s why I wanted to get away for a while,” Annie said. “That and…”
Winsome raised a finely plucked eyebrow. “Come on. Give. I was thinking things have been dull around the place for a while now,” she said.
“Ever since you drop-kicked that drug dealer over a fourth-floor balcony?”
“It wasn’t a dropkick. And it was only the third floor.”
Annie took a sip of beer. Winsome had got quite a bit of press out of that escapade, which was probably the main reason why the locals knew who she was, and gawped at her. “There’s actually been quite a lot going on,” Annie said.
“Only I haven’t been in the loop. Doug and I have been investigating that hit-and-run on the Lyndgarth Road.”
“And?”
“Case closed. Witness got a partial number plate and it was easy sailing from there. Course, it didn’t help that our two victims weren’t talking.”
“Oh? Why not?”
“Up to no good. Off their faces on drugs, weren’t they?” Winsome said with a smile.
“Well, it’s time to get you in the loop now. How’s Harry, I mean Doug, coming on?”
“All right,” said Winsome. “Yeah, he’s all right. Maybe he lacks the killer instinct and that extra edge you need if you want to be a good detective.” She shrugged and grinned. “In some ways he’s like a little brother. I try to keep him out of trouble.”
“I never took you for the maternal type, Winsome. Anyway, you can’t play nursemaid forever.”
“I know. I know. He’s a good detail man, though, memory like a steel trap. And let’s face it, how often does the job get physical around here?”
“We can’t all be fearless warriors, I suppose,” said Annie.
“It’s my heritage. My ancestors were fearless warriors. It’s in my genes. I’m thinking of investing in a spear.”
Annie laughed. “You’re scary enough without.” She drank some more beer. “Besides, I’d love to see Madame Gervaise’s face if you did walk in carrying a spear.”
“It would certainly give her something to think about.”
A pale skinny young girl who looked as if she ought to be in school came with their food: burger and chips for
