‘Inspector Tanner has thoroughly reviewed the forensic evidence with the pathologist, Sergeant …’ Long hesitated in his angry response, regretting being provoked into an explanation. His fingers gripped the green file as if trying to choke it. ‘Let me make this quite clear, Sergeant. You don’t seem to have been listening to what I said earlier. Whether you are satisfied with Dr Beamish-Newell’s explanation is now irrelevant. What is more relevant is whether we can be satisfied with your conduct.’
He took a deep breath, consciously relaxing his fingers. ‘Inspector Tanner has my instructions to conclude this matter immediately and to prepare a report for the coroner. You and DC Dowling are to be assigned to other duties. You are to undergo counselling in investigative procedures and community relations. Now … you will please go with Inspector Tanner and conclude this briefing. I wish to hear nothing further on this matter.’
Stunned, Kathy and Gordon got to their feet and followed Tanner out of the room, along the corridor, into the lift down to level 2 and along to his office.
Tanner sank into the chair behind his desk, lit a cigarette, then indicated that they sit. He looked at Kathy expectantly. ‘Did you follow all that, Sergeant?’
‘No, I can’t say I did,’ she said carefully. ‘I didn’t follow how a case could be resolved without the participation of the two investigating detectives who were most familiar with it. I didn’t follow how a senior police officer who was himself a witness and involved in the financial affairs of the institution under investigation could assume control of the investigation and close it down without consulting the investigating officers. I didn’t follow how a principal witness who had lied to the police on a number of occasions could be privately briefed by that senior officer. And I didn’t follow how, after all that, I’m the one who needs counselling in investigative procedures.’
Tanner exhaled smoke upwards. ‘The fact is, you haven’t followed very much at all. Not from the very beginning of this case.’
‘Sir! I won’t have snide remarks about my competence used as a smoke-screen to mask a cover-up.’
Tanner smiled, pleased that she was so angry. ‘The only cover-up going on around here is the attempt by the Deputy Chief Constable and myself to hide the incompetence of an officer who can’t handle her job. In just three days you expended — ’ he made a play of consulting some figures written on a memo pad ‘- 214 man-hours of police time. Yeah, 214!’ He raised his eyebrows in mock amazement. ‘And at the end of it the only thing you’ve proved conclusively that wasn’t obvious at the bloody start is that you couldn’t organize a piss-up in a fucking brewery.’
He gave her a big grin of satisfaction.
‘Oh, I tell a lie! There were other outcomes. We’ve had a small mountain of complaints. From Mrs Doris Cochrane, for example, alleging that you harassed and bullied her in order to get her to say that Dr Beamish-Newell was a monster. Her son is a QC, interestingly enough. In fact there were a number of distinguished members of the legal profession and senior public figures among the clientele of the clinic when you mounted your assault on the place on Monday morning, many of whom have written personally to the Deputy Chief Constable in support of the Director and expressing concern at the heavy-handed tactics of the police. I think “crass insensitivity” was the phrase one of them used. Apparently they didn’t appreciate all those little jokes at the expense of sick people.
‘Then,’ he shook his head wonderingly, ‘alongside your incompetence, there’s your homophobia, your obsessive — yes, that word suits you very well — your obsessive pursuit of some kind of gay plot. We’re still not sure whether we can persuade one gentleman not to go public on that — you know, the one you reduced to tears by pretending that his boyfriend had Aids?
‘You look pale, Sergeant. Not feeling well? Can I make a suggestion? And this applies to you both, because however much we may privately feel that Sergeant Kolla is the prime mover in all this, you, Dowling, you dozy bugger, are also up to your ears in shit. If either of you still thinks you have a future in the police force, any police force, then you have some very serious rehabilitating to do. You will do what you’re told; you will go to counselling; you will keep very, very low; you will be very, very quiet and humble. Because if I see or hear one cheep from either of you again, I am personally going to insert all the paperwork from this case into your private orifices and set fire to it. Do I make myself clear?’
9
There was a little municipal park whose narrow entrance was squeezed between two buildings facing on to the long market-place which formed the heart of Crowbridge. It had been built on the site of the only building to be bombed in the town during the Second World War, a narrow-fronted terrace with a large rear garden which rolled down the long slope of the hillside. In the earnest spirit of the late forties, the town council had turned this single casualty into a public amenity, transforming a pleasant eighteenth-century garden into the functional patchwork zoning of dahlia beds, herbaceous borders and rose gardens which signified the beneficent arrival of the Welfare State.
Kathy sat on a bench watching a gardener tending the roses. In her present circumstances she felt a sharp envy for the simplicity and satisfaction of his work, which involved the severe pruning of a year’s exuberant growth to a foot or two of stunted stalk. There were a number of men upon whom she would have liked to practise similarly drastic surgery.
She sat for over an hour until the cold and gloomy atmosphere of the afternoon had soaked into her sufficiently to restore a sense of proportion. Then she climbed back up the winding path to the iron gates facing the market-place and returned to her car. She drove to Edenham and parked in the High Street, right outside the greengrocers’. Jerry wasn’t pleased to see her. She waited while he finished serving his customer.
‘I’m just closing. What do you want?’ he said.
‘I’d like some grapes, if they’re sweet and juicy.’
He stared at her through his big lenses, which gave his face a surprised, innocent expression even when he was scowling, as now. ‘They are. How many do you want?’
‘Couple of big bunches. How’s Errol?’
‘You should ask! He’s off sick as a matter of fact, thanks to you.’
‘How come?’
He stared at her for a moment and his lip curled. ‘I don’t want to talk to you. Take your grapes and eff off.’
‘I’d like to speak to Errol. I suppose I could call round to your place now.’
‘Don’t you dare! Errol’s under doctor’s orders. I’m warning you, you leave him alone! You’ve given us both quite enough grief.’
‘But you haven’t said how. What’s happened, Jerry? Did someone else come round to visit him? Today? Who was it?’
Jerry was becoming quite agitated, cocking his head from side to side, adjusting his glasses on his nose as if something had happened to their focus. ‘He’s been told to speak to nobody, and so have I. If you try to pester him again I’m going to make an official complaint. I warn you, one more try and I’m on to my solicitor.’
He turned away, looking towards the shop window, blinking rapidly.
Kathy sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Jerry,’ she said finally, shook her head and left.
She found a phone box and rang the County Mortuary. She was told that Professor Pugh had left for the day. She found his home address in the phone book and returned to her car, where she identified his place on a street map of Crowbridge.
The road was lined with horse-chestnut trees, but most of their big leaves had fallen. The houses were large, red-brick, built fifteen or twenty years before, when Crowbridge had been discovered by commuters from the metropolis. Pugh’s house was in darkness, and Kathy waited in her car in the street, eating the grapes. Jerry had been right: they were succulent.