skills. That didn’t much matter, because he wasn’t front of house, and he was good at his job. Danuta really rated him.’
‘Were they friends?’
Angela held her breath then let it out in a sigh. ‘I wouldn’t say friends, no. Not exactly. When he had his crack- up, Danuta was incredibly kind to him. But more the way you would be to a distant relative than a friend. Obligation rather than genuine affection, if you see what I mean.’
Sam’s antenna stood to attention. ‘His crack-up?’
‘Let me see . . . It must have been late ‘94. He’d been under a lot of pressure to help us out-perform our rivals and he’d made a few bad judgement calls. Harry always took things very personally, and he just went to pieces. One of the partners found him curled under his desk, sobbing. And that was the end of the line for poor Harry.’
‘They just dumped him?’
Angela gave a little peal of laughter. ‘Good God, no. Corton’s was always tremendously paternalistic. They made sure he had the best of care in some discreet clinic. But of course, they couldn’t take him back at the bank. You can’t take chances with the customers’ money.’ This time, the laugh was bitter. ‘That sounds pretty bloody hollow in today’s financial world, doesn’t it? But it was how they thought back then at Corton’s.’
‘So what happened to Harry?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t really know. I drew up the severance papers, so I do know he went out the door with a year’s money. And he would have had his own portfolio. So money wouldn’t have been an issue. Not for a while, anyway. Danuta visited him in the clinic.’ Angela frowned, rubbing the bridge of her nose. ‘I vaguely remember her saying something about him selling his house and moving away,’ she said slowly. ‘But I wasn’t really paying attention. I wasn’t that bothered about Harry, to be honest.’
‘It sounds like Danuta was.’
She shook her head. ‘Not really. She felt sorry for him, that’s all. She was always much kinder than me.’ Matter of fact, not the over-emphasis of someone protecting her friend.
‘Is there any chance they could have been having an affair?’
There was nothing artificial about Angela’s reaction. She threw her head back and roared with laughter. ‘Christ,’ she spluttered. ‘Leaving aside the fact that Harry had all the emotional intelligence of a starfish, you obviously haven’t seen a photo of him. Trust me, Danuta was several divisions out of his league. No, Mr Evans. Nobody who knew Danuta could believe that for a nanosecond.’ She swallowed, recovering herself. ‘I don’t know who’s set you off on this track, but you are so barking up the wrong tree.’ Then suddenly she was sober and serious again. ‘I so hoped you were bringing me news. Even bad news would have been better than the uncertainty, believe me. I still think of her.’ She sighed. ‘I so hoped someone was finally going to nail that bastard Nigel Barnes.’ A sharp look at Sam. ‘He killed her, you know. I’ve never doubted that for a minute.’
‘What makes you so sure of that?’
‘He’s always been ruthless. As far as business is concerned, he’d cut your throat before he’d let you get one over on him. Danuta was his trophy wife. Smart, beautiful and not quite as successful as him. But after the baby was born, that all changed. She decided she didn’t want to work any more. She wanted to be a full-time mother. Not wife and mother, just mother. She was entirely focused on her child.’ She looked embarrassed. ‘To tell you the truth, I found the whole thing pretty tedious. I hoped the novelty would wear off and the old Danuta would come out to play again. I’ve always thought Nigel couldn’t stand the competition. So they had to go.’
‘He could just have got divorced, surely?’
‘Money and reputation,’ Angela said. ‘Nigel wouldn’t want to part with either.’
‘He’d have lost a lot more than that if he’d killed them and been caught.’
Angela Forsythe gave him a long, level stare. ‘But he hasn’t been, has he?’
CHAPTER 27
Tim Parker had never been to Bradfield before. All he knew about it was that they had a Premier League football team that usually bumped along somewhere in the middle of the table. Raking up history lessons from school, he vaguely remembered it had grown rich in the nineteenth century on textiles, though he couldn’t recall whether it was cotton or wool. Or something else altogether. Had there been anything else in the nineteenth century? Linen, he supposed. Well, whatever.
Nominally a detective sergeant, Tim liked to think of himself as above and beyond the narrow confines of rank. He’d taken a first in PPE at Jesus College, Oxford and had raced through the graduate fast-track process of the Metropolitan Police. He’d never had any intention of pounding the beat. He knew he was too smart for that. His goal had always been the cool end of the job, working in intelligence of one sort or another. He didn’t much mind whether it was NCIS or SOCA or Europol. As long as it provided a challenge and made him feel like he was one of that handful who truly made a difference. He’d sort of slipped sideways into the profiling stream at the National Police Faculty and found he’d had a knack for it. He’d sailed through his courses and impressed most of his instructors. Well, the academic ones, anyway. The clinical psychologists who actually worked in secure mental hospitals hadn’t been quite so glowing. Especially that weird little fuck from Planet Vague who talked about messy heads and passing for human. Like that had any scientific rigour.
Now he was more than ready for the real thing. It was just a pity it had to kick off on a Saturday. He and his girlfriend had tickets for Chelsea at home to Villa. A bunch of them were supposed to be meeting up for lunch before the game, then going on afterwards for a night out. But instead he was on his way to Bradfield. Susanne had been disappointed, but she’d got over it. By the time he’d left, she’d already fixed up for her pal Melissa to take his place.
The train was travelling through some pretty drab suburbs now. Grey council flats, red-brick terraces straggling up and down hills like you always saw on TV dramas set in the North. He’d once been to Leeds for somebody’s stag night and vaguely remembered something similar. They crossed a canal basin then suddenly the great cast-iron and glass arch of Bradfield Central came into sight round a curve in the line. It was, he had to admit, impressive. He hoped the team he’d be working with matched up to it.
Tim had heard of the DCI. Carol Jordan had a reputation for cracking cases that, if she’d been a Met detective, would have given her legendary status. But Bradfield and gender combined to relegate her to the level of an operator who was owed respect. But the case notes that had been emailed to him overnight had not impressed him
