Power Games (25 page)

‘Of course,' Kate observed, ‘exercise makes you very thirsty, doesn't it? I wonder what you drink when you're thirsty, Mrs Coutts? Water? Or do you prefer fruit juice?'

‘This whole conversation is quite bizarre, quite surreal,' Coutts said. ‘You'll be aware—' She stopped short. Yes, she was rattled, wasn't she?

‘Aware of what, Mrs Coutts? I didn't quite catch that,' Ford said politely.

Coutts shifted her weight to the other foot. All three were still standing. Kate forced herself to unbrace her bruised knees. The more relaxed she was, the better she could react.

Coutts was reacting, too. Trying to retrieve what must have been a gaffe, she smiled, dropped the pitch of her voice. ‘You'll be aware that I have other appointments—'

‘At five o'clock? Most people are packing up to go home,' Ford said. ‘In any case, I'd like to talk a little more. Why don't we all sit down? Maybe your secretary could organise a pot of tea. I'll just ask her, shall I?' As he turned, he flickered a minute wink to Kate. Hard cops, it said, were not asked to organise tea.

Neither did hard cops normally wear light summer dresses which fell in soft folds as she sat on one of those elegant chairs. She might just manage a feminine cross at the ankles.

What would the house be like? What would she find when she got home?

Ford was back. He sat heavily in the other chair. Mrs Coutts withdrew to hers, the far side of the desk.

Mistake. They'd made a big mistake. OK, she wouldn't be the sort of woman to keep a firearm in a desk drawer, but there might be other things—

Kate was on her feet. She headed for the window behind Coutts, as if to throw it open and let in spring air. But stopped, turning swiftly. Ford's eyebrows moved up and down. She nodded curtly. If only they were a team, not two colleagues thrust together by chance.

Kate's new position seemed to throw Coutts even more than it threw Ford, however. The only way she could see both was to push back from the desk, and turn her chair through ninety degrees. Good. She couldn't reach the desk drawers even if she wanted to, not quickly and easily.

A knock at the door. The secretary with a tea tray: teapot, water jug, fine china. Ford, facial lines more austere than ever, stirred the tea and poured three cups. ‘Milk and sugar, Mrs Coutts?'

‘Neither, thank you.' She produced a bleak, self-derisory smile. ‘A milk allergy, Superintendent.'

Was this the start of a confession? If so, the tension between them was broken by the bathos of a mobile phone chirrup. Ford's. Whatever the message from the other end, he kept his face completely impassive. The monosyllables he grunted revealed as little.

‘Very well,' he said at last, ending the call. He looked first at Kate, then at Coutts. ‘I think it would be better,' he said, ‘to continue this conversation back at Steelhouse Lane. Mrs Coutts, if you want your solicitor present, I think you should phone him.'

 

Wherever Mrs Coutts was languishing, Kate was damned sure it wouldn't be a standard cell – not a member of the Police Committee and the mother of a detective inspector. But languish she must, until what Rod Neville – why wasn't he back in Kings Heath with the MIT? – referred to as a little local difficulty was sorted out.

Face unreadable, he ushered Kate into his room. There his poise deserted him. He faced her, apparently wanting to kiss her but unable to. At last, he reached a tentative hand to her face, pushing her hair behind her ear. ‘Oh, Kate …'

‘What is it, Rod?'

‘God, I don't know what. I think you're the bravest, gutsiest woman I know. You hear your house is on fire and you carry on doing the job. But you shouldn't have, Kate, you shouldn't have. What if the other side find out you were personally involved?'

His fingers still in her hair, she considered. ‘Rod: that call never reached me. Dick Ford and I never had a call. I kept my mobile switched off, didn't I?'

‘Have you thought of the consequences of lying under oath?'

‘You sound like Graham Harvey,' she said flatly. ‘Of course I have. But no one will ever know about the call, so I won't have to perjure myself. But,' she added ruefully, ‘clearly I know now, so I won't be questioning her, at least.'

He shook his head. ‘No.'

She looked him straight in the eye. ‘What's the damage, Rod? What did they do to my house?'

