At the top of the stairs Claudia assessed herself. Her jaw was clenched and her heart was thudding hard in her chest. Walking up those few steps had not helped her in the least. She was most definitely not the best person to continue.
‘Is she in?’ Claudia asked Maxine, Sharpe’s PA.
Maxine looked up from her computer, curls pulled back from her face, a few strands coming loose and tumbling down to her shoulders. ‘She’s in. She said to send you straight through as soon as you arrived.’
‘Thanks.’ She didn’t have much capacity for small talk today.
She pushed open Sharpe’s door to find her standing behind her desk with her landline phone to her ear. Finely polished fingernails twirled between the curls of the cord separating the phone and earpiece. With her free hand she waved Claudia in.
Claudia let out a breath, closed the door behind her and waited for Sharpe to finish her call.
‘Yes, yes, I know. Yes, I know. Yes, of course. We’re on it. Yes. Yes.’ A deep sigh escaped Sharpe’s lips and she rolled her eyes at Claudia. ‘She’s one of ours, of course we’re pulling out all the stops. Yes, I’ll get in touch as soon as I know anything.’ She put the phone down with a crash.
‘Bloody civilians,’ she muttered.
Claudia raised her eyebrows.
‘The police and crime commissioner. Doesn’t think it looks good that one of our own has been abducted, potentially fatally injured. Thinks it will scare the public. We need to deal with it as quickly as possible.’ Sharpe stopped talking. ‘I’m sorry you were the one who had to find the crime scene, Claudia. How are you? And what a bloody idiot leaving it there for us.’
‘I’m fine, ma’am.’ She was far from fine. She wanted to be as far away from this job as she could get.
Sharpe pulled her chair back from her desk. ‘Grab a seat, Claudia. Grab a seat. Don’t stand there looking untidy.’ Sharpe sat in her own chair and Claudia in the one opposite.
‘So, you have to arrest Harrison then.’ Sharpe picked up a mug and drank from it.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Claudia snapped back up to standing.
‘Oh, do sit down, Claudia. Let’s talk about this. We don’t need hysterics.’
‘Hysterics?’ Claudia turned her back to Sharpe. Was she being hysterical by not wanting to carry on with this case? She didn’t understand why she was even involved.
‘Okay, I might have been a little harsh.’ Sharpe’s voice softened. ‘But please, do sit.’
Claudia was caught off guard; Sharpe wasn’t known for backing down. She slipped back into the chair and stared at her boss. ‘Why do you want me to make the arrest and carry on with the case?’ she asked.
‘When I got your message I took it up with Connelly and between us we think, as you’ve already started the process with Harrison, it would serve to have you continue. He’ll know what you’ve found and he’ll not expect you to be the one to go in and make the arrest and to interview him from here on in. We can use this to our advantage. To knock him off his comfortable perch. The more unsettled we keep him the better. He won’t be able to keep himself together and whatever plan he has in play, we can scupper and find Ruth sooner rather than later.’ She looked at Claudia. ‘Whatever state she may be in.’
Claudia understood where her boss was coming from but she didn’t like it. Sharpe was making an assumption that Harrison was guilty of a crime before they had any evidence. Evidence was the cornerstone of a police investigation and evidence was the only way Claudia could even begin to get her head around the whole scenario. Today had her spinning. How was she supposed to hold herself together while Ruth was missing and Dominic was their immediate suspect? Sending Claudia in to interview him now the blood had been found wasn’t playing by the rules. Though there was nothing actually written down that said she couldn’t do this. And he was going to be arrested, because yes, there certainly was enough to make an arrest, with the blood having been found at his home, just not enough to jump to the conclusion he was guilty — he was, after all, still one of their own.
Claudia frowned. ‘He might be innocent.’ It was a possibility. Again with the evidence. They had none either way — other than a pool of Ruth’s blood in his home.
Sharpe tapped on the mug she was holding, waited a beat to respond to the statement. ‘Of course he may well be. And obviously you’re going to come at the investigation from that angle. But we trust you to follow the evidence. You’ll unsettle him, but also be open to whatever comes out in the wash. Guilty or not.’
‘And what about, if it turns out that way, when it gets to court? They’ll try to throw it out because I interviewed him.’
Sharpe placed the mug back on her desk. ‘They can try, but as long as you stick to all the rules they won’t have a leg to stand on. You’re a stickler for the rulebook, Claudia. If that rulebook is followed to the letter and nothing goes awry, they have nothing to get it thrown out on. There is nothing in writing that says you can’t interview him.’ Sharpe leaned forward in her chair. ‘The
