superintendent out of retirement to contribute his wisdom. And harp on about how much better police work was in the good old days.’
‘So you’ll be reporting to him?’
She shifted on the sofa. They’d bought it a couple of years ago from a Scandinavian store that offered designer living on a budget. It was blue and elegant and looked wonderful in the catalogue. It was also astonishingly uncomfortable. ‘No, retired officers don’t have full police powers. Nominally, I’ll be in charge.’
‘What’s the problem, then?’ he murmured. ‘Sounds fascinating to me. Go for it. It could be just the change you need.’
Could it? Hannah had feared that she’d been lucky in her career. What if her luck had run out? Was the collapse of the Patel trial her fault? Of course, witnesses fail to turn up every day of the week. Talk to any officer who has worked in Merseyside or the Met, they’ll say it’s an occupational hazard. In any city, intimidation of people due to give evidence is a way of life.
But this was a high-profile murder and she’d been sure that Golac would see it through. Of course, she should have sat on the fence with the ACC. If the investigation had been allowed to die quietly once further enquiries drew a blank, no one would have complained. No one mourned Sudhakar Rao. His widow had remarried and his two daughters had been so young at the time of his death that they could barely remember him. Would it really have mattered if Sandeep Patel had been allowed to escape prosecution? Hannah thought it would. Even after ten years in the police, she still wasn’t cynical enough to abandon all belief in doing the right thing simply because it was the right thing. But, clearly naive. Her efforts had come to nothing and Patel had been allowed to put two fingers up to justice.
‘Even if this new team isn’t just a rest home for detectives who have screwed up,’ she said, ‘it isn’t…’
‘Oh, don’t you know anything, for God’s sake? It’s Gerard Manley Hopkins! Any fool should know that.’
Hannah blinked and then realised that Marc was shouting at the hapless quiz show contestant. The man on the small screen had developed a nervous tic. The questionmaster’s trademark sarcasm wasn’t helping.
‘Tennyson?’ the man enquired, with a mixture of hope and panic.
‘Doh!’ Marc flicked the remote so that the crushed features of the ignoramus vanished. ‘Imagine Tennyson writing
‘Sorry, was I distracting you?’
‘All right. Don’t start.’ Marc put his hands up in mock surrender. ‘You’ve had a bad day, a miserable experience, and it’s a shame. Just don’t take it out on me, okay?’
‘I wasn’t…’
‘Look,’ he said, stretching a bony arm around her, ‘I was listening to you, honest. Just remember, you’re not the only one who has bad days. The bank manager was telling me this afternoon to carry less stock. The accounts aren’t looking too clever at the moment. All the same, I try not to bring these things home, right? Trouble is, you let that woman get to you. Has it crossed your mind she could be right?’
‘There’s a first time for everything,’ Hannah said bitchily. ‘I just have this sneaking feeling that I’m being set up to fail. Or not to succeed, which is just as bad.’
‘Listen, cold cases are sexy at the moment.’ His hand strayed to her breast. ‘Journalists love them. Maybe she thinks she’s doing you a kindness.’
‘Moving me out of the firing line? Perhaps. But she’s also taking away my best chance of redeeming myself after Sandeep Patel. Outcomes, that’s the name of the game. The police authority loves to see them. Budgets are fixed, reputations won and lost, all because of outcomes. Any progress I’ve made so far has been because I’ve delivered the right outcomes. And then came the Patel trial, and a shedload of negative publicity.’
He began to nibble at her ear. ‘You’ll get over it.’
‘Sure,’ she said, wriggling away, ‘but if I’m shuffled into reviewing cold cases, it won’t only be Kelsen who sees it as a sort of demotion. And far worse, I won’t be able to do much to claw back my credibility. Let’s face it, there’s often a very good reason why cases go cold. It’s because they’re bloody difficult to solve.’
‘But running a small team, you can be hands-on, conduct key interviews yourself if you want to.’
‘I suppose.’
With infinite care and patience, he undid a couple of buttons on her blouse. ‘So what are you going to do at make-your-mind-up time? Resist — or submit?’
He put on such a comically lascivious expression as he unbuckled his jeans that she couldn’t help laughing. ‘Submit, of course.’ She leaned back against the sofa. The TV remote was digging into her thigh and she threw it on to the floor. As he eased himself on top of her, she whispered, ‘You never know, miracles happen. I may find I enjoy it.’
In bed that night, she rolled over and turned to face him. They had switched off the light, but the moon was shining in through a gap in the curtains. The fair hair was flopping over his face, the way she’d always loved, and she couldn’t resist giving his cheek a kiss. His skin was smooth and warm and smelled of lemon soap. He was a fastidiously clean man; that was something she’d liked about him early on, though now it counted for less. His eyelids were drooping and she almost let him slip out of consciousness, but there was something she wanted to get out in the open before it created a barrier between them.
‘Marc, I’ve been thinking. Suppose I accept this job…’
‘You should,’ he said sleepily. ‘It’ll be fine.’
She took a breath and summoned up her courage. ‘Okay, when I say yes, I’ll be asking the ACC if I can have Nick Lowther on the team.’
Marc lifted himself up and pushed the hair out of his eyes. He leaned on his elbows, staring at her. When he spoke, his voice was tight. ‘Why do you need him?’
‘He knows me, I know him. We can trust each other. That’s important, in a unit like this. God knows what the retired guru will be like. I don’t just want any old sergeant. I need someone who’s on my side.’
Marc grunted. ‘Just as long as…’
‘What?’
‘Oh, nothing.’
He turned away. She put her hand on his bony shoulder. His whole body was taut with suppressed anger.
‘Marc, listen, you’ve got the wrong idea about Nick Lowther. We’re friends, that’s all. It’s never been any more than that.’
No answer.
She felt as though a rope had been pulled tight around her midriff, squeezing the breath out of her. She didn’t want to be trussed up, she had to break free.
‘Marc,’ she said, ‘Talk to me. I know you’re awake.’
‘Friends?’ he muttered. ‘He’d like to be more than that.’
‘He’s a married man.’
‘Ah, but is he a happily married man?’
‘Oh God, Marc. I can’t imagine why you’re so…so…’
He turned over again. ‘Jealous?’
The rope slackened a bit, now that the word was out in the open. Usually it lingered unspoken, somewhere in the air between them.
‘Protective.’ She was willing to compromise, but it took two.
‘He’d love to get into your knickers.’
‘You’re imagining it.’
Marc put his arm around her, started to caress her rump. ‘I’m sorry, darling. It’s not that I don’t trust you…’
Even as she closed her eyes, her thoughts were racing.
But that’s not true, you’ve never trusted me. Not altogether, not with Nick, not with any other man I admit a liking for. After all these years, why can’t you?
‘You’ve made the right decision, Hannah.’ The ACC beamed, magnanimous in triumph. Another tricky people problem resolved, another box about to be ticked. ‘I’m absolutely sure you won’t regret it.’
On a wet and windy morning, the breakfast TV weathergirl had warned of ridges of low pressure sweeping in from the west. The ACC’s room offered a temperate, climate-controlled refuge. Through the colour-coordinated
