That was only partly true, he felt. She had lost some weight, her face was thinner, and while this probably made her more attractive in a slightly haunted sort of way, she looked less healthy than when he had first met her a year ago. Less happy too, perhaps, although he hadn’t really been in a position to judge that.
‘The side?’ He glanced at her right side where the worst wound had been.
‘No, it’s fine,’ she smiled. ‘No more twinges. And you, Brock, you’re looking really well.’
Though she too had doubts. He had put on weight, just a little but enough to notice. He looked as if he hadn’t been out of doors much lately, and she spotted the way his eyes narrowed with discomfort as he straightened his back, as if he’d been spending too long sitting in front of a keyboard. His bushy grey hair could definitely do with a cut, and his beard a trim.
‘You’d probably like coffee?’
‘Oh yes,’ Kathy said. ‘That would be wonderful.’
‘And something to eat, I expect, Gordon?’
Dowling shrugged non-committally, not wanting to seem too forward with the great man, although now food had been mentioned he realized he was starving. Brock nodded and left the room.
Kathy was drawn past the leather armchairs clustered round the gas fire to the far wall, almost entirely filled by a range of windows through which pale, snow-filtered light illuminated the room. She discovered when she reached it that the last three feet of the room were in fact an enclosed balcony overhanging the lane, like an aerial conservatory. From here she could see why the lane was only built up on one side, for the hedge opposite had hidden a sharp drop into a railway cutting. The roofs of houses showed dimly on the far side.
There was a low window-seat around the balcony, and she sat there for a moment, suspended in a swirling cloud of snowflakes, as if in the gondola of a hot-air balloon.
She looked back into the room, snug, simply furnished, purposeful. It seemed both an office and a living room. The morning papers were scattered beside one of the armchairs, and there were several empty coffee mugs on the bench. There was only one picture on the plain white walls. She got up and went over to have a look. It was composed of odd scraps of paper stuck together. She made out an old bus ticket and a fragment of a German newspaper with Gothic script. At the bottom was a pencilled signature, ‘K. Schwitters’.
Behind her she heard Dowling swear quietly. She turned and saw that he had touched the mouse on the PC with the active screen pattern, which had immediately come to life, scrolling down lines of data.
‘Kathy!’ he hissed in panic. ‘How do you turn it off again? He’ll be back in a minute.’
‘You’ll just have to wait. It’ll turn itself off in a minute, I expect.’
She went over to have a look. The screen held a data sheet with details of a man — physical, biographical and case references. She hadn’t heard of him, although apparently ten years ago he had cut a Birmingham family to pieces with a Japanese ceremonial sword.
‘Bloody hell, Kathy, I can hear him coming! What’s he going to think?’
‘That you’re a detective, Gordon,’ she smiled. ‘Come and sit down by the fire and hope he doesn’t notice.’
Brock bustled in with a large tray which he set down on a low table in the middle of the ring of armchairs. As well as the coffee things, he had brought a plate piled with slices of bread and crumpets, a dish of butter and a large jar of honey. He reached for a long steel fork which was hanging from a hook beside the fireplace, and offered it to Dowling.
‘Gordon, would you take charge of this for us?’
Dowling looked lost.
‘The toasting, Gordon. Haven’t you done it before? I suppose you only have central heating with radiators. The main point of an old-fashioned gas fire is to toast things while you sit around it and talk. Didn’t you know that?’
Dowling accepted the ribbing with a shy smile and took the handle of the fork while Brock speared a crumpet on to the long prongs.
‘I haven’t had a crumpet since I was little,’ Kathy said, and caught Dowling’s eye, nodding her head surreptitiously towards the bench on the other side of the room. He glanced over, and she saw the relief dawn on his face as he spotted the pattern slowly rotating again on the computer screen.
Brock was crouching, pouring the coffee into mugs and passing them round.
‘You like kd lang, do you, Brock?’ Kathy asked.
‘Of course,’ he smiled, easing himself back into his chair. ‘And how is the country suiting you, Kathy? Are they teaching you anything?’
Kathy was about to come out with the opening she had prepared, then stopped. ‘Good question. I suppose that’s it, really. No, they’re not.’
‘Because of your murder?’
She nodded. She had said very little to him on the phone, just enough to get him interested, although he had told her often enough to keep in touch with him and let him know how her spell with the County force was going. It suddenly occurred to her that he may have made some inquiries of his own after she’d rung. She hoped not — not before she’d put him in the picture.
‘But the whole point about your being down there is to broaden your experience — they know that. We’ve done these rotations with them before. There’s no point to it if you’re not learning anything. We might as well pull you back to the Met.’
‘Yes,’ Kathy said doubtfully. For her, the whole point was to get back, not just to another division in the Met, but to SOI, the Serious Crimes section at the Yard.
‘Have you spoken to whoever’s supposed to be supervising your assignments?’
‘He’s a DI, Ric Tanner. Yes, I have, and got nowhere. He made it plain that I’m being punished — not in so many words, but there is a … lack of confidence in my ability to perform at a higher level.’
Brock snorted. ‘Bullshit! Who’s his instructing officer?’
Kathy sighed. ‘That’s the problem. The programme comes under the Deputy Chief Constable’s office. His name is Long.’
‘Long?’
‘Bernard Long. Both he and Tanner came from the Met originally. They knew each other there. And Long became involved in the murder case — personally involved.’
Brock frowned. ‘You’d better tell me about this murder, Kathy.’
‘Brock, before I do, I want to be clear about this. I’m not making a complaint. I just want the advice of someone whose judgement I trust. But I don’t want to put you in the position where you feel you have to follow up. In fact you may very well want to be able to say later that you knew nothing about it.’
‘Ah.’ Brock gave a little smile into his coffee mug. ‘But you’ve brought Detective Constable Dowling with you, Kathy.’
Kathy coloured. ‘I brought Gordon because he’s become tainted along with me. I was in charge of the investigation, and he was my main assistant. When things turned sour he stood by me. Now he’s getting the same treatment I am. Only he won’t be transferring out in another month or so, as I will. He’s stuck. That’s why I brought him, that and the fact he may be able to add to what I say. But if you’d rather he left, of course he’ll go.’
Brock nodded non-committally, hearing the tightness in her voice. ‘All right, but I’m not joining a conspiracy, Kathy. If I feel I have to act in a certain way after what I hear, I’ll just have to do it. That could be awkward for Gordon, perhaps. What do you say, Gordon?’
The young man straightened from the fire. Two toasted crumpets lay on the plate in front of him, a third almost finished. He was twenty-five, just six years younger than Kathy, but, as he cleared his throat to speak, she realized how protective she had come to feel towards him. His slow and rather tentative physical movements seemed to have the effect of making hers quicker and more adept, and the same happened with his speech. As he hesitated, she had an almost overpowering desire to break in and answer for him. Yet when he did eventually speak, he did so with such a depth of concern in his voice that she felt ashamed of her impulse to patronize him.