table.
Stacey shook her head, miming regret. The thing is, we don’t have time to waste here. Either we do this the nice way, where you stay in control of your addresses and your system, or we do it the other way, where I get a warrant and we cart your computers out of here and I do whatever it takes to get your subscribers to come across. It may not be pretty and I doubt you’ll have much of a business left to attract the corporate sharks once somebody leaks to the press that you tried to obstruct the investigation into Robbie Bishop’s murder.’ Stacey spread her hands. ‘But, hey, it’s up to you.’ Chris Devine would have been proud of her, she thought, monstering the poor woman so thoroughly.
Gail looked at her with hatred. ‘I thought you were one of us,’ she said bitterly.
‘You’re not the first one to make that mistake,’ Stacey said. ‘Let’s go and send some emails.’
Vanessa drew her reading glasses from her face and dropped them by her pad. ‘I think that’s us,’ she said.
The plump woman opposite her settled back in her chair. ‘I’ll get everything under way,’ she said. Melissa Riley had been Vanessa Hill’s second-in-command for four years. In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, she persisted in her belief that Vanessa’s steely professionalism disguised a heart of gold. Nobody who was that shrewd or swift in her assessments of human behaviour and personality could really be as hardboiled as Vanessa seemed to be. And today, finally, there was proof of that. Vanessa had cancelled all her appointments to be at the bedside of her injured son. OK, she’d reappeared mid-morning and had been working like a Trojan ever since, but still. She’d only come away because her son’s partner had insisted on relieving her. ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked, her smooth face shining with concern.
‘Feeling?’ Vanessa frowned. ‘I’m fine. It’s not me that’s in the hospital.’
‘It must have been a terrible shock, all the same. And to see your son laid up like that…I mean, as a mother, you want what’s best for them, you want to take their pain away…’
‘You do,’ Vanessa said, her tone indicating the conversation was at an end. She could see Melissa was gagging for something more intimate. Her social work training had left her avid for other people’s disasters. There were times when Vanessa wondered if Melissa’s brilliant organizational skills were sufficient to outweigh her desire to insinuate her fat little fingers into every crevice of any passing psyche. Today, it was a close call.
‘And of course, you’re absolutely riven with anxiety about his recovery,’ Melissa said. ‘Have they said whether he’ll walk properly again?’
‘He might have a limp. He’ll probably have to have another surgery.’ It killed Vanessa to reveal this much, but she understood that sometimes she had to give a little to maintain the respect of her team. As Melissa wittered on, she wondered what it felt like to be consumed with maternal concern. Mothers talked about bonding with their kids, but she’d never felt that burning intimacy they spoke of. She’d felt protective towards her baby, but it didn’t seem much different from the way she’d felt about her first puppy, the runt of the litter who’d had to be bottle-fed. In a way, she was relieved. She didn’t want to be chained to this child, to feel a physical absence when they were apart as she’d heard other women describe. But she had known right from the start that her lack of response was not the sort of thing it was acceptable to admit to. For all she knew, there were millions of women who felt as disengaged as she did.
But as long as there were Melissas out there laying claim to the moral high ground, Vanessa and her multitudes would have to pretend. Well, that wasn’t such a big deal. She’d spent most of her life pretending one thing or another. Sometimes she wondered if she really knew any more what was real and what was constructed.
Not that it mattered. She would do as she had always done. Look after number one. She didn’t owe Tony a damn thing. She’d fed and clothed him and put a roof over his head till he’d left for university. If there was any debt owed, it was in the other direction.
Running a unit like hers meant there was no hiding place, Carol thought bitterly as some sixth sense kicked in and she looked up to see the main office door open on John Brandon. The time it took her Chief Constable to cross the office to her cubicle was enough for Carol to compose herself mentally, to review what little there was to share.
She stood up as he walked into her small domain. She was conscious that Brandon and his wife were her friends, a consciousness that made her stand on ceremony whenever they met in the semi-public arena of the police HQ. ‘Sir,’ she said with a tight smile, waving him to a chair.
Brandon, his lugubrious bloodhound face reflecting her own low spirits, eased into the chair with the care of a man suffering back pain. ‘The world has its eye on us today, Carol.’
‘Robbie Bishop will get the same commitment from my team as every other victim, sir.’
‘I know that. But our investigations don’t usually attract quite this much attention.’
Carol picked up a pen and rolled it between her fingers. ‘We’ve had our moments,’ she said. ‘I don’t have a problem with being the focus of the media’s attention.’
‘Other people do, though. I have bosses and they want a quick result. Bradfield Victoria’s board want this brought to a successful conclusion ASAP. It’s unsettling their players, apparently.’ Brandon was enough of a diplomat to hide his feelings generally, but today, his irritation was just visible beneath the surface. ‘And it seems that every citizen of Bradfield was Robbie Bishop’s number one fan.’ He sighed. ‘So where are we up to?’
Carol weighed up her choices. Should she make the little she had sound more or less than it was? More would put pressure on her to deliver on it; less would put pressure on her to find something to chase. She settled for laying it out exactly as it was. At the end of her short recital, John Brandon looked even more miserable. ‘I don’t envy you,’ he said. ‘But that doesn’t mean I don’t want a result. Anything you need in terms of bodies and resources, let me know.’ He got up.
‘It’s not a matter of resources now, sir. It’s a matter of information.’
‘I know.’ He turned to go. His hand was on the door handle when he looked back. ‘Do you need me to sort out another profiler? With Tony out of action?’
Carol felt a flash of panic. She didn’t want to have to forge a working relationship with somebody whose judgements would be based on a scant knowledge of her and her team. She didn’t want to have to worry about how to mitigate another psychologist’s conclusions. ‘It’s his leg that’s busted, not his brain,’ she said hastily. ‘It’ll be fine. When there’s something for a profiler to get his teeth into, Dr Hill will be there for us.’
Brandon raised his eyebrows. ‘Don’t let me down, Carol.’ Then he was gone, walking across the office with a word of encouragement.
