'How was your weekend?' he asked.
'Very nice, I went to my niece's wedding on Saturday, then had a houseful of relatives yesterday. And you?'
'Managed to get out in the country yesterday.'
'Good!' she said. 'You needed a break and some fresh air.' She peered at him more closely. 'You look very pale, you know.'
'Tell me about it.' He took the sheet of paper, already knowing what it was - his agenda for the week. She had produced it every Monday morning for him, for as long as he could remember.
He sat down, the smell of the coffee tantalizing, but the liquid as yet too hot to drink, and scanned the agenda, needing to clear his diary of everything non-essential now he was the SIO on the case.
At ten this morning he was due to attend court for the continuation of the Suresh Hossain trial, and he would have to do that. At 1 p.m. he had a dentist's appointment in Lewes - which would have to be cancelled. At 3 o'clock tomorrow he had a meeting scheduled with South Wales CID for an exchange of information on a known Swansea villain found dead with a snooker cue sticking through his eye on a waste tip near Newhaven. That would have to be rescheduled. On Wednesday he was due at the Police Training College at Bramshill for an update on DNA fingerprinting. Thursday's highlight was the Sussex Police headquarters cricket team - of which he had landed himself the unwelcome headache of being Hon. Sec. - AGM. Friday was clear at the moment, and on Saturday there was a terrorist attack training exercise at Shoreham Harbour - in which he was not involved.
It would have been a nothing week, if it weren't for the Hossain trial and now Operation Salsa. But, then, in his experience, few weeks finished the way he expected them to.
He told Eleanor to reschedule everything except his trial attendances, then rummaged through his post, dictating replies to the most urgent on the pile. He scanned his emails and because time was short and he was a slow typist, dictated replies to those, too. Then he walked along the maze of corridors to the Incident Room. It was already beginning to feel like home to him.
The 8.30 a.m. Operation Salsa briefing meeting was short. There had been no new developments overnight - apart from what he had gleaned from Max Candille, which he kept to himself, and from his visit to Double-M's offices. Hopefully by their next meeting at 6.30 p.m. there might be some news.
Grace drove into Lewes, stopping at a petrol station on the way to buy an egg and bacon sandwich, which he was still munching as he walked up the courthouse steps at 9.50. It was already beginning to feel like a very long day.
The morning proceedings were taken up with in-camera submissions to the Judge by the prosecuting counsel, and all Grace could do was hang around in the waiting room, giving Eleanor some dictation over the phone and speaking to Glenn Branson a couple of times. There was not enough time to get to the office and back during the lunch recess, so instead he went along to his dental appointment after all, for his six-monthly check-up, and to his relief his teeth were fine, although he received a reprimand from the dentist about not brushing his gums carefully enough. But at least no fillings - he dreaded them, always had.
Returning to court at 2 p.m., he discovered he was not going to be needed for the rest of the day, and went back to his office. With the time Operation Salsa was now consuming, a massive backlog was building up on the rest of his paperwork, and he did his best to deal with the most urgent of it.
It was an uneventful afternoon for him, right up until his arrival at the 6 p.m. briefing in the Incident Room. He could tell instantly from the team's faces that there had been a development. It was Bella Moy who told him the news.
'I've just had a call from a Phil Wheeler, Roy - the father of the murdered lad found this afternoon.'
'Tell me?'
'He said he didn't know if it was significant, but apparently his son told him that he'd been chatting with Michael Harrison on a walkie-talkie radio - since - Thursday.'
68
Ashley walked up behind Mark, who was hunched over his desk in front of his computer screen, trying to catch up on his work. He badly owed the architect, the quantity surveyor and the construction company responses to a whole raft of emails on issues that had been raised by the Planning Department over the company's most ambitious project to date, the new Ashdown development of twenty houses.
She slipped her arms around his neck, leaned forward and nuzzled his cheek. He breathed in the heady scents of her fresh, summery cologne and the faint citrus tang of her hair.
Bleary-eyed, he lifted his arms up and cupped her cheeks in his hands. 'We're going to be OK,' he said.
'Of course. We don't do not OK, right?'
'Right.'
Leaning further over, she kissed him on the forehead.
Mark shot a glance across the office at the open doorway, wary every second of the day and night of who might walk through it.
She kissed him again. 'I love you,' she said.
'I love you too, Ashley'
'Do you? You haven't shown me much affection the past few days,' she chided.
'Oh, right, like you've been all over me?'
'Let's put that behind us.' She nibbled his ear, then, unbuttoning his shirt front, slipped her hands inside and began to tease his nipples with her fingers and thumbs. She felt him react almost instantly, heard his sharp intake of breath, felt his chest tighten. Slipping her hands out, she- reached around him, clicked his mouse to exit the program, then whispered into his ear, 'Fuck me.'
'Here?'
