The woman cast her eyes upwards in a parody of exasperation. Then she grinned and pointed at her head. “You found her. Theresa Fowler at your service. Fiona playing the old trick of working on your gender assumptions?”
Irritated with Fiona for setting him up as the perfect model of the prejudiced policeman, Steve walked in with an apologetic shrug. Nothing like starting at a disadvantage, he thought. “What can I say? I fell for it. I apologize. I’m not usually prone to sexist assumptions.” He extended a hand. “Steve Preston.”
“Pleased to meet you, Superintendent.” Her handshake matched his; firm, no nonsense, nothing to prove. “Don’t worry about it. Psychologists find it hard to resist playing silly games. It goes with the territory. Grab a chair and make yourself comfortable. Well, as comfortable as you can on one of those instruments of torture.”
Her smile was infectious, and he found himself returning it. “Call me Steve, please.” He pulled up a plastic bucket chair and sat down. “I take it Fiona has briefed you more fully than she briefed me?”
She shook her head. “Only in the most general terms. She said you had a group of cases you wanted me to run through the crime linkage system. Then if there’s a cluster, I’ve to do a geographical profile. And you’re going to pay me, which is a major plus, I have to tell you.” Terry leaned back in her chair, unconsciously showing off a slim body in black jeans and T — shirt.
“There’s a little bit more to it than that,” Steve said, opening his briefcase and taking out the file Joanne had compiled. He had added four unrelated cases, to test the accuracy of the crime linkage programme, but he wasn’t going to tell Terry that. “First of all, I have to stress that this material is highly confidential.”
“My lips are sealed,” Terry said, pushing them together in a tight pout.
“I don’t doubt it,” he said stiffly, determined to keep things formal. “But I couldn’t help noticing that you share this office. So whenever you leave the office, you’re going to have to take this file with you unless you can be sure it will be secure in here.”
“OK.”
“Even if you’re only popping out to the loo or the coffee machine.”
“Point taken.” She smiled and raised her hands palms outwards in a placatory gesture. “It’s cool, Steve. I understand.”
“I don’t mean to teach you to suck eggs.”
Terry shook her head. “Hey, you’ve never worked with me before, how are you to know I’m not some ditzy blonde?” She widened her eyes, her mobile face a question.
Steve’s turn to grin. “Fiona doesn’t hate me that much. OK, here’s what I’ve got for you. Six rapes and four serious sexual assaults. As Fiona said, I want you to see if there are grounds for believing any or all of them to be linked. If you get a cluster, I’m keen to see what the geographic profile produces. If we get that far, I then want you to enter another location into the geographic profile to see what happens.”
Terry raised one eyebrow. It should have looked pretentious but somehow she avoided that. “Is the other location in the file?”
Steve shook his head. “I don’t want to influence the way you’re thinking. Once I see the results, then we’ll take it from there.”
“Fine by me. How quick do you need it?”
Steve spread his hands. “Yesterday?”
“Yesterday costs extra. But for the regular fee, you can have it tomorrow. On one condition.”
Steve tilted his head slightly, his face suspicious. “One condition?”
“You have dinner with me tomorrow.” Her smile was the calculated flirt of a woman who expects to get her own way.
Steve felt hot blood flushing his cheeks. “I have dinner with you?”
“Is it such a strange idea?”
He forced himself to cling on to his professional reserve. “I just don’t think it’s a very good one.”
“Why? You’re not married, are you?”
“No, but…”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“I’m not in the habit of mixing business and pleasure,” he said, aware as he spoke that he sounded like the kind of stuffed shirt he’d always prayed he’d never become.
“Where else do people like us meet interesting dinner companions? We don’t have to talk about work, you know,” Terry said. “I won’t quiz you about your ten greatest cases if you don’t ask me to define Piagetian theory. Come on, what have you got to lose? Even if you have a totally crap time, it’s only going to be for a few hours. And I won’t tell if you don’t.”
Pleasantly bewildered but still wary, Steve ran a hand through his dark hair. “This is all rather sudden.”
She shrugged. “Life’s too short. You’ve got to seize the moment.”
“But why me?”
“God, you lot know how to ask questions, don’t you?” Now she was laughing, even white teeth gleaming like the big bad wolf. “Because you’ve got a brain and a sense of humour, because you’re a nice-looking geezer and because you’re not a geeky psychologist. Four very good reasons. So, you going to have dinner with me, or what? It’s OK if it’s no, I can take it. I’m a big girl. And I’ll still do your analysis, no hard feelings.”
Steve shook his head, entirely disorientated by the way the meeting had deviated from his expectations. “OK, let’s do it,” he found himself saying, realizing as he spoke that the idea was genuinely exciting.
“Good call, Steve. I’ll ring you tomorrow when I’ve got something for you, OK?” She was already reaching eagerly for the file.
Understanding he was being dismissed, Steve got to his feet. “Er…about dinner? Where shall I book? What sort of food do you like?”
She shrugged. “You choose. I don’t eat meat but I love fish. And I never met a cuisine I didn’t like.”
“Why am I not surprised? Thanks, Terry.” He walked down the corridor to the flight of stairs that would take him to Fiona’s office, grinning from ear to ear. He couldn’t quite believe what had just happened. He’d been blown away by the charisma of a stranger. He’d thrown aside one of his strongest principles, and he was feeling more light-hearted than he had for months. Maybe at last his luck was on the turn.
THIRTY-THREE
Steve’s smile didn’t survive his encounter with Fiona. When he walked into her office, she was staring blankly at her computer screen, hands linked behind her head. “Isn’t it a lovely day?” he said blithely, settling on her sofa.
Fiona looked at him as if he’d gone mad. “It is?”
“I think so,” he said cheerfully. “I’ve just had a very interesting encounter with Terry Fowler.”
“Oh good,” Fiona said absently. “She’s very efficient. I’m sure she’ll do an excellent job for you.” Her voice tailed off and she frowned at the wall above his head.
“Earth to Fiona…Is there anybody home?”
“I’m sorry, Steve, I didn’t sleep much last night. I’m…a bit distracted.”
“You wanted to see me about something?” he reminded her.
Fiona scowled and squeezed the bridge of her nose between her finger and thumb. “I know. It all made perfect sense when I left the message, but now…Well, I don’t know if I’m overreacting.”
Fiona this distracted was too unfamiliar an experience for Steve to take lightly. “Let’s hear it,” he said. “Then we can both decide.”
She nodded. “Makes as much sense as anything else. I woke up in the middle of the night. You know, the way I do sometimes. No obvious reason, but I couldn’t get back to sleep. So I went upstairs to surf the web for a while, and I ended up in a chat room where people were discussing the Jane Elias murder. And the general consensus seemed to be that the Garda have arrested the wrong man.”