Jim Breslaw was back at the window. ‘There’s a break in the clouds. I might need to water the garden after all,’ he said.
‘A wasted trip,’ Larry said on the drive back to the office.
‘Was it?’
‘Who knows. Time will tell.’
***
‘Enemies in high places, it seems you’re good at that, Ashley,’ Isaac said.
‘No more than you. I’m told that the Met’s Commissioner Davies doesn’t think much of you.’
‘Touché. Anyway, it’s good to see you. How long has it been?’
‘Since you stood me up? Eight years, give or take a few months.’
Isaac hadn’t mentioned in the office that before Wendy had come into Homicide, before Larry, before Isaac had married, he and Ashley Otway had been out together a couple of times.
Isaac wasn’t sure why he hadn’t told the team. It had been during his first murder investigation, back then inspector, not chief inspector, and Ashley had been a police reporter for another newspaper.
Since then, the two had drifted apart, nothing unusual, as both were ambitious, neither looking for undying love, only a good time.
Back then, Isaac was a few pounds slimmer, jogging regularly. Ashley had been cute with a pert nose and blue eyes, and as he studied her now, the light streaming into the room from behind her, he saw that time had aged her slightly and that she bore an uncanny resemblance to Jenny.
A waterfront restaurant at Camden Lock, a glass of wine each, a menu to peruse; it was almost like old times, the two of them, even if it hadn’t lasted long, enjoying each other’s company. And then, Isaac remembering, she had gone overseas, a promotion to a political reporter, following a trade delegation led by Gabriel Doveton, the minister of trade, a junket out to the Middle East, a chance for those on the trip to get drunk, strike a few deals and declare it a success. The only fly in the ointment was the diligent Ashley, revealing that bribes had been paid at the highest level in one country, an eighty-million-pound contract awarded on the back of them.
Hushed up, as they often are, a copy of the Official Secrets Act thrust under Ashley’s nose and a retraction by the newspaper.
‘No one believes retractions,’ the newspaper’s editor had told her in the confidence of his office. ‘In future,’ he’d added, ‘run it past me, check with our legal beavers. Don’t want to get on the wrong side of those in power, even if they’re on the fiddle, do we?’
Ashley continued to follow the rules, to expose when there was something to reveal, running it past her masters, modifying the story, an inflexion here, another word there. If the name was likely to cause trouble, an anonymous source quoted, to bin the story if the legal team said so.
With a degree in journalism and left-wing beliefs, Ashley, young and idealistic, had seethed on more than one occasion. Still, with time, the rough edges smoothed, the extreme ideology tempered, she adopted a change in tactics.
Still determined, still believing that journalism was about truth and justice, she carefully acquired her moles: people who would, out of idealism or a need for money, slip her news of happenings behind the scenes in the Palace of Westminster, the Houses of Parliament.
She came to know about those who were fiddling their expenses, incompetent, and others only in it for the money and prestige. And the most heinous was rewarded with a peerage, kicked up to the House of Lords if they kept their mouths shut.
Eventually, sickened by the hypocrisy and in a fit of despair, she had written the article about the minister and his Spanish mistress; the editor and the legal team, no longer as diligent as before, not checking all the copy that she submitted.
It had caused a political storm, the opposition shouting at the prime minister to remove his minister, to set an example. Ashley Otway was moved to entertainments, more out of political expediency than for what she had written.
The editor congratulated her, and the minister resigned – to concentrate on serving his electorate, to spend more time with his family. And then, nine months later, after the storm had blown over, he was back on the front bench, a more senior ministry to run.
The newspaper continued to publish articles on government corruption. But without their best investigative reporter, now confined to interviewing boy bands and ill-mannered movie stars, they weren’t as incisive as before.
‘Why did you take on Jerome Jaden?’ Isaac asked.
Ashley took a sip of wine. ‘It’s murder, not celebrities or reality stars dragged out from under a rock somewhere. They’re unimportant, but Simmons was an impressive individual, worthy of more respect, and there’s Jaden, up on that platform, preaching about a new world dawning with Tricia Warburton leading the singing.’
‘You don’t like her?’
‘I’ve nothing against her. It’s not her per se. Ambition’s not a crime.’
‘On the back of murder, it could be,’ Isaac said. He had liked Ashley before, still did. But then, he had liked a lot of women in his time, almost married one or two. Yet always a reason he hadn’t, the reason why he had chosen Jenny, why she had chosen him.
‘You’re after the dirt?’
‘We know some of it, nothing criminal, not yet. You have a reputation for getting under people’s skin. Have you found anything?’
‘Apart from that fiasco the other day?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m not about to indulge in gossip.’
‘You’re aiming to get your old job back?’
Ashley put her cutlery down, looked across the table at Isaac. ‘I am,’ she said. ‘One way or the other.’
‘You could join the police force, put your investigating skills to good use. Sixty-five thousand pounds a year for a chief inspector.’
‘Isaac, you may be able to get by on that, but I can’t. Multiply that by
