Bryant thrust his hands in his pockets. A small pony-tailed girl from the press office put her head round the door and said in a breathless tone, ‘We’ll start in two minutes, ma’am, if that’s all right.’
‘Thanks, Sally-Ann, that’s great. Are we all set?’
‘Absolutely. The BBC crew is here and the room’s full to bursting, but I thought you’d like to keep them waiting for a few moments. Make a bit of an entrance. Build the excitement.’
Hannah caught Bryant wince at that last phrase, but the ACC was too busy checking her cue cards to notice. She lifted her head and squared her shoulders, her momentary discomfiture already forgotten. ‘Marvellous, absolutely marvellous. This could kickstart our project in the best possible way. Nothing like wall-to-wall media coverage for regenerating interest in an inquiry that’s gone cold. Don’t you think so, Les?’
‘Two-edged sword,’ he said bluntly, slouching towards the door. ‘We could find ourselves knee-deep in rubbish. Time-wasters and clairvoyants. It’s all about sorting the wheat from the chaff.’
‘Of course, you’re right, but…’
The ACC hesitated. For once she was lost for words. And for once Hannah actually felt sorry for her.
‘So now the circus is over,’ Les Bryant said as they trooped into the room that Headquarters had allocated for the team briefing, ‘where do we go from here?’
‘The pub?’ Bob Swindell stayed true to form. He would be the unit’s self-appointed joker. Every team had to have one.
Hannah waited until everyone had settled down and Bob had stopped pretending to shiver. Or perhaps he wasn’t pretending. The room was light and airy and freezing. Some problem with the radiators; they always malfunctioned during a cold snap. At least the media conference had gone as well as could be hoped. The ACC was thrilled with all the photo opportunities and the fact that nobody had asked penetrating questions about budgets. She was currently giving an in-depth interview to a local journo who needed to fill a page in a slack news week.
‘All right, where do we go from here?’ Hannah asked. ‘Well, we start by having to make choices. The resources allocated to us are limited. Our aim has to be to make an impact, fast. The ACC has been told to make an interim assessment of our work after six months. Not much time, not much cash.’
‘No change there, then.’ Lindsey Waller crossed her long legs and her skirt rode higher than ever. Hannah had already noticed that eyes kept straying to admire her. No change there, either. Linz was an object of almost universal desire and also one of the sharpest young detectives in the county. When the pressure was on, her sceptical sense of humour kept everybody grounded.
‘Too right. Six serving officers plus Les here as consultant, to cover all three regions of the county, all unsolved murders and rapes in Cumbria over, say, the past thirty years. That’s enough for a start.’
Bryant rocked on his chair and said, ‘More than enough, don’t you think, ma’am? Better make it fifteen years.’
The ma’am nettled Hannah even more than the hint that she was biting off more than she could chew. A small team needed to operate with maximum cohesion, minimum formality — she had little doubt that he was taking the piss. She’d retaliate by killing him with courtesy.
‘Excellent idea, Les. Spot on. Fifteen years it is. As for you four,’ she nodded at the detective constables, ‘I’d like you to split into two teams. Linz, you’re with Bob. Maggie, I’m pairing you with Gul.’
Bob Swindell nodded with enthusiasm and Maggie Eyre seemed happy enough, but DC Gul Khan wasn’t much of an actor and his flicker of disappointment was noticeable. A renowned ladies’ man, he’d obviously fancied taking the chance to bond with Linz Waller. Maggie had the rosy cheeks and ample proportions of a true farmer’s daughter, but glamorous she wasn’t. Anyway, she’d recently fallen for a young car mechanic from Keswick. Gul’s parents ran a convenience store in Workington; he and Maggie might not be soul-mates, but they could share experiences about escaping the clutches of a family business without becoming distracted from the grunt work of cold case review.
‘We need to take a look at each case, focusing on the evidence that might be improved with a little help from our friends in the Forensic Service. Then we can prioritise in order of re-examination for more detailed work. Looking at the statements that were taken at the time, the exhibits…’
‘If they’ve been retained,’ Bryant said.
‘Obviously it won’t help if stuff’s gone missing. We’ll have to take our chances on that. But as we all know, there’s scope for identifying minute quantities of DNA these days, in contexts where investigators a few years back didn’t have a prayer. We can consider the tests made originally and whether we can improve on them.’
‘Finance permitting,’ Bryant said.
‘Absolutely right, Les.’ She wouldn’t let him knock her off her stride. Above all, she couldn’t allow a negative attitude to take root in the team. A unit like this needed to be highly motivated. It would be so easy to despair of ever achieving a result. ‘Because cash is tight, it’s all the more important to take good care to use it to maximum effect. Maybe you’d like to give us the benefit of your experience? Anything to add?’
Les Bryant grimaced. His trousers seemed tight; Hannah guessed that he’d put on weight since he’d last worn a suit. Had he already spent too long in cardigan and slippers? Maybe he’d lost it and meant to cover up by seeking out for a chance to make her look a fool. Hannah realised she was holding her breath, waiting to gauge his response.
‘Take nothing on trust,’ he said finally.
As was her habit, Linz said what everyone else was thinking. ‘Meaning what, specifically?’
‘Yes,’ Hannah said. Seize the moment. ‘Would you like to elaborate, Les?’
Bryant contemplated Linz’s legs wistfully. For a moment, Hannah thought he was going to crack a locker-room joke, just to see how she handled it. Then he cleared his throat and began to talk in a drab monotone that she found oddly hypnotic.
‘You need to remember, cold case review is different from a typical murder inquiry. There you start with a body and nothing else. Right? In this game, you have a whole load of stuff on your plate from day one. Photo-fits, e-fits, exhibits, a thousand and one facts. Things are simpler when you don’t have too many facts getting in the way.’
‘You can say that again,’ Bob Swindell murmured, but Maggie hushed him with a fierce look.
Bryant didn’t seem to notice the interruption. It was almost as if he was talking to himself, as he defined the nature of the challenge that the ACC had set. ‘You see, a lot of those facts are going to be useless. Worse than that, they’ll lead you astray if you let them. Facts are like ideas, you can have too much of a good thing. We’re walking in old footsteps, ladies and gentlemen, dealing with other detectives’ preconceived ideas. Sure, we’re playing catch-up with the past, but don’t let it get you down. There’s always a reason why a murder inquiry fails to get a result and it’s mostly down to cock-up, not conspiracy. Was a bit of evidence overlooked, a statement not checked? We can’t assume that any of the original work was sound. Maybe all but one per cent of it was — but we don’t know which particular one per cent it might be.’ He folded his arms and looked at Linz, the faintest hint of a cynical smile on his seen-it-all features. ‘That’s why I say — take nothing on trust.’
‘So what do you make of him?’ Hannah asked.
Nick stirred his coffee with a plastic spoon. They were sitting in a corner of the canteen while the four constables sifted through the first calls responding to the press office’s publicity blitz. Les Bryant was upstairs with the ACC, wrangling about the procedure for claiming his expenses.
‘I was hoping for Gandalf. Looks like we finished up with Eeyore.’
She laughed. ‘Under pressure, he did talk a bit of sense.’