‘You think she realised the gatecrasher on Rig was a bloke?’
‘I don’t know. I doubt she was that sophisticated. I think she went to learn more about this so-called “secret”.’
Patterson sighed. ‘And until Gary works his magic, we don’t have a bloody clue what that might be.’
‘True. But in the meantime, it wouldn’t hurt to have a chat with Mum and Dad. Find out if there were ever any plans for a cake.’
CHAPTER 5
Daniel Morrison had been indulged from well before the moment he’d been born. It would have been hard to imagine a child more wanted than he had been and neither expense nor consideration had been spared in the effort to make his life the very best it could be. During her pregnancy, his mother Jessica had forsworn not only alcohol and saturated fat but also hairspray, dry cleaning, deodorant and insect repellent. Everything that had ever been accused of being potentially carcinogenic had been banned from Jessica’s environment. If Mike came home from the pub smelling of cigarette smoke, he had to strip off in the utility room then shower before he could come near his pregnant wife.
When Daniel emerged from his elective caesarian section with a perfect Apgar score, Jessica felt justified in every preventative step she’d taken. She didn’t hesitate to share that belief with anyone who would listen and quite a few who wouldn’t.
The drive to perfection didn’t end there. Daniel’s every stage of development was accompanied by the age- appropriate educational toys and other forms of stimulus. By four, he was enrolled in the best private prep school in Bradfield, encased in grey flannel shorts, shirt and tie, maroon blazer and a cap that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the 1950s.
And so it continued. Designer clothes and fashionable hair-cuts; Chamonix in the winter, Chiantishire in the summer; cricket whites and rugby jerseys; Cirque du Soleil, classical concerts and theatre. Whatever Jessica thought Daniel needed, Daniel had. Another man might have put the brakes on. But Mike loved his wife - his son too, obviously, but not the way he adored Jessica - and so he chose the route that made her happiest. As she indulged Daniel, so he indulged her. He’d been lucky enough to get in on the ground floor of the mobile phone business back in the early nineties. There had been times when it had felt like the legendary licence to print money. That Jessica knew how to spend it had therefore never been an issue.
What was slowly beginning to dawn on Mike Morrison was that his fourteen-year-old son was not a very nice person. In recent months, it had become clear that Daniel was no longer happy to accept whatever Jessica decided was best for him. He was developing his own ideas about what he wanted, and the sense of entitlement that Jessica had bred into him meant he wasn’t happy to settle for anything less than the prompt and total fulfilment of his desires. There had been some spectacular arguments, most of which had ended with Jessica in tears and Daniel in voluntary exile in his suite of rooms, sometimes refusing to emerge for days at a time.
It wasn’t the arguments that bothered Mike, in spite of Jessica’s frustration and anger. He recalled similar rows in his own teens as he’d tried to assert himself in the teeth of parental opposition. What made him anxious was a suspicion that was hardening to a certainty that he didn’t have a clue what was going on in his son’s head.
He remembered being fourteen. His concerns had been pretty simple. Football, both watching and playing; girls, both real and imagined; the relative merits of Cream and Blind Faith; and how long it would be before he could wangle himself into a party where there was alcohol and dope. He hadn’t been a goody two-shoes and he’d been convinced that his own drift away from his parents’ expectations would help forge a connection when Daniel hit adolescence.
He couldn’t have been more wrong. Daniel’s response to Mike’s attempts at bonding by sharing had been a shrug, a sneer and a complete refusal to engage. After one too many rebuffs, Mike had reluctantly accepted that he had no idea what was going on inside his son’s head or his life. Daniel’s dreams and desires, his fears and his fantasies, his passions and his proclivities were unfathomable to his father.
Mike could only guess at what occupied his son during the long hours they were out of each other’s presence. And because he didn’t like what his imagination conjured for him, he’d chosen to try not to think about it at all. He guessed that was entirely fine by Daniel.
He couldn’t have guessed that it was also just fine by his killer.
Some meetings were better held outside the workplace. Carol had always known it by instinct; Tony had provided her with a rational explanation. ‘Take people off their territory and it blurs hierarchies. They’re slightly off-balance but they’re also trying to show off, to make their mark. It makes them more creative, more innovative. And that’s essential in any unit where you want to keep ahead of the game. Keeping things fresh and inventive is one of the hardest things to achieve, especially in hierarchical organisations like the police.’
In a team like theirs, staying ahead of the curve was even more crucial. As James Blake had so pointedly reminded her, elite units were invariably under closer scrutiny than routine departments. Developing new initiatives that proved effective was one straightforward way to disarm their critics. Now the pressure was heavier than ever, but Carol trusted her crew to fight for their roles as hard as she would herself. Which was why she was taking orders for drinks in the private karaoke room of her favourite Thai restaurant.
More than that, she was practising something else she’d learned from Tony: choices and the way they’re made have the potential for revelation, even in the smallest degree. So this was a chance for her to check perceptions against knowledge, to see whether the things she thought she knew about her team were corroborated by what they chose and how they chose it.
Stacey Chen had been a no brainer. In the three years they’d been working together, Carol had never known their ICT wizard to drink anything other than Earl Grey tea. She carried individual sealed sachets in her stylish leather backpack. In bars and clubs whose drinks menu didn’t stretch to tea, she demanded boiling water and added her own bag. She was a woman who knew exactly what she wanted and, once she’d figured out what that was, she was utterly uncompromising about getting it. Her consistency also made it difficult to gauge her state of mind. When someone never wavered in their preferences, it was impossible to figure out whether they were stressed or elated, especially when they were as good at keeping things hidden as Stacey. It felt uncomfortably like racial stereotyping, but there was no denying that Stacey managed inscrutable better than anyone Carol had ever known.
After all this time she still had almost nothing to add to the bare facts of Stacey’s CV. Her parents were Hong Kong Chinese, successful entrepreneurs in the wholesale and retail food business. Rumour was that Stacey herself had made millions from selling off software she’d developed in her own time. She certainly dressed like a millionaire, with tailoring that looked made to measure, and there was an occasional flash of arrogance in her demeanour that showed another facet to her quiet diligence. If it hadn’t been for her brilliance with technology, Carol had to acknowledge she would not have chosen to work at close quarters with someone like Stacey. But somehow mutual
