Nothing about Draper's young widow and child.
Two pages on, a single paragraph near the foot of the page attested to the fact that the investigation into the death of Detective Sergeant Maddy Birch was still ongoing and that no arrests had so far been made.
Let it alone, Frank, he told himself. Let it be.
After yet another restless night he rose early, made coffee, walked down to the coast path to clear his head, rang Robert Framlingham and caught the London train.
Paddington station was thick with travellers, the natural hubbub and bustle overlaid with the saccharine wail of poorly amplified voices wishing them all a merry little Christmas. As Elder crossed the forecourt, a Big Issue seller with tinsel in his hair and two extravagant sprigs of mistletoe tied either side of his head like horns, lurched towards him, puckering up rouged lips.
The Underground platform was dangerously crowded – delays on the District, Circle and Bakerloo – and, when it arrived, the first train was near impossible to board. At Oxford Circus there was a five-minute queue to get out of the station.
In daylight, the skeletal snowflakes and reindeer that hung high above the street looked ugly and incomplete. Shop windows burgeoned with tawdry and expensive imprecations to buy, and Elder, hating it, hating every bit of it, felt nonetheless guilty he had neither bought a present for Katherine nor thought of one; had, in fact, bought nothing for anyone.
The restaurant was on one of the narrow streets that ran between Regent Street and Great Portland Street, home, for the most part, to small clothing wholesalers, their windows sprayed with fake snow. A sign on the door wished Elder Merry Christmas in Italian and inside red and green streamers looped cheerily along the walls.
Framlingham was already seated at a corner table, tucking into an antipasto of tuna and fagiolini. He was wearing a tweed suit that reminded Elder of damp heather, a cream shirt and a mustard tie.
Levering his tall frame out of his chair, the Chief Superintendent held out his hand. 'Frank, how long?'
'Seven years, eight?'
'And since you and I were the scourge of every bully-boy and malefactor in Shepherd's Bush?'
Elder smiled. 'Thirteen or so.'
A waiter took his coat and pulled out his chair.
When Elder had first moved down to London with Joanne, Robert Framlingham had been his immediate superior. Now, after one or two high-profile successes, his standing, as head of the Murder Review Unit, was growing. He had a house in Chiswick that he'd had the foresight to buy against the boom, and a cottage in Dorset, near the coast. Sailing was his passion.
There was a wife whom Elder had met no more than once or twice; three children, the youngest still at university, the others out in the world, paying back, no doubt, their student loans.
'You and Joanne,' Framlingham said once they'd settled. 'I was sorry to hear things didn't work out.'
Elder shrugged.
'Still see much of her?'
'Not a lot.'
'And the girl – Katherine, is it? – Frank, that was a terrible business. Nothing worse.' He broke off a piece of bread and wiped it round his plate. 'Coping, is she?'
'I'm not sure.'
'And you?'
Elder said nothing.
Framlingham leaned forward. 'All this kowtowing to civilised values and decency is all very well, but, cases like that, left to me, the bastard would've been given a taste of his own medicine and then sent for the long drop off some nice corded rope.'
The waiter, a sprig of holly pinned to his red waistcoat, had reappeared, smiling, at the table.
Oil ran down between Framlingham's fingers. 'Calves' liver's good, Frank. Sage and butter, nice and simple.'
Elder nodded, looked quickly down the menu and plumped for lamb cutlets with rosemary, saute potatoes and spinach.
'You'll have some wine, Frank? Red or white?'
'Red?'
Framlingham ordered a bottle of Da Luca Primitivo and some mineral water and for ten or so minutes they allowed themselves to gossip about half-remembered colleagues. Framlingham's liver leaked blood, pink across the plate.
'What I have to wonder, Frank, this current business, Maddy Birch, why it matters so much? To you, I mean.'
'I've told you, we worked together.'
'Come on, Frank, it's got to be more than that.'
Elder shook his head. 'I knew her, liked her. That was all.'
Framlingham poured more wine. 'More than fifteen years ago. Around the time Katherine was born, a little after? You were tupping her, Frank, no great disgrace. Times like that, it happens. Feeling a little trapped, I shouldn't wonder. You looked around and there she was. Young, available I dare say.'
'It wasn't like that.'
Framlingham laughed. 'For Christ's sake, Frank, spare us the holier-than-thou. We've all been there. If we're lucky seen it slip between the sheets and out of sight, no one any the wiser.'
Elder bit into a piece of lamb. Well done was what he'd asked for and well done was what he'd got.
'Admit it, Frank. You had her. Once, twice, half a hundred times. That doesn't matter.'
'No.'
Framlingham read the seriousness in his face.
'It's worse then. You didn't have her, Frank. Just wanted to. Fancied her and most likely she fancied you. But somehow you let her get stuck inside your head. She was the one you pictured when you were screwing your wife or jerking off in the shower.'
Elder reached for the bottle and refilled his glass. 'She's dead and I want to know why. I want whoever was responsible to be caught. Is that so wrong?'
'No, it's not wrong. Not at all. It's more than that, though, Frank. More than wanting.'
'What do you mean?'
Framlingham smiled. 'Come on, Frank, you've not come all this way for a fair-to-middling lunch and a few questions asked and maybe answered. You might not want to sign back on full-time, but you'd not mind a bite at this. Am I right?'
'I suppose so.'
'Is that a yes?'
'All right. Yes.'
Framlingham steepled his fingers. 'This investigation, Homicide gave it everything. Overtime, technical support staff, everything. Maddy Birch, she was one of ours, after all. Then, when there was no early breakthrough, things were scaled down. You know the way it goes. Normally, by now, some of my lot would be moving in, putting the whole thing under review. Starting from scratch if needs be.'
'And that's not happening?'
Framlingham set down his glass. 'We're having to tread careful, Frank, this one, with Shields in charge.'
'I don't understand.'
'Come on, Frank. A woman officer and black. If we're seen elbowing her aside…'
'That's ridiculous.'
'Politics, Frank, that's what it is. Perception. That's what matters. I doubt she'd play the race card herself, Shields, but there's others who would.' He sighed. 'It's a quagmire, Frank. A bloody mess. On the one hand we're instigating anti-racist policies left, right and centre, practically dragging ethnic minorities off the streets and begging them into uniform, and at the same time, we'll spend half a million pounds to prove some member of the Black
