‘A DI called Stuart Patterson.’
Carol frowned and shook her head. ‘Name doesn’t ring a bell.’
‘From West Mercia.’
Surprise flashed across her face, freezing her expression. ‘West Mercia? You’re going to Worcester?’ The accusation he’d expected was there in her voice.
‘That’s where I’m needed, Carol. I didn’t chase this. It chased me.’ He didn’t want to sound defensive but he knew he did.
‘You didn’t have to say yes.’
Tony threw his hands in the air. ‘I never have to say yes. And I always have to say yes. You know that. Like I just said, we’re the only ones left to speak for the dead.’
Carol hung her head. ‘I’m sorry. You’re right. It just seems . . . I don’t know. When I tried to talk to you about your father, you cut me off at the knees. You didn’t want to deal with it. And yet here you are, first chance you get, off to the city where he lived most of his adult life. You’ll be walking the streets he walked, seeing the buildings he saw, maybe even drinking in the same pubs as people who knew him.’
‘I can’t help that, Carol. It’s not like I drove down to Worcester to murder and mutilate a teenage girl on the off-chance West Mercia would call me in to do them a profile. This is what I do best, this is what makes me come alive. I’m good at it and I can help.’ He stopped speaking as the waiter arrived with their main courses.
Once they were alone again, she said, ‘So are you going to pretend you’ve got no connection with the place once you’re there?’
‘That wouldn’t be a pretence. I don’t have any connection.’
Carol gave a dry laugh as she loaded a piece of naan with karahi chicken. ‘Apart from owning a house and a boat there.’
‘That’s an accident, not a connection.’
She gave him a long look, compassionate and tender. ‘You won’t be able to resist, Tony. If you try to, it’ll eat a hole in your heart.’
‘That’s a bit melodramatic for you,’ he said, trying to deflect her concern. ‘Where’s my pragmatic detective chief inspector?’
‘Trying to get you to accept your own needs for once. You spend your life trying to fix what’s broken. You do it for your patients. You do it when you profile for us. You do it for the people you care about, people like Paula. And me. All I want is for you to be selfish this time and do it for yourself.’ She reached out and put a hand over his. ‘We’ve known each other a long, long time, Tony. We know a lot of the ways we’re both fucked up. When you’ve spotted opportunities to help me, you’ve taken them. Why won’t you let me do the same for you?’
He felt his throat swell, as if he’d swallowed a naga chilli whole. He shook his head, pushing his plate away. ‘I just want to do my job.’ Getting the words out was a strain.
‘I know that.’ Carol spoke gently, almost inaudible against the background noise. ‘But I think you’d do it better if you acknowledged your need to come to terms with your history.’
‘Maybe.’ He drank some beer and cleared his throat. ‘Maybe you’re right.’ He managed a weak smile. ‘You’re not going to let this go, are you?’
She shook her head. ‘How can I? I don’t like to see you hurting because you’re in denial.’
Tony laughed. ‘Excuse me, but I’m supposed to be the psychologist here.’
Carol pushed his plate back towards him. ‘And I’m a good learner. Now eat your dinner and let me tell you what I’ve managed to find out.’
‘You win,’ he said meekly, reaching for his fork.
‘It’s not like it’s anything approaching the whole picture,’ Carol said. ‘But it’s somewhere to start. The first good thing is that he didn’t have a criminal record. He even had a clean driving licence, though he did have a couple of speeding convictions in 2002. Probably down to the installation of speed cameras on the nearest main road.’
‘And then he learned to be careful.’ Tony slowly began to eat, one tiny morsel at a time.
‘The second good thing - at least, I think it was probably good for him, if not for the people who were close to him - is that his death was very quick. No lingering illness, no long period of debilitation. The cause of death was a massive heart attack. He’d been at some sort of canal boat rally and he was walking back to his boat when he collapsed on the quayside. By the time the ambulance arrived, he was beyond help.’
Tony imagined what that must have been like. The paralysing grip of sudden pain. The loss of control. The agonising understanding that this was it. The darkness descending. The terrible loneliness, the absence of anyone he cared about. No chance to say goodbye. No chance to make amends. ‘Did he know he was likely to have a heart attack?’
‘Not really. He’d been diagnosed with ischaemic heart disease, but it didn’t seem to have had any impact on the way he lived. He played golf, he spent a lot of time pottering about on the canals in his narrowboat, and he went to work. He smoked a cigar most evenings, he drank the best part of a bottle of red wine every day and he enjoyed eating out in expensive restaurants several times a week. Not the way you behave if you’ve got an eye on a long and healthy life.’
Tony shook his head. ‘How did you find this stuff out?’
‘I’m a DCI. I called the coroner’s officer.’
‘And they just told you all this? Didn’t they wonder why you wanted to know?’ Tony knew he shouldn’t be surprised by the lack of privacy the state offered its citizens, but there were still times when it amazed him how easy it was to garner information that was supposed to be confidential. ‘You could have been anybody,’ he added.
‘He did wonder, yes. I reassured him that we didn’t think there was anything untoward about Edmund Blythe’s death, just that we were looking into the possibility that someone on our patch had stolen his identity. So naturally I
