'You can go through.'
Maddy knocked, took a breath, and entered. Lean, bespectacled, nicely balding, Assistant Commissioner Harkin smiled from behind his desk. Tie knotted neatly and clipped, he was in shirtsleeves, cuffs turned back. Younger than quite a few of the officers below him, Mallory included, he was not so many years older than Maddy herself.
'Detective Sergeant. Maddy. You'd rather sit or stand?'
'Stand, sir, if that's all right.'
'Of course, whatever you're comfortable with. I'm sure this won't take long.'
The room was airless but not unpleasant, a faint background odour of antiseptic and flowers. Anonymous paintings on the walls. A water carafe and glasses on a narrow table to one side. It reminded Maddy of the lounge at Gatwick Airport, the one time she'd been bumped up to business class.
Harkin tapped papers on his desk. 'You've not been in the unit long.'
'No, sir.'
'Settling down?'
'Yes, sir. I think so.'
'Yesterday,' he said. 'First thing that has to be made clear, the manner in which you acquitted yourself, first rate. Absolutely first rate.' He beamed as though he had been praising himself. 'Everything I've heard, the Detective Superintendent's report – well, you heard him last night, of course, extolling your virtues at great length – it all points to a good job well done. Initiative. Steady head. Guts. Above all, guts. Going up against an armed man. Commendation material, I'd not be surprised.'
'Thank you, sir.'
'Do you no harm when it comes to promotion. None at all. You've taken the inspector's examination, I dare say?'
'Twice, sir.'
'Hmm. Well, qualities will out. Eventually. Your kind of quality. In the field.' He coughed into the back of his hand. 'There'll be an inquiry, of course. Fatal shooting. Officers from another force. Standard procedure.'
'Yes, sir, I understand.'
'And you've no concerns, I take it?'
'Concerns, sir?'
'Regarding the inquiry. Sequence of events and so on.'
'Sir?'
'No doubt in your mind as to how it all played out?'
Maddy could feel the sweat prickling beneath her arms. 'No, sir.'
Harkin nodded and glanced towards the window as if something outside had suddenly claimed his interest. 'Detective Superintendent Mallory's actions, appropriate, you'd say, to the situation?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Good. Excellent.'
Once she'd noticed a slight tic in the assistant commissioner's left eye, Maddy was finding it difficult not to stare; she looked at the floor instead.
'You, personally,' Harkin said. 'Incidents like these, violent death, sometimes takes a little while for them to settle in the mind.'
'Yes, sir, I'm sure.'
'If there's any help you feel that we can offer… a little personal time, maybe. A chat with someone versed in these things, someone professional…'
'A psychiatrist, sir?'
'That sort of thing.'
'I don't think there's any need. Really. I'm fine.'
'Yes, yes. I'm sure you are.' Harkin rearranged papers on his desk. 'If there's nothing else then…'
'DC Draper, sir, I was wondering if there was any news?'
'Ah.' Harkin removed his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb. 'A shame about DC Draper. Great shame.'
One of the first things Paul Draper had done, he and Maddy chatting together on their first day in the squad, was to show her a photograph of his wife and kid. Alice and Ben. On holiday somewhere in the north-west. Blackpool. Morecambe. A faint suggestion of sea on the horizon. Alice in a two-piece swimsuit, not a bikini exactly, her figure not yet back to what it once had been, Ben in a little all-in-one on her knee. Alice having to narrow her eyes slightly against the light, but smiling nonetheless, her skin pale, as if unused to the sun.
'You must come round,' he'd said. 'We'll get a takeaway, eat in. Alice'd be chuffed with the company.'
Maddy never had.
Now she sat awkwardly on the edge of a chair. Alice slumped back on the two-seater settee opposite, the child fretting at her breast. Cups of tea on the table, half-cold. Biscuits, some broken fragments of rusk. There'd been photographers outside, a few; one reporter, insistent, from the local whatever-it-was, Journal or Gazette.
'Alice…'
At the sound of Maddy's voice, tears appeared again on Alice Draper's face. How could she not cry? Maddy thought. Twenty-three and a wee boy of no more than six or seven months and then this…
Maddy forced herself to her feet. Through the partly drawn curtains she could see the flats opposite, identical to the one in which she was standing; balcony upon balcony busy with tubs of flowers, rusting bicycles, washing twisting in the late-afternoon breeze. The dark already falling into place.
'It's not bad,' Draper had said. 'Not bad at all. Ex-council, couldn't afford it else. But okay. You wait till you see.'
He looked a little like that guitarist, Maddy had thought, the one who used to play with Morrissey.
Alice had said very little. Before being finally pronounced dead, her young husband had said nothing at all. Flowers from the Metropolitan Police Commissioner lay by the sink, waiting to be put in water. I'll do it before I go, Maddy thought. Wash these cups, make a fresh pot of tea. See if I can't persuade Alice to eat something, a sandwich at least.
While she was waiting for the kettle to boil, Alice switched on the television news.
'Alice,' Maddy said, 'are you sure this is a good idea?'
Colours unnaturally bright, Paul Draper's face flickered for a moment on the screen, then disappeared.
'Alice…'
Seated behind a bank of microphones, the Assistant Commissioner looked sombre yet purposeful.
'From all the information available to me, I have no doubt that the operation was carefully and professionally planned and executed with a high level of competence that does credit to all the officers involved. With regard to the tragic death of a young detective constable…'
Regardless of Alice's wishes, Maddy leaned forward and switched off the set.
Ben was wriggling in his mother's lap, whimpering against her chest.
'Alice, Alice. I think you might be holding him too tight. Do you want me to take him for a minute? Here. That's it. Just while you drink your tea.'
The baby's pale eyes looked at her in wonder when she lifted him towards her and Maddy felt something kick, hard, against the hollow of her insides. When Alice picked up the cup it slipped between her fingers, spilling tea across the table and the floor.
'Never mind,' Maddy said. 'I'll clean it up.'
Alice looked back at her blankly. 'Paul,' she said. 'Paul, Paul.'
'Poor cow.' Vanessa Taylor broke off a piece of chapatti and used it to wipe up what remained of the chicken
