I told you to bloody well leave Betts alone.’ Kershaw’s voice carried across the room and a couple of people looked around.
‘That was to do with something completely different. As you know, I tried several times to get hold of you.’
He glanced over at the bar, where a couple were having a heated discussion. His phone had been switched off for a quite a while. It wasn’t the first time that he had been unaccountably out of contact. The rumour was that he had a mistress, who he was seeing on a regular basis during office hours and after. If necessary, she would make sure it came out at the disciplinary hearing why she hadn’t been able to get hold of him. The Met had been her world for nearly fifteen years and she wasn’t going to let it go without a fight.
‘When I couldn’t find you,’ she said pointedly, ‘I asked Superintendent Johnson and he gave me the OK.’
He looked back at her angrily. ‘He says he didn’t.’
‘He’s lying.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘To cover his arse, like he always does.’
‘There’s nothing on record.’
‘There wasn’t time.’
He took a small bottle of pills from his jacket pocket, swallowed a couple, and washed them down with the remains of the whisky, then he banged the glass down on the table in front of him.
‘You say Jason gave you the info, but you’ve no idea where he got it from, right?’
‘Yes, but I intend to find out. And whoever did it, needs to pay.’
‘You’ll do no such thing. You leave it alone. You’re in enough trouble as it is.’
‘So it doesn’t make any difference if I was set up? It certainly does to me.’
He leaned forward towards her across the table. She could smell the whisky on his breath.
‘OK. Maybe someone wanted you to fuck up, or maybe they wanted to screw up the surveillance operation and they used you as bait, but it all sounds farfetched.’
‘Doesn’t mean it’s not possible.’
‘But you have no idea where the info came from, do you?’
‘No. Not yet.’
‘Look at it this way – the way the panel at your disciplinary hearing will look at it. You go off on a fool’s errand in search of an informant who’s officially off limits, who you’ve been told to leave alone—’
‘As I said, I tried several times to call you and I got clearance to go ahead …’
He shook his head angrily. ‘You take with you a fellow officer, your subordinate, a married bloke, who—’
‘My relationship with Jason’s irrelevant.’
He held up his huge hand. ‘Let me finish. I’m making no moral judgements here. Jason Scott was no saint, but you were his superior and it doesn’t help your PR. So, you take your sergeant with you and together you blunder into the midst of a major potential drugs bust. Two months’ worth of expensive surveillance down the toilet, chief suspect’s out the door and probably out of the country too, and your sergeant dead. And now I’ve got to take the flak from above.’
‘I wasn’t to know.’
‘Yes you bloody well were. As I said, you just don’t care. That’s your problem, and now it’s bloody well mine too.’ He glanced at his watch and stood up. ‘You have to put up your hand and take the blame.’ He stabbed the air with his index finger several times for emphasis. ‘Don’t go wasting your time and energies on some fanciful idea that you were set up. And keep out of the bloody limelight. I’ll do all I can to support you, but don’t go pulling any more stupid stunts like the one today. Right?’
FOUR
Eve pulled up in a space outside the house where she lived in Hazel Avenue, just off the Uxbridge Road. She switched off the engine, gathered up her things and hurried up the steps to her front door. The building was four storeys high, in the middle of a terrace of almost identical late-Victorian houses, almost all of which were divided into flats. Inside, the common parts had recently been redecorated and the hall smelled strongly of fresh paint and new carpet, which blotted out the dank odour from the street. She collected a couple of pieces of post from the mat, put the rest on the small shelf above the radiator and climbed the several steep flights of stairs to her flat at the top. She didn’t mind the walk up and had chosen the flat because it was more private, with nobody clattering around above her, no footsteps thudding past on the stairs. The tenant immediately below was often away and the only noise to disturb her was the occasional pigeon up on the roof, its cooing carried loudly down the chimney.
As she reached the top landing, she bent down and checked the small strip of invisible tape that she had stuck across the bottom of the door and the frame on her way out. It was still in place. It was something she had been doing for years and it had become automatic. She often told herself she was being irrational, that she had no need to worry any longer, but at the back of her mind was still the idea that one day it might save her life. Reassured that it hadn’t been touched, she peeled it off and let herself into the flat. It was light and airy, with a sitting room and galley kitchen at the front, and a bedroom and bathroom at the back, overlooking a drab patchwork of concrete yards and muddy gardens. She kept the blinds drawn most days, as much for privacy from the houses opposite as to shut out the view of other people’s lives. The flat was rented and had come fully furnished in a bland, functional way, with inoffensive carpets and neutral colours and furnishings. She had added a few touches here and there: some olive-coloured silk cushions to soften the hard, angular sofa, a large glass vase for fresh flowers, which sat in the centre of the round dining table and a new, very expensive coffee maker after her old one had broken. There was nothing characterful, or memorable, or even particularly pleasing about the space, but it didn’t bother her. It was comfortable and she had everything she needed, although even after ten months, she still had the feeling of being in transit. Nowhere had ever really felt like home. The solitude was what was important, the ordered predictability of living on her own. She hated sharing it with anyone, even for a short time. She didn’t need someone to come home to, to worry about where she was, to question her about her day, or even just fill the space with the basic warmth of another human presence. It felt just fine as it was. Jason had commented on several occasions about the lack of personal things. He wanted to know more about her and he said the place gave nothing away. It was ‘like a hotel’; she didn’t see anything wrong in that. It wasn’t ‘homey’ he said, by which she gathered he meant it lacked colour and clutter and endless useless possessions. She had tried to explain that she didn’t like bright colours and that objects, knick-knacks, meant nothing to her. She didn’t need any mementos either, anything with a connection to the past, that would twang her heartstrings each time she saw it and make her want to curl up inside. It was one of the many things he hadn’t understood.
She turned on the overhead lights and carefully unlaced her muddy boots, putting them in the kitchen sink to clean later. She stripped off her wet clothes down to her underwear and hung them over a couple of chairs next to the radiator in the sitting room. For a moment, Jason’s presence filled the room. She pictured him sprawled on the sofa just ten days before, a glass of red wine warming in his hand
