the finest minds on cold cases, Bri. Our best and finest minds.’
Manon had wondered what on earth Glenda was even doing in her back to work interview, it being well below her pay grade.
‘Can you manage the workload in three days a week?’ Glenda demanded, all brusque and challengey, as if this is what powerful women can do. Thank you, feminism.
‘It’s cold cases,’ Manon answered. ‘I’m not heading up counter terrorism.’
Glenda, Manon reasoned, was meddling for the sake of meddling. Glenda was saying ‘I want it pink’ just because she could. Glenda fell into that group of people who seemed to believe that if they stretched their tentacles into the very far flung corners of existence – corners that didn’t even concern them – they would Achieve Ultimate Control.
She agreed to McBain’s preposterous working pattern, and then, a few weeks later, when McBain’s laser gaze was focussed elsewhere, quietly shifted her working week to the way she wanted it.
On her way into HQ she wishes she had her M&S mackintosh, which she can picture in a rumpled heap on the floor beside the front door of their house. The coat hooks fell off the wall three weeks ago and they’ve been ‘storing’ their coats on the floor ever since. There is no prospect of anyone dealing with the coat hooks. It is beyond their skill set, and she’s too embarrassed to get a handyman in for such a piddling job. Her sexual fantasies, such as they are, generally involve men performing minor DIY while retaining their emotional equilibrium.
Knee twinges climbing the stairs to McBain’s office. She glances behind her, to see if anyone’s on the stairwell, so she can go up on one leg giving it maximum elderly hobble, but there are young uniformed coppers bringing up the rear, so she has to fake full mobility. She wonders what McBain wants. Is she going to lambast me for my footwear, or my use of stationery? Ask me to livetweet an arrest? Hashtag police! Open up!
‘Ah, Manon, come in,’ McBain says. ‘I’m seconding you to team two, the Lithuanian job.’
Manon is about to protest about hours and her sacrosanct days at home with Teddy, but Glenda puts her hand up. ‘You’ll be SIO, but continue on your Monday, Wednesday and Friday shift pattern.’
Manon experiences a stab of heartburn at this.
‘If developments occur on your days off, Davy can step up. He’s more than capable. You might have to take the odd out-of-hours phone call. Is that a problem?’
Manon shakes her head. She’s searching for the downside, literally rummaging about for a grievance in this scenario, but can’t find one. She’s been desperate for a sniff at this case, been turning it over in her mind, nearly called Davy with her list of investigative avenues he ought to go down, and now she gets to lord it about while still working three days a week. It’s as if feminism has actually come through for her. There simply must be a downside, some horrific personal yet invisible cost that she must suck up while making a casserole and refreshing her patio pots. Is someone going to throw in the care of an octogenarian? Potty training a Retriever pup?
And yet all she can think is: Back on the road with Davy Walker.
‘What about my cold case team?’
‘Your team can carry on with their case load, update you when something shifts.’
I.e. never, Manon thinks.
‘What about Harriet? Isn’t she SIO on the Lithuanian job?’
‘Yes. Harriet’s taking some time off. Um, I don’t know how much she wants the office to know … but you’re her friend, so. Harriet has discovered a lump on her breast. She’s having a mastectomy this week.’
‘Oh no!’ Manon says, hand over her mouth.
Not feminism then.
At the door, Glenda says, ‘Bit late to start today, and anyway Davy’s still at the migrant house conducting interviews. Best you hit the ground running when you’re next back in.’
Come evening, Manon storms into the kitchen where Mark is feeding Teddy, flings her keys onto the counter, and says, ‘Guess what Griselda McFuckface did today?’
‘I assume you mean Glenda McBain,’ he says mildly.
‘Oh right, you’re her bezzie these days, are you?’
‘What did she do to anger you, Oh Great One?’
‘She wants me to lead a live murder investigation. The Lithuanian job.’
‘And that’s terrible because …’
‘We’ve got no clean pants.’
‘Sorry, what’s the connection between pants and awfulