The Stranger You Know (2 page)

‘We got a result,’ I pointed out.

‘Anyone could have got it. Even you.’

‘We did a good job.’

‘The local murder team could have handled it.’

‘They were too busy.’

‘Is that what the boss told you?’ He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and walked faster. I lengthened my stride to keep up.

‘Why else would he send us up there?’

‘Why indeed?’

I realised I wasn’t going to get an answer out of Derwent. Besides, I wasn’t sure I wanted one. There was a chance he was referring to the fact that I was out of favour with the boss, and I couldn’t imagine that Derwent would be pleased if he knew about it. Especially if he knew why.

I’d have been sensible to keep my mouth shut and walk in silence, but there was something I wanted to know. ‘You were a bit off with Dr Early. What was the problem?’

Derwent’s jaw clenched. ‘She shouldn’t be doing that job in her condition.’

‘She’s more than capable of doing it.’

‘If you say so. She probably won’t even be able to reach the table to do the PM.’

‘I’m sure she’ll manage.’

‘She shouldn’t have to.’ Derwent flipped up the collar of his coat, hunching his shoulders as a scattering of rain spat in our faces. ‘It’s no job for a woman anyway. But when she’s got a baby on board, she shouldn’t be near dead bodies.’

‘You are so old-fashioned it’s untrue. Are you worried her unborn child will see the corpses and be upset? Wombs don’t come with much of a view.’

‘It’s just not right.’ His voice was flat. No more arguing.

I held my tongue until we got to the tube station and discovered that two lines were closed, just in time for the evening rush hour. We forced our way onto a packed Metropolitan line train to Baker Street, switched to the Bakerloo line and suffered as far as Charing Cross. It was a positive pleasure to resurface from the super-heated, stale depths of the Underground, even though the cold autumn air made my head ring as if I’d just been slapped.

Even with the inspector as a companion it wasn’t a hardship to walk through Trafalgar Square and on down Whitehall as the lights came on. It had rained properly while we were on the tube, a short but sharp cloudburst, and the pavement had a glassy sheen. Fallen leaves were scattered across the ground, flattened against it by the rain, looking as if they had been varnished to it. The going was slick and my shoes weren’t designed for it. Opposite the Cenotaph I slid sideways and collided with Derwent, clutching his arm for support. He bent his arm so his biceps bulged under my fingers. I snatched my hand away.

‘Steady on,’ Derwent said.

‘It’s the leaves.’

‘I know you, Kerrigan. Any excuse to cop a feel.’ He crooked his arm again. ‘Come on. Hang on to Uncle Josh. I’ll look after you.’

‘I can manage, thank you.’

‘It’s not a sign of weakness, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s good to recognise your shortcomings. Look at Dr Early. She knew she couldn’t shift that body on her own so she asked for help. You could take a lesson from that. Accept help when it’s offered.’

‘Is that what you do?’

He laughed. ‘I don’t
need
any help.’

‘Of course not. The very idea.’

‘Seriously, if you need to hold on to my arm, do it.’

‘I would if I did, but I don’t.’ I would rather take off my shoes and walk barefoot than reinforce Derwent’s ideas of chivalry. He would see it as proof of what he’d always thought – women need looking after. And I was junior to him, as well as being female, so he was totally comfortable with patronising me.

It made me want to scream.

We turned the corner into Parliament Square and I gazed across at the Houses of Parliament, not yet tired of staring at them even though I saw them every day on my way to work. They were a Victorian idea of medieval grandeur and there was something fantastic about them, something unreal about the delicate tracery, the honey-coloured stone, the soaring gilt-topped towers. From here, Britain had ruled the world, temporarily, and the buildings remembered. They were a physical manifestation of the superiority complex that was bred into the British, my father had said once. He had little time for the Empire and less sympathy for the country he lived in. I didn’t think you could characterise a whole nation that way, but then I wasn’t in the comfortable position of being foreign. Nor could I count myself as British. I was born in London of Irish parents, bred and raised as an Irish girl, despite the fact that we lived in Carshalton rather than Killybegs. I’d learned to dance the Walls of Limerick and played ‘Down by the Sally Gardens’ on the tin whistle and struggled into thick, sheep-smelling Aran jumpers knitted by relations and swapped the soda bread in my packed lunches for my friends’ white crustless sandwiches. I’d played camogie, badly, at weekends, and played hockey equally badly at school. I was Irish by blood and English by accident and I didn’t belong to either tradition, or anywhere else. I’d grown up feeling as if I’d lost something and it was only now I was starting to wonder if it mattered.

Derwent threw out an arm. ‘Look at that. What a disgrace.’

‘The Houses of Parliament?’ I asked, surprised. I should have known Derwent was unlikely to be experiencing post-colonial guilt.

‘Those fuckers. Shouldn’t be allowed.’ He was referring to the protesters camping on the grass in the middle of Parliament Square, occupying the space where the anti-war crowd had maintained their vigil, and where the demonstrations against globalisation had raged. There were regular police operations to clear the lawn, but somehow the campaigners came back in ones and twos, and it was rare to see it empty.

I tried to read the banners but it was hard to see them in the dusk, especially since they were rain-sodden. ‘Capitalism is evil?’

‘Dads Matter.’

‘Oh, them.’ The Dads Matter group was the militant alternative to Fathers for Justice, a pressure group for men who felt they had been victimised by the family courts. Dads Matter was small but growing and prone to extravagant publicity seeking. Its leader was Philip Pace, a handsome, charismatic forty-year-old with a background in PR. He was a smooth talker, a regular interviewee on news and current affairs programmes and had made the Top Ten Most Eligible Males list in
Tatler
the previous year. I didn’t see the attraction myself, but then I wasn’t all that keen on zealots. As the public face of Dads Matter, he made it his business to be reasonable and moderate, but as a group they were neither. ‘What’s their new campaign? Twenty-Twenty?’

‘Someone hasn’t been paying attention to briefings,’ Derwent said. ‘It’s Fifty-Fifty. They want the courts to split custody of children equally between parents. No exceptions.’

‘Oh, that sounds reasonable. What about abusers? What about protecting children from that?’

‘Dads don’t harm their children. They love them.’ For once, Derwent’s ultra-sarcasm had a decent target.

‘What bullshit.’

‘You don’t think fathers have rights?’ Derwent’s eyebrows were hovering around his hairline. ‘I thought you were a liberal, Kerrigan. If I said feminism was wank, you’d report me.’

‘You say that frequently, and I haven’t yet. Anyway, it’s not the same thing. The courts make their decisions on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes the mothers get full custody because the dads aren’t fit to be involved with their families. These men are just sore losers.’

‘Doesn’t mean they’re not dangerous. You know they’ve been sharing tactics with extremist anti-abortion activists in the States, don’t you?’

‘I didn’t, actually.’ I was amazed that Derwent did. He generally didn’t bother with reading briefings. In fact, I wasn’t aware of him having read anything properly since we’d been working together.

‘Pace was over in Washington recently, trying to get a US branch up and running. He appeared on a platform with the pro-lifers at a massive rally, though he doesn’t want that to get out in this country in case it puts people off. They’ve got a lot in common, though. It’s all about the sanctity of the family, isn’t it? Two-parent happy families with hundreds of smiling, cheerful children. Fucking fantasyland. If you didn’t read the briefing notes you’ll have missed this too: they found a Dads Matter-affiliated messageboard on the Internet with a list of names and addresses for family court judges and their staff. Everyone is very jumpy about it. They’re expecting parcel bombs and anthrax and God knows what.’

‘How did I miss all of this?’ I felt as if I hadn’t done my homework and I’d been caught by my least favourite teacher – which was basically what had happened.

‘Dunno. Maybe you’re too busy concentrating on what’s right in front of you to get a decent idea of the big picture. That’s why you’re a DC. You do all right at the small stuff, but you need a bit of a flair for strategy at my level.’

Maybe if you didn’t leave all the paperwork and form filling to me I’d have time to read about the big picture
. ‘Thanks for the advice.’

‘Freely given,’ he said. ‘Listen and learn.’

‘I do. Every day.’ It was true. If I wanted to know about misogyny, right-wing conspiracy theories or competition-grade swearing, working with Derwent was roughly equivalent to a third-level education.

Our route took us close to where the protesters stood, rain-blasted and pathetic, huddled in their anoraks like penguins in nylon hoods. Most were middle-aged and a touch overweight. They didn’t look dangerous.

‘They can’t all be evil, and they must miss their children,’ I said.

‘Pack of whingers. If they loved their kids so much they wouldn’t have left them in the first place.’ He glowered at them. ‘Anyone who’s got the nerve to sit under the statue of the greatest Englishman who ever lived and make it look like a gypsy camp has got no principles and no soul.’

‘Winston Churchill?’

‘Who else?’ He looked at me as if he was waiting for me to argue, but I knew better than to try. Derwent needed a fight occasionally, to do something with the aggression he seemed to generate just by breathing. But I was not going to be his punchbag today.

I could have sworn his ears drooped.

Chapter 2

Back at the office, Derwent threw himself into his chair and waved at me imperiously.

‘Go and find the boss and tell him where we are with the case.’

I felt a thud of dismay. ‘Don’t you want to do it?’

‘I’ve got things to do.’

‘So have I.’

‘Mine are more important.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I’m senior to you so whatever I have to do is bound to be more important.’ As he said it he was reaching over to pick up a copy of the
Standard
that someone had left on a nearby desk.

‘Look, I’d really rather not—’ I started to say.

‘Not interested. Tell someone who cares.’ He glanced up at me. ‘Why are you still here?’

I turned on my heel and stalked across the room towards the only enclosed office, where Chief Superintendent Charles Godley was usually to be found. I rapped on the door and it opened as I did so, Godley stepping towards me so that we almost collided. I apologised at the same time as he did. My face had been flaming already because I was livid with Derwent, but embarrassment added an extra touch of heat to my cheeks. I was aware of Derwent grinning at his desk on the other side of the room, and the speculative glances from my other colleagues across the tops of their monitors. I knew, even if Godley didn’t, that there was frequent, ribald speculation he had brought me on to his team because he wanted to sleep with me. I knew that Godley attracted rumours of that sort like roses attract greenflies; he was head-turningly handsome with ice-blue eyes and prematurely silver hair, and I was the first woman he had recruited in a long time, though not the last. I also knew that people had picked up on the fact that I was extremely awkward around him all of a sudden. The general theory was that we had had an affair and I had ended it, or he had ended it, or his wife had found out and
she
had ended it.

They couldn’t have been more wrong.

‘Did you want something, Maeve?’

‘DI Derwent asked me to update you about the Somers Town murder – Princess Gordon. We’ve got one in custody.’

‘Her husband?’

‘Partner.’

‘Give me the details.’ Instead of inviting me into his office he stayed where he was, standing in the doorway, in plain sight of everyone on the team. Maybe he did know about the rumours after all.

Briefly, I explained what we had found out. Godley listened, his blue eyes trained on my face. He had a gift for total concentration on whatever was in front of him, and it was a large part of his charm that he made you feel as if you were the only person in the world when he was listening to you. I could have done without the rapt attention, all the same. It made me too aware of my voice, my face, my tendency to wave my hands around while I was explaining things, my suspicion that my hair had gone frizzy in the damp evening air.

Not that he cared about any of that. He cared about the fact that I had worked out, beyond any doubt, that he was utterly, totally corrupt. He was paid by one of London’s biggest drug dealers, a ruthless gangster with an appalling record of violence, and I wasn’t sure exactly what Godley did for him in return. I didn’t want to know. I had worshipped the superintendent, blindly, and finding out that he was a fake made me more sad than angry. And for all that he was on the take, he was still a supremely gifted police officer.

I’d promised him I wouldn’t give him away, because it was none of my business and I couldn’t throw him to the wolves. He’d promised me it made no difference to how he did his job, and he’d also promised not to treat me any differently. But he had lied about that, and I was starting to change my mind about interfering. I still couldn’t reconcile the two facts: he was a boss who inspired total loyalty in everyone who worked with him, and he gave away inside information for money. He’d said it was more complicated than I knew, and I wanted to believe him, I really did.

I just couldn’t trust him.

‘And the sister?’ Godley asked.