Polly looked bemused. ‘She’s just a kind and caring person who thought it would be the best way to help her colleague through her difficulties?’
‘My thoughts exactly. Very altruistic of her.’ Grace looked equally bemused. ‘You know what surprises me the most about human behaviour, Polly?’
She shook her head. ‘What?’
‘It’s that the older I get, the less anything surprises me. When I first joined the force, I met so many old sweats who were such cynical bastards — as my dad was. I vowed never to become like them, that I would always keep my faith in human decency. But that gets harder with every passing year. I’m turning into my dad.’
‘My dad had an expression — he used to say it often after a particularly trying day.’ Polly’s father had been a copper, too.
‘Which was?’
‘Don’t make excuses for shitty people. You can’t put a flower in an asshole and call it a vase.’
Grace laughed. And suddenly realized it felt like a long time since he had. ‘I’ll remember that one.’ Then, serious again, he said, ‘So, what’s your assessment of Rebecca Watkins?’
‘A proper ice maiden. What a bitch.’
‘Well said, but personally I wouldn’t be so polite.’
Polly raised her eyebrows. ‘She’s hiding something.’
‘For sure. The question is, what? She’s definitely lying to us, but her arrogance — confidence — is telling me she’s not done anything illegal here — not committed any crime.’
‘Such as murdering Eden?’
Grace nodded. ‘My reading of her is she’s defensive of Niall, which indicates she doesn’t think he’s committed any crime.’
‘What do you think, sir?’
Grace took a moment to reply. ‘Something’s been bothering me from the very start. When Sandy vanished, I was frantic with worry that something bad had happened to her. In those first hours and days I was in a complete state of panic, particularly when it became evident she really had gone and wasn’t just staying away overnight. I don’t get any sense of panic — or even caring — from Niall.’
‘You loved Sandy,’ Polly said. ‘Seems like a different situation with Niall.’
‘And with Eden, too? If we follow the money, we have a trail going back some months of her moving assets out of her husband’s reach. Why is that? To shield her assets against a divorce? Or to build up a war chest to fight any divorce proceedings? Or...?’ His voice tailed off.
‘Or?’ she prompted after some moments.
‘Did she have some other plan?’
‘Such as?’
‘I don’t know,’ Grace said. ‘As I’ve wondered all along, there might be something else going on here, all being not what it seems on the surface. I suspect our surveillance on Niall Paternoster might lead us to the answer. What I—’
His job phone rang.
Answering it, he heard a voice he recognized, DI Lawrence Thompson, Staff Officer to Cassian Pewe.
‘Sir,’ he said, respectfully, ‘the ACC would like to see you as soon as convenient in his office.’
Grace quickly checked the calendar on his computer. ‘I can be there in fifteen,’ he said.
‘Thank you, sir. I will inform him.’
And stick your phone up his jacksie while you’re at it, Grace thought irreverently. He knew that Lawrence Thompson shared his views on Pewe. Not many employees of Sussex Police who’d ever encountered the man didn’t.
92
Usually these days, the ACC didn’t invite Roy Grace to sit, instead making him stand in front of his desk for their meetings. But today, with an odd, almost simpering smile, he shook his hand firmly. ‘Good to see you, Roy, thanks for sparing the time to see me.’
As Cassian Pewe spoke, he ushered him to one of the two-seater corner sofas and perched himself on the other. ‘Would you like some coffee?’
That was almost another first. This must be Pewe’s way of showing sympathy, Grace thought.
‘I’m fine, thank you, sir.’
Pewe looked closely at him, still with his faintly unintelligent expression. ‘How are you bearing up?’
‘OK, thank you. Being at work is helping.’
‘And your lovely wife, is she coping all right?’
‘Cleo’s trying to be strong — she’s gone into work today as well.’
A frown flitted across his face. ‘I understand the PM on Bruno was carried out at Worthing, is that right?’
‘Yes, to spare Cleo from having to be involved. The funeral directors are collecting his body from there.’
‘Very sensible,’ Pewe said. ‘I’m so extremely sorry, Roy, for your loss. You have my very deepest sympathy. You will please pass my condolences to Cleo and his grandparents.’
‘I will, thank you.’
‘I think it was Aristotle who said, “The gods have no greater torment than for a mother to outlive her child.”’
‘Fortunately for Sandy, if you can call her a mother, she didn’t.’
The wan smile again. ‘I’m sure it applies to the father, as well.’
‘It does,’ Grace replied. ‘And Aristotle was right.’
Pewe nodded, clasping his hands together in a gesture of sympathy. ‘If there is anything I can do, if you need to take some time out as I’ve said before, please let me know.’
‘I appreciate that, sir.’
‘And when you have made the funeral arrangements, please also let me know.’
Was he intending to send a donation to the charity he and Cleo decided on — which they were still discussing — Grace wondered? God forbid he was planning to attend. All the more reason to make it a private, family one. It had been bad enough when he’d attended Sandy’s, he didn’t want this creep polluting their grief at Bruno’s.
‘We’ll be putting an announcement in the Argus,’ he replied.
Pewe nodded.
‘Perhaps you could let me know, in case I miss it.’
Grace grimaced by way of a reply.
There was a moment of silence. Then Pewe’s face clouded into a back-to-business expression. Evidently the ACC was still blissfully unaware of the tsunami heading his way. That thought was the only thing that cheered Grace up at this moment.
‘Right,’ Pewe said. ‘Good. So, I need to talk to you about resourcing, Roy.’
‘Resourcing?’
‘As you are well aware, Operation Lagoon is currently using half the entire Major Crime Team’s available manpower, as well as one of only two Surveillance Teams our finances currently stretch to, so I thought you might like to give me an update?’
‘With pleasure, sir.’ Grace said the word sir happy in the knowledge he wouldn’t be saying it for much longer. Not from the moment Professional Standards acted on the information Guy Batchelor had provided. But for now, he maintained a facade of respect. ‘Should we still be calling it manpower, sir? Not a very up-to-date expression, is it?’
Pewe looked, as he so often did when confronted by anything distasteful to him, as if he could smell something nasty. ‘Do you have a better term for it?’
Grace gave him a deadpan look. ‘Resources?’
For the next five minutes he filled Pewe in on their progress to date and the major turn of events with the discovery of Rebecca Watkins’s affair with Niall Paternoster. When he had finished, Pewe sat for a while, saying nothing. Finally, he nodded.
‘You’ve established, through the surveillance, that Eden Paternoster’s husband and her boss, Rebecca Watkins, are having an affair? Nice work.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ Grace said politely, expecting the sting was about to come.