His other hand gripped her shoulder. ‘Enough. Could be a lot worse. That tiled floor in your vestibule saved you. But there's smoke and water damage to the front of the house. The back's relatively untouched. Habitable, the fire people say. And Guljar – he phoned in ten minutes ago. Habitable.'

‘It wasn't our art-dealer friend who did that.'

‘No.'

‘Any idea who did?'

He shook his head. Not because he didn't know, she thought. More because he didn't want to say. Her insistence on going to Lichfield had shocked him more than she'd expected.

‘Rod?'

‘It's out of my hands, Kate. Bent policemen don't get investigated by their day-to-day colleagues, do they?'

‘So what now?'

‘You go back to your house. Sort out insurance and security and whatever. Take a few days off if needs be. Compassionate leave, whatever. Why not?'

She was shaking her head violently.

‘I'll do what I have to do to the house. But there must be something I can do, behind the scenes, to help tie up this lot.'

‘You'll have to let me think about that. I'll have to take advice.' He pulled away his hands, shoving them deep in his pockets like a guilty schoolboy.

‘Think about something else, then, Rod. Tomorrow is Tuesday. Tennis coaching day. I still want to play tomorrow. I want it known I'm playing tomorrow. To everyone.'

‘You want to be a
decoy
?' His eyes widened.

‘A bit more active than your normal tethered goat, but yes, a decoy.'

‘What sort of predator are you expecting to attract?'

‘I've no idea. What interests me more is who will be there to catch the predator. Without him knowing they'll be there.'

‘Leave that to me.'

So how was he speaking? Superintendent to sergeant? Or man to woman? She doubted if he knew any more than she did.

‘Of course. The plan was I should walk down to the centre, and Mark would collect me. You'll let me know if you want changes?'

‘Jesus. You'd be so bloody vulnerable …'

‘Quite. Which is where the team comes in, as Sue suggested. I take it someone will brief me? Or is it more convincing if I don't know the details?' Despite herself, she had to stop. Biting her lip, she turned away. Her house. The house she'd worked so hard to make her home. She wailed with the pain of it.

Knowing in another single agonising second that the man she'd slept with wasn't going to comfort her, she opened the door and fled from his room.

Sue one side of her, Colin the other, Kate stared at her house from the road. Habitable, was it? Well, she supposed it was.

What she didn't expect was to see Alf emerging from her entry. ‘Soon sort that out.' He jerked his thumb at the tarpaulin where the front door had once been. The inner door, which she'd been to such pains to have re-glazed with stained glass, was a shell of burnt wood dumped on her front garden. ‘I'll get a door for you now – no time to hang it properly tonight but I'll fix it, inside and out. You'll have to use the back door for a bit. Kettle's on, as a matter of fact.'

She didn't expect to see Stephen ready with a teapot, either.

His smile was embarrassed. ‘I think I may have made it out to be worse than it was,' he said. ‘There's actually not all that much damage. Considering.'

Apart from muddy footprints and something chuntering away in her washing-machine, the kitchen was just as she'd left it. So, as she pushed her way gingerly through, was the living room. Apart from the smell of smoke and burnt paint. But beyond the living room were the tiny hall and the vestibule. Both stinking messes. God knew what the dining room would be like. Not to mention the front bedroom.

‘The FIT have been in, have they?' she asked Colin, who had his hands on her shoulders.

‘Yes. Complete with dog,' he said.

‘Did they say anything?'

He shook his head.

‘Did the dog get excited?'

‘It wagged its tail a lot.'

Did that mean it had found petrol? Well, that was the usual m.o. for domestic arson. Nothing to get excited about. Excited! This was her own house. But better be interested than appalled.

‘I gather your front bedroom's not very well. But Stephen's been trying to sort out the damage,' Sue, who'd not followed them, announced. ‘Ready to see?'

He'd propped up the carpets to dry and set a fan heater going. He'd actually saved the curtains, Sue said, and set them to wash.

‘If I know you, you'll insist on staying,' Sue added. ‘But you know there's a bed for you at my place.'

‘Thanks, Sue. But you're right. I do want to stay here.'

‘I'll go get my sleeping bag,' Colin said.

And with that she couldn't argue.

