The older woman sat quietly for a moment, chewing on her toast and thinking about what she was going to say next.
The younger woman leaned towards the little boy, reaching out her hand to push his hair out of his eyes with her fingers.
The boy moved his head from side to side, giggling, and then shook his hair, which flopped back into his eyes.
“Which one’s DI Gayther? Is he the one that kept pestering you?”
“No, that was creepy Greening – he transferred to the Met six months ago. Gayther, Roger Gayther, is the one I worked with when I was a special at uni. He lives up by that little Co-op at the mini roundabout. I pointed his house out to you once, remember? The one with the clematis. He’s quite funny in a dry sort of way. You have to tune into his wavelength a bit …”
“Is he …?”
“You met him a couple of times before I passed my test. He gave me lifts to work sometimes. Biggish man, he’d be about mid-fifties. Grey suit and tie and grey hair … receding a little … balding now probably … you know the one, you said he’d look quite nice with a wash and brush up. He worked on crime investigations. The heavy stuff.”
She looked at her young son, Noah, and smiled widely at him.
The little boy smiled back sweetly as he spooned Coco Pops into his mouth. Some of it went in, most of it didn’t. He looked down at the milky mess on the tablecloth and then looked back up at his mum, who pulled a pretend-angry face at him. He wiped at the puddle of milk and Coco Pops with his sleeve.
“He’s really nice,” the young woman added, taking a mouthful of tea and mopping at the boy’s sleeve with a piece of kitchen roll on the table.
She turned away from her son towards her mother and dropped her voice. “His wife passed away earlier this year … it’s said she was an alcoholic and took her own life. He then had some sort of breakdown and is now back at work heading up this new section. They’re easing him back in, I’m told. At his own pace. I think he might be a bit depressive, too.”
“Well, I hope you know what you’re letting yourself in for, that’s all I can say … if he’s not well up here.” The older woman touched the side of her head.
“He was always kind to me,” the young woman replied as she put her emptied glass of orange and cup of tea on her plate ready to clear away. “I’ll learn a lot from him. He’s very open … or was, I don’t know how he’ll be these days. He has a son who did, or does, something terribly hush-hush in the Met. He’s based in London, so DI Gayther must be on his own at home and quite lonely, I’d have thought.”
“Well, you be careful, don’t take any nonsense …” the older woman instructed. “LGBTQ+. Lesbian, gay, bi–”
“Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer or questioning and others,” the younger woman interrupted. “They’ve a big cold case team at work that covers all of the unresolved cases – missing people, serious sexual offences, murders – all going back to the sixties and seventies. Massive, it is. All the files. And they’ve a couple of big cold cases that they’re looking into … a tenth and twenty-fifth anniversary … the media will be all over them … it’s just got too many cases at the moment.”
The younger woman paused before carrying on.
“So, they’ve set up a separate section for LGBTQ+ cases, going way back, and all across East Anglia, and put DI Gayther in charge. It ticks the politically correct boxes and they’ve had loads of local publicity in the papers – on the radio and he’s been on Anglia TV, BBC and ITV. It gives him a way to come back in at his own pace.”
“So,” the older woman replied as she stood up and began putting the breakfast crockery onto a tray, “you’ve no idea what you’ll be doing when you get into work this morning then?”
“No,” replied the younger woman. “… It could be anything from a hate crime to a murder. Whatever it is, I’m ready …”
They smiled at each other.
The young woman ran her fingers through the boy’s hair.
The older woman said, “Good luck.”
PART ONETHE CARE HOME
1. MONDAY 12 NOVEMBER, EARLY MORNING
Newly qualified Detective Constable Georgia Carrie walked slowly up the steps of the temporary portacabin office to the side of the main police station building, balancing two full mugs of tea, one in each hand. She stopped to read the sign, ‘DI Gayther, Cold Cases’ and the handwritten scrawl above it, ‘LGBTQ+’. She put the mugs down on the top step to open the door and then paused for a moment, thinking what she might say.
“Sorry to hear about your wife, sir”? No, not even that cursory sentence of sympathy would be welcomed. His wife’s alcoholism was an open secret at the station, but he had never talked of it. “I’m looking forward to working with you again” sounded suitably keen. But she was sure he viewed his sideways move – “a washed-up old has-been shuffling through dead files,” as he’d probably put it – without much enthusiasm.
She opened the door. Picked up the mugs. Stepped inside. The older man, in his battered grey suit and brown loafers, looked up as the young woman put the mugs of tea on the desk. One on his side, the other on hers. He smiled briefly and nodded his thanks.
