She’d been right. Too right, unfortunately. His surgeon might have given the thumbs-up to the amount of time Tony now spent lumbering round his living room playing tennis, bowling and golf or indulging in surreal games against weirdly dressed rabbits. But Tony had a feeling her approval wouldn’t be matched by the editors whose deadlines he was in serious danger of missing.
He was about to destroy the chief rabbit in a shoot-out on the streets of Paris when he was interrupted by the intercom that Carol had installed between her basement flat and his house above.
‘I know you’re there, I can hear you jumping,’ her voice crackled. ‘Can I come up or are you too busy pretending to be Bradfield’s answer to Rafa Nadal?’
Tony stepped away from the screen with barely a pang of regret and pressed the door-release button. By the time Carol joined him, he’d replaced the game controllers on their charger and poured a couple of glasses of sparkling water. Carol took hers, looking sceptical. ‘Is this the best you can do?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I need to maintain my fluid balance.’ He walked past her, back towards the living room, his move calculated to make resistance easier.
‘I don’t. And I’ve had the kind of day that deserves a treat.’ Carol stood her ground.
Tony kept on walking. ‘And yet you came here, knowing I’m trying to help you move away from drinking so much. Your actions are saying the opposite of your words.’ He looked over his shoulder and grinned at her, trying to take the sting out of thwarting her. ‘Come on, sit down and talk to me.’
‘You’re wrong.’ Clearly grumpy now, Carol followed him and plonked herself down on the sofa opposite his chair. ‘I’m here because I have something important to talk to you about. Not because deep down I want to not have a drink.’
‘You could have asked me to come down to your flat. Or to meet you somewhere that serves alcohol,’ Tony pointed out. Finding the arguments was tedious, but helping her back to a point where she genuinely didn’t need a drink was the best way he knew of demonstrating how much he cared for her.
Carol threw her hands in the air. ‘Give me a break, Tony. I really do have something important to discuss.’ It sounded like she meant it.
Another good reason why he wanted her to stop leaning on alcohol. Her need for a drink masked so many other things - something genuinely important to share with him, a truly difficult day - and that made it hard to read her. And not being able to read her was something he found very hard to bear. Tony leaned back in his chair and smiled, his blue eyes twinkling in the pool of light cast by a nearby reading lamp. ‘Go on then. I’ll stop being your nagging friend and revert to interested colleague. Has this got anything to do with your meeting with your new boss, by any chance?’
Carol’s answering smile was sardonic. ‘Got it in one.’ She swiftly laid out the ultimatum James Blake had given her team. ‘It’s so unrealistic,’ she said, frustration obviously gnawing at her composure. ‘We’re entirely at the mercy of what comes up over the next three months. Am I supposed to be wishing for some tasty murders, just so that I can show off how good my team is? Or fake evidence to clear up a few high-profile cold cases? You can’t apply some time-and-motion study to a specialist investigative unit.’
‘No, you can’t. But that’s not what’s going on here. He’s already made his mind up. This trial period’s bogus, for precisely the reasons you’ve laid out.’ Tony scratched his head. ‘I think you’re screwed. So you might as well just do things exactly as you would anyway.’
He saw her shoulders slump. But she knew better than to come to him for anything less than honesty. If they started down that road, the trust they’d spent years building would crumble faster than overcooked meringue. And since neither of them had anyone else in their life as close as the other, they couldn’t afford that. ‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ she sighed. She took a long drink from her water glass. ‘But that’s not all.’ She stared down into her glass, the thick tumble of her hair hiding her face.
Tony closed his eyes momentarily, rubbing the bridge of his nose. ‘He’s told you to stop using me.’
Galvanised by his acuity, Carol’s neck straightened and her startled eyes met his. ‘How did you know that? Has Blake spoken to you?’
Tony shook his head. ‘It’s the dog that didn’t bark in the night.’
Carol nodded, getting it. ‘He didn’t speak to you. I introduced you, he didn’t engage.’
‘Which I took to mean that I’m not part of his budget or his plans.’ He smiled. ‘Don’t worry about me, there’s plenty of other chief constables that still think I’m money well spent.’
‘I’m not worried about you, I’m worried about me. And my team.’
He spread his hands in the equivalent of a shrug. ‘It’s hard to fight a man who reduces everything to the maximum bangs for his buck. The truth is, I’m not the cheapest option, Carol. You’re turning out your own profilers these days. Your bosses think it’s better to go down the American route - train cops in psychology - rather than rely on specialists like me who know nothing about the realities of policing the streets.’ Only someone who knew him as well as Carol could have detected the subtle edge of irony in his tone.
‘Yeah, well, you get what you pay for.’
‘Some of them are pretty good, you know.’
‘How do you know?’
He chuckled. ‘I’m one of the people who’s been training them.’
Carol looked shocked. ‘You never said.’
‘It was supposed to be confidential.’
‘So why are you telling me now?’
‘Because if you have to work with them, you should know they’ve had the benefit of input from some of the most experienced profilers around. Not just me, other people in the same field that I’ve got a lot of time for. And these bright young officers have not had their knowledge cluttered up by having to decide on treatment regimes. They’re very focused on one aspect of psychology, and they’re not stupid. Give them a chance. Don’t dismiss them because they’re not me.’ There was another layer of meaning to his words which they both understood. Unfortunately for Tony, it wasn’t a good time to remind Carol of the bond between them that underpinned all their
