Farrow drops his eyes. ‘Always a bad idea,’ he mumbles, ‘getting involved with people at work.’
King gives a quick bark of laughter. ‘Well, evidently she doesn’t think so. She was banging Gareth Quinn a while back for a start –’
One of the other DCs looks up. ‘And Fawley too, from what I hear.’
‘Really?’ says King sharply.
The man shrugs. ‘It was all round the station a few months ago.’
‘Interesting,’ says King, his tone half thoughtful, half sneer. ‘Not such a bleeding paragon of virtue after all, eh.’
‘Was there anything else you wanted, Sarge?’ says Farrow. ‘Only –’
King turns to him. ‘Yeah, sorry. Yeah, there was. Apparently Fawley’s lawyer had a “little chat” with Gallagher last night.’ He’s dropped his voice now. ‘She was crapping on again about CCTV at the bridge. I take it we’ve bloody confirmed that, have we? I don’t want it coming back to bite me in the arse.’
Farrow reddens slightly, though he has no reason to: he’s checked already. Twice. ‘No, Sarge. No cameras in that area at all.’
‘What about the clothes – the ones Fawley claims Smith was wearing – where are we on that?’
Farrow pulls up a file on his screen. ‘Here’s the inventory from the flat – no leggings or T-shirts matching that description.’
‘So he’s lying.’
Farrow hesitates. ‘Well, I guess if it really was Gavin Parrie who killed her, he’d deffo have got rid of the gear –’
King gives an incredulous scoff. ‘Don’t tell me you actually believe that bollocks.’
Farrow reddens again. ‘No, Sarge. Of course not. I’m just saying that the clothes not being there now doesn’t prove they never were. Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of –’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ begins King, but then there’s a tap at the glass panel in the door and they look up to see Ruth Gallagher outside. No one appears to have thought to give her the key code. King curses under his breath as one of the DCs rushes to open it. Gallagher thanks him, rather pointedly, takes a few steps into the room.
‘Just wanted to let you all know I finally had a call back from Warwickshire. They’ve confirmed Gavin Parrie’s electronic tag is fully functional and shows him as being within a mile of his designated accommodation the entire night of July 9th. Whoever killed Emma Smith, it certainly wasn’t him.’
Dave King does a fist pump. ‘Fucking nailed it,’ he says.
‘No,’ says Gallagher calmly, ‘we haven’t “nailed” anything. Gavin Parrie has been eliminated from the inquiry; Hugh Cleland is likely to be. Adam Fawley remains by far the most likely suspect. But right now, that’s all he is: a suspect.’
No title, no ‘DI’. Just Adam Fawley. No one in the room underestimates the significance of that.
‘But until I decide otherwise, you say nothing.’ She glances round at them, one by one, taking her time about it. ‘Am I clear? However tempted you may be, you are to say nothing – not to your mates, your family, even other Thames Valley officers. And if there’s anyone who thinks they might find that a bit of a challenge after a couple in the Red Lion, I suggest you play it safe and go straight home. Do your career a favour, if not your liver.’
She gives King a long last look, turns and is gone.
* * *
Ev decides, for once, to pack it in at five. The CID office is half empty anyway. Gis has been AWOL for at least an hour and she has no idea where Somer’s been all day. Bugger it, she thinks; it is Saturday, after all. She clatters her stuff into her bag before she has time for a rush of conscience, but it seems the universe has a sense of humour: the phone goes.
She looks round, hoping someone else will do the decent, and eventually Asante picks it up.
‘CID, DC Asante.’
She sees him nod then look over towards her. ‘Line two. Asking for you.’
She sighs, slides her bag back on to her desk and picks up the phone. But she is not sitting back down, she is not sitting back down –
‘Miss Everett? It’s Elaine Baylis again.’ There’s just the slightest stress on that last word.
‘Look, I’m sorry I haven’t been back to you –’
‘It’s not that,’ she says crisply. ‘I’m afraid there’s been another incident with your father.’
Ev grips the phone, turns away from Asante’s discreetly quizzical glance. ‘What sort of “incident”?’
‘An altercation with another resident. Nothing to be worried about, but in a community like this, even small disagreements can be very disruptive. I’m sure you can appreciate that –’
‘I do, I’m just not sure what I can do about –’
‘Could you come in tomorrow? Two thirty?’
Ev’s heart sinks. She had her Sunday all planned. A lie-in, brunch at Gail’s, a walk round Christ Church meadow. Not a twenty-mile round trip in thirty-degree heat and another dressing-down by matron in an office that smells of pee.
‘I appreciate you have a demanding job,’ says Baylis in a tone that rings with don’t we all, ‘but this is about your father’s welfare and that of the other residents in our care.’ A heavy, self-righteous pause. ‘It’s important.’
‘OK,’ says Ev, gritting her teeth and reminding herself that Baylis will be working on Sunday too. ‘Two thirty. I’ll see you then.’
She puts down the phone and turns to see Asante still looking at her.
‘Line three,’ he says.
‘You’re taking the piss.’
But Asante doesn’t take the piss.
He shrugs. ‘Sorry. I did try. But it’s you he wants.’
‘Someone down here to see you,’ says one of the desk officers when she picks up.
‘Oh yes?’
‘Won’t give her name,’ he says, slightly more loudly, as if he wants the visitor, whoever they are, to hear quite how hacked off he is.
Ev frowns. ‘So why –?’
‘Has to be someone on the Fisher case, she says. And it
