‘I believe …’ he began, and for a moment it sounded as if he was about to recite the catechism, ‘I believe that Kathy was right, all the way down the line, in the way she handled the Petrou investigation. They tried to make her look incompetent, but she wasn’t. The way they treated her, they wouldn’t have done the same if she’d been a man. At least’ — he ducked his head — ‘that’s my opinion.’
He stared gloomily at the toasting fork in his hand while they waited to see if there was more. Finally Brock said, ‘Yes, I see. But you look, well, uneasy, Gordon … about being here. Are you sure you want to be involved in this?’
Dowling raised his eyes to face Brock. ‘Oh, yes, sir. If Kathy thinks you should know about it, then I agree and I want to be part of it. I was in her team, I trust her judgement.’
Chastened by his loyalty and anxiety, Kathy lowered her eyes and said nothing, waiting for Brock’s decision.
He stared at Dowling for a moment, scratching his beard, then nodded. ‘So do I lad,’ he said. ‘So do I.’
They followed his example and took a crumpet each, letting the butter melt before they spooned honey over it.
‘Last October, you said,’ Brock prompted, and she nodded, mouth full. ‘Mmm, the end of October. There’d been quite a lot of rain, remember?’
2
Kathy had hung back as the others filed out at the end of the early Monday morning briefing. Detective Inspector Tanner threw the last file behind him on to the table he was half straddling, and made some comment to one of the sergeants as he passed. They both laughed, and the other man replied, saying something about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Kathy waited for them to finish, their easy banter making her feel even more uncomfortable.
‘You watch the match on Saturday, Sergeant Kolla?’ Tanner asked suddenly, looking back over his shoulder. The other sergeant smirked and looked at his feet.
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, sir, I didn’t.’
‘No … well. You want me?’
‘I’d like a word, if you’ve got a minute, sir.’
She was very careful with her words, with the tone of her voice, with the expression on her face as she answered him. He had never been overtly rude to her, always listened to what she had to say, always given a reasoned response. Yet from the very first time they had met, she had felt his hostility. At that stage she had had no opportunity to give offence, yet it was palpably there from that moment, and had continued, unprovoked and unacknowledged, ever since. It was a chilling undercurrent to the formality with which he treated her and lack of interest in what she had to say. There was something rather frightening about it — the unreasonableness, the pointlessness of it and, worst of all, the way in which it had gradually inspired in her an equally unjustified aversion. She resented being forced to protect herself by allowing this feeling to grow, of antagonism towards someone she hardly knew, of being drawn towards a confrontation that lacked any reason. He was an admirable officer in many ways — he worked longer hours than anyone else at Division and, like Kathy herself, he had driven himself up the ranks without the benefit of a higher education. He had made no attempt to modify his broad Tyneside accent, which he sometimes seemed to exaggerate as a point of pride. He was tough, experienced and proficient. And he made Kathy’s skin crawl whenever she found herself in the same room with him.
The other sergeant left, closing the door behind him, and Tanner turned to face her. ‘Speak.’
‘I wondered if you would consider a change in my duties, sir.’
He stared at her for a while, his face expressionless, then lowered his eyes and picked at a thumb-nail. ‘Why would I do that?’
She took in a deep breath, steadying her voice. ‘Since I’ve been here, for the past six months, I’ve been working with Sergeant Elliot in Family and Juvenile Crime. I wondered whether I could have some time in other areas. Maybe with Sergeant McGregor in Serious Crime.’
‘Don’t you get on with Penny Elliot?’ He brought his eyes back up to hers as he completed the sentence, looking for her reaction.
‘We get on fine. It’s not that. I’ve learned quite a bit from working with her. She’s very good at it. But it’s not really the kind of detective work that I’m interested in.’
‘That you’re interested in,’ he repeated. ‘Wouldn’t you call domestic violence and child abuse serious crime?’
‘Of course. But I’d hoped to get some experience in organized crime — some murder investigations perhaps — while I’m here.’
‘Murder investigations,’ he again repeated her words, managing, without any particular emphasis in his voice, to make them sound vaguely absurd and self-indulgent.
Kathy flushed. When she spoke again, her voice was harder. ‘Under the terms of my transfer to County…’
‘I’m quite familiar with the terms of your transfer, Sergeant,’ he broke in, without raising his voice, ‘according to which you go wherever, in my best judgement, I think you should.’
He paused, giving her more of the cold eye. ‘What’s so special about murder investigations? You think they’re glamorous?’
She was about to tell him that she had already led one murder investigation while she’d been with ED Division at the Met, then remembered he knew that.
‘You don’t have some kind of unhealthy obsession with death, do you?’ he went on. ‘Some kind of fetish?’ He gave her an unpleasant little smirk.
There was a knock on the door. Without turning, Tanner barked ‘In’, and the sergeant he’d been speaking to earlier put his head round. He handed Tanner a note. ‘I’ll take it if you like, Ric.’ He was pulling a coat on over his jacket.
‘No.’ Tanner read the note, the sergeant waiting motionless with one arm in the coat. ‘No, Bill. I want you to stay with the cars.’
‘Shall I give it to Arnie?’
‘No. Sergeant Kolla here is very interested in unnatural deaths. This should appeal to her.’
The sergeant glanced at him, then at Kathy, shrugged and left. Tanner handed her the note. It read: 0855 hrs, 19 October. Request for CID assistance. Suicide hanging at Stanhope House Clinic, Edenham. Patrol car at scene. Police Surgeon notified.
‘Looks like the angels were listening to you, Sergeant.’ Tanner’s smile was very tight. ‘The angels of death, perhaps. It’s all yours. Your very own investigation. Take that sleepy bugger Dowling with you.’
He turned, swept up his files and walked out of the room. She had spoken to Penny Elliot about Tanner. Penny didn’t particularly like him, thought him fairly unsympathetic on a personal level, but couldn’t fault him in his dealings with her. Although he wasn’t much interested in the areas of domestic crime that she was concerned with, he had made sure that she had received a fair — and in recent years a growing — share of resources. She had experienced none of the animosity Kathy felt.
‘So it’s not common-or-garden sexism; it must just be me; Kathy had said, and Penny Elliot had smiled.
‘Well, he does like to control things. Maybe he doesn’t like the fact that you really belong to the Metropolitan Police and are only here for a year.’
Maybe. Kathy stared gloomily out at a wood of dark pines that flashed past the car window. Dowling was skirting the edge of Ashdown Forest on the way to Stanhope House. Making a report on a suicide wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind when she’d finally worked herself up to approach Tanner. She wondered why the uniformed branch couldn’t have dealt with it themselves. ‘What is this place we’re going to, anyway? Any idea?’
She hadn’t worked with Dowling before and asked the question as much to make conversation as anything, as he’d been very quiet since they got in the car. He chewed his lip for a moment, concentrating on a bend.
‘Er … some kind of health farm, I believe, Sarge.’
‘Call me Kathy. You’re Gordon, aren’t you?’