‘DS King says you threw coffee in his face. Scalding-hot coffee. What the hell were you thinking? He’d have every right to pursue you for ABH – I assume you do know that?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ says Somer. She’s staring at the floor, her body rigid.
Gallagher frowns. ‘DC Somer – Erica – I know you. Or at least I thought I did. You’re astute, thoughtful, the very opposite of impulsive. I can quite easily see DC Quinn flipping a latte at someone in a fit of pique, but you?’
Somer bites her lip. She can feel tears prickling the back of her throat, but she will not cry, she will not cry –
Gallagher’s still staring at her. ‘Help me out here, will you, because I just don’t get it.’
Somer takes a breath. ‘DS King made a derogatory remark. I just – reacted.’
Gallagher’s frown deepens. ‘A remark about you?’
Somer shakes her head. ‘No. About my boyfriend. About when they worked together.’
Gallagher is taken aback. ‘Worked together? When was this?’
Somer can feel her cheeks going hot. Sweat is seeping down her back. ‘I don’t know.’
Gallagher just looks baffled now. ‘But surely you’ve checked with – Giles, isn’t it? What does he say?’
Somer’s cheeks are burning. ‘I haven’t spoken to him about it.’
Gallagher sighs. There’s clearly more to this than she feels comfortable prising out. ‘Well, for what it’s worth, I know for a fact that DS King has never worked either with or for Hants Police. In any case, there must be some sort of misunderstanding at the root of this, because DS King says you were discussing the Emma Smith case at the time –’
She stops; Somer suddenly has her hand to her mouth, swallowing, as if she’s trying not to be sick.
‘I think, ma’am,’ she says quietly, ‘I think I may have got it wrong. What DS King said, I think it must have been about DI Fawley.’
‘DI Fawley? But why? He’s not your boyfriend –’ Gallagher stops, counts to ten, then takes a deep breath. ‘Unless you’re trying to tell me there’s been something going on between you two?’
Somer is shaking her head vigorously and looking her, finally, in the eye. ‘No. There isn’t and there never has been. But, a few months back, there were rumours – some people thought –’ She makes a sad, despairing gesture. ‘He’d supported me – brought me into CID – so they thought we were – you know.’
Gallagher nods slowly; she knows, all right. Not about this specifically, but how common ‘this’ still is. The casual assumption – even by people who’d never think of themselves as sexist – that an attractive and ambitious woman must be using the one to further the other. She’s faced it enough times in her own career, but she’d been hoping dinosaur attitudes like that were finally dying out.
‘What exactly did DS King say?’
Somer looks up at her again, then drops her gaze. ‘He said he assumed I’d be finishing with him and I could do a lot better. That even if he was a “sodding DI” he was still a bastard.’
Gallagher sighs. Needless to say, King’s story is rather different, though given the way he’s been gunning for Fawley she suspects Somer’s version of events is likely to be closer to the truth. But even if she could prove it, that’s still no excuse for what Somer did.
‘OK,’ she says. ‘This is what’s going to happen. I’ve already spoken to DS King and he’s not minded to resolve this informally, which is regrettable, but unless he has a change of heart, a formal misconduct investigation will have to be instigated.’
Somer drops her head, nods.
‘There’s nothing I can do about that, even if I wanted to. And in any case, Superintendent Harrison has already decided to refer the case to Professional Standards. So what you need to do now is talk to a Police Federation rep as soon as you can – today, if possible. Take them through exactly what happened. All of it, mind – the precise words he used, the assumptions he made – the whole thing. You understand what I’m telling you?’
Somer nods again.
‘I’m not going to recommend suspension –’
Somer gasps – but surely she must have realized it was a possibility?
‘– but I am going to suggest you transfer temporarily to other duties. But right now, this minute, I want you to go home and contact your rep. You look completely bloody exhausted.’
Somer says nothing. There’s something about her demeanour – the deadness of it – that makes Gallagher suddenly wonder –
‘Are you OK, Erica? Is there something I should know – something that might affect your case?’
Somer shakes her head. ‘No, ma’am,’ she says. ‘Nothing at all.’
* * *
Fair to say it’s been a slow news day for Richard Yates at the Oxford Mail. There are only so many ways you can say ‘Phew, what a scorcher’ without actually saying ‘Phew, what a scorcher’, and what with the usual silly season crap, the pickings right now are particularly parched. He sifts idly through the latest crop of press releases but nothing’s popping; another round of Endeavour filming really isn’t cutting it as ‘news’ these days, and as for the Martin Scorsese honorary degree, he’s already squeezed two bylines out of that and his suggestion for a vox pop at the station cab rank was well and truly spiked (‘That’s enough Taxi Driver references, Ed’, as his editor took great delight in scrawling on Yates’s message pad).
He sits back in his desk chair and swings it idly from side to side. His mobile starts to ring, but he doesn’t exactly jump to it. The way today’s going, it’s probably his mum.
‘Dick, old mate, how are you?’
There’s only one person who calls him that. It fucks him off every time, but he bites his tongue because of who this bloke is.
‘You got something for me?’
‘Off the record, right? Really off. Because if it gets out you got this from me, they’ll have my arse.’
Yates sits forward, scoop feelers on full alert. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he says as casually as he can muster. ‘When have I ever dumped on you?’
There’s a sigh at the other end. ‘OK. Just needed to say it, right?’
Yates pulls his notebook towards him. ‘So what’ve you got?’
‘Emma Smith. We’ve charged someone.’
‘That forty-six-year-old bloke you arrested?’
‘Right. We won’t be making an announcement but he’ll be up before the beak first thing tomorrow, so make sure you’re down there waiting, OK? And take a bloody photographer.’
Yates is writing furiously. ‘You think he’s definitely your man?’
No mistaking the self-satisfaction at the other end. ‘Oh yeah, he’s our man, all right. But it’s not that. It’s who he is. Seriously, mate, this is hold-the-fucking-front-page territory.’
Yates grasps the phone a bit tighter. ‘You going to give me a heads-up or just be a bloody prick-tease?’
‘If I do, you can’t break it early, right? You’ll have to wait for the court list. Security on this one is as tight as a duck’s backside.’
‘Yeah, yeah –’
A low laugh. ‘Let’s just say you could do worse than mugging up on the life and career of one Adam John Fawley.’
Yates frowns; he knows that name. Every reporter in this city knows that name. ‘Hang on, are you seriously telling me –’
‘Too right, mate. That’s exactly what I’m telling you. The bastard who raped and murdered Emma Smith? It was Detective Inspector Adam Fawley.’