‘Pity,’ she said. ‘I always thought that reality was overrated.’ And shortly after that she drifted off with Carey bobbing behind like a sadly neglected balloon.
She’ll miss him if she lets go and he drifts off, I thought.
I looked over to where Seawoll was making Lesley laugh. She was holding a straight glass full of multicoloured alcohol from which protruded two lemon slices, a paper parasol and a bendy straw. Since she was occupied, I decided to avail myself of the opportunity to get an update on the case. There are three basic ways to get yourself up to speed on an ongoing case. One is to log into HOLMES and work your way down the action list, reading statements, evaluating forensic reports and following the investigation tree to see where each branch leads. The primary advantage of this technique is, if you have a terminal at home, you can do it while eating pizza and drinking beer. The second involves gathering your team around a table somewhere and getting each of them to outline their progress so far. Often a white board is involved or – if you’re really unlucky – PowerPoint. The principal advantage of the meeting is that, if you happen to be the Senior Investigating Officer, you can look your subordinates in the eye and tell if they’re talking bollocks or not. The disadvantage is that, beyond about half an hour, everyone around the table below the rank Chief Superintendent will begin to slip into a coma.
The third way is to catch up with the investigation team when they’re in the pub. And the big advantage of the pub ambush, beyond the easy availability of alcohol and salted peanuts, is that nobody wants to talk about the case and in their haste to get rid of you they will boil down their role in the investigation to a sentence. Thus: ‘We did a joint evaluation of video evidence encompassing all possible access points in conjunction with BTP and CLP and despite widening the parameters of our assessment to include registered and non-registered cameras in the high-probability zones we have as yet to achieve a positive identification of James Gallagher prior to his appearance at Baker Street,’ becomes ‘We’ve checked every CCTV camera in the system and it’s as if the fucker beamed down from the Starship
Accurate, concise – unhelpful. His fellow students thought he was boring, his lecturers thought he was talented but boring and those locals he interacted with thought he was pleasant, respectful and boring. The only interesting things about James Gallagher were periodic gaps in his timeline starting in late September where his movements couldn’t be accounted for.
‘But that could be him going clubbing,’ commented the DC who told me. ‘You always get gaps, and mine’s a pint if you’re getting them in.’
I got them in all night but what I got out was pretty much nothing except to find there was an upper limit to the amount of orange juice I can drink. I was just wondering whether I could risk another pint when Seawoll beckoned me over and I suddenly became very glad I was sober.
Lesley was as pissed as I’ve ever seen her.
‘Excuse me, gentlemen,’ she said. ‘I have to powder what’s left of my nose.’
Seawoll winced as he watched her stagger off in the direction of the loos then he turned his attention to me.
‘She was the best of your generation,’ he said. ‘And you broke her.’
Between growing up with my mum, for whom tact is the blue stuff you use to put posters up, and my dad, who prided himself on being your plain-speaking cockney geezer, particularly when his ‘medicine’ was late, I’m pretty immune to the hard stare. Still it wasn’t easy to meet Seawoll’s gaze – and I’ve stared down Molly.
‘But that is as it may be,’ he said, ‘We’re fucking nowhere with this case and it’s got that nasty smell that I’ve come to associate with you and that well dressed piece of shit you work for.’
I bit my lip and waited. He was pushing, I wondered why.
‘What do you want?’ I asked.
Strangely, this made him smile. ‘I want to stop running through my life like a man late for an appointment,’ he said. ‘But what I want mostly is a way of getting through this case with a minimum of paperwork, property damage and an actual suspect I can arrest and send up the fucking stairs.’
‘I’ll do my best, sir,’ I said.
‘You know the Covent Garden beheading has never been officially cleared,’ he said. ‘That’s a dent in my clear-up rate, Peter, not yours, because you don’t have a fucking clear-up rate do you?’ He leaned forward. I leaned back. ‘I’ve got a very good clear-up rate, Peter, I’m very proud of it and so at the end of this case I expect there to be a collar – preferably one attached to a human being.’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said.
‘You do know when to keep your mouth shut,’ said Seawoll. ‘I’ll give you that much. What are your actions for tomorrow?’
‘I’m going to follow Kevin Nolan and see if I can’t establish what his connection with James Gallagher was,’ I said.
‘You’re sure there’s a connection?’
They were both dealing in magic pottery, I didn’t say.
‘You don’t want to know, sir,’ I said. ‘But with luck we can connect them in a more tangible way.’
‘I want you to write up the action plan properly and file it first thing with the case manager,’ said Seawoll. ‘If you get a connection we can use, you call Stephanopoulos immediately and we ramp up the surveillance. No going off on your own – understand?’
There was a crash as a door slammed open and a high-pitched laugh.
Lesley lurched out of the loos, pulled herself up into a semblance of dignity, and looked around in vague puzzlement before fixing on me and Seawoll.
‘Oh dear,’ said Seawoll. ‘Will you look at the state of that? About time you took her home, son.’ He waved at me imperiously and I scuttled off to do his bidding.
Lesley wasn’t so drunk that she didn’t think to check my fitness to drive.
‘I’m definitely below the limit,’ I said as I poured her into the passenger seat and closed the door.
‘Why aren’t you drunk?’ she asked. It had grown cold out while we were in the pub and the inside of the Asbo was freezing – my breath steamed as I leaned over to buckle Lesley in.
‘Because I’m driving,’ I said.
‘You’re so boring,’ she said. ‘You’d think a copper who was a wizard would be more interesting. Harry Potter wasn’t this boring. I bet Gandalf could drink you under the table.’
Probably true, but I don’t remember the bit where Hermione gets so wicked drunk that Harry has to pull the broomstick over on Buckingham Palace Road just so she can be sick in the gutter. Once she wiped her mouth with the napkins I’d so boringly kept in the glove compartment against such an eventuality, she resumed by pointing out that Merlin had probably had something to teach me about the raising of the wrist.
I would have been subjected to a longer list except Lesley had grown up reading Sophie Kinsella and Helen Fielding and so she ran out of fictional wizards at Severus Snape and our journey home continued in relative quiet.
By the time I’d parked in the Folly’s garage Lesley had gone from belligerent to my best mate. She flopped against me and I felt her breasts squashing against my chest as her arm snaked around my waist. ‘Let’s go to bed,’ she mumbled. I was hard enough to make me glad I wasn’t wearing jeans. It certainly didn’t make manoeuvring her through the snow to the back door any easier.
I tried to prop her against the wall while I fumbled for my keys but she kept flopping against me. ‘I could leave the mask on,’ she said. ‘Or wear a paper bag.’
Her hand found my erection and gave it a delighted squeeze. I yelped and dropped the keys. ‘Look what you made me do,’ I said.
‘Never mind that,’ said Lesley and tried to get her hand inside my fly.
I jumped back and she started to sag slowly into the snow. I had to throw both my arms around her to try to hoist her back up, but all I managed to do was half pull both her jumper and blouse off.
‘That’s more like it,’ she said. ‘I’m up for it if you are.’
The back door opened to reveal Molly, who looked at me, then at Lesley and then back at me.
‘It’s not what you think it is,’ I said.
‘Isn’t it?’ asked Lesley as she staggered upright. ‘Shit.’
‘Let us in, Molly I want to get her into bed,’ I said.
Molly gave me a poisonous look as I half dragged Lesley inside.
‘Well, you put her to bed then,’ I said.