 

No Rod in her bed tonight. A good job he'd chickened out, really, considering that Colin was occupying the living room. Perhaps Sue had told him. Not warning him off – no, she couldn't have guessed – merely passing on news about two of his squad. But Kate would have liked a phone call. Some reassurance that – well, she didn't know what she wanted. Clearly things had gone pear-shaped when she'd carried on to Lichfield and Mrs Coutts; but Ford had at very least connived with her. If he'd insisted on turning back, she'd have had to go. But Ford had not only continued to drive her, he'd worked with her.

No. She mustn't try to blame anyone except herself. She deserved a flea in the ear from her boss. But not silence from her lover.

Whisky; a warm bath, complete with aromatherapy oils Colin had conjured from somewhere; homoeopathic sleeping pills courtesy of Stephen, who'd joined her and Colin in a balti – she ought to sleep, oughtn't she? Just as she was resigning herself to a night of insomnia, however, the phone rang. Rod.

‘I'm sorry. I'd no idea it was so late. I've been busy setting things up for tomorrow. I promise you, you'll be quite safe, whatever happens. And we've no reason to believe they'll do anything. But you – Kate, you must promise me you'll pull out if anything worries you. Anything at all.' His voice gave little away until that last sentence.

She might as well be honest. ‘I'm scared, Rod. And what really scares me is I don't know what I'm scared of. It's one thing looking down a barrel of a gun and working out a strategy. It's quite another—' She took a deep breath. ‘I'm sure I shall have a perfectly normal lesson.' No, that didn't sound right. ‘Rod – what about Jason, my coach? He's a nice kid—'

‘I'm coming round—'

Oh, yes! ‘You can't.'

‘Don't you want me to?'

‘Of course I do. But you'll fall over Colin if you do. Maybe literally.'

She was surprised when he laughed. ‘Only Colin? Well, maybe I can go to bed a slightly happier man. But if you can't sleep. If you want me – to hell with everything. Just phone and I'll come. Promise?'

She promised.

 

Some of those vans would be concealing her colleagues. Some might be concealing other people. But she must do as she'd done before. Simply trust the organisation. Trust Rod. Who would have come round if she'd asked.

 

The lesson went surprisingly well. OK, her knees were sore, and the palms of her hands quite painful. But she could ignore that. So her forehands were good, the backhands – oh, yes, there must be other backhands to investigate – pretty efficient. Her serve had improved beyond measure. But as the end of the lesson approached, everything went to bits.

‘Kate – are you OK?' Jason came to the net and peered at her.

‘Fine. No. Not fine. I'm scared. And I tell you, I don't know what I'm scared of.' She looked at her watch. ‘Let me pay you now. Then just scarper. Don't wait for me. Don't try to leave the building with me. Understand?'

‘No – I—'

‘Just do it anyway. Just look as if you're in a hurry, pack your things, wave me goodbye. And go.'

‘Are you sure? – there's a good five minutes—'

‘Same time next week? OK? Now, go!'

Shaking his head, he gathered his gear – mobile phone, drinks bottles, huge bag – more slowly than she thought she could endure without screaming at him. At last. Now to her own kit. Just the tracksuit to pull on. Racquet and water into the bag. And walk towards whatever it was that was waiting. In the foyer? In the car park? Or just in her mind?

One familiar face: the woman on Reception was the one who'd been helpful – was it only a week ago?

She smiled at Kate. ‘Same time, same court next week?' she asked, activating the computer. She was a pretty kid. Fine blonde hair, in a straggly bun. Good skin. Good features. A book on child psychology to read when things were slack.

‘Please. A coaching session with Jason. Shall I pay now?' Kate heaved her bag on to the counter. Fumbled for her purse.

Slowly, slowly fumbled for her purse. Because there was someone behind her. A man in a tracksuit – she could see his reflection in the office door behind the computer. A man in a tracksuit with a drinks bottle. Which he was casually opening as he waited.

This bottle wouldn't have juice.

The bag! ‘Get down,' Kate yelled. She threw the bag hard at the girl who screamed. And whirled back herself to elbow him hard in the guts as the liquid flew in a silent and sinister parabola.

‘Amateurish from start to finish,' Rod was saying coolly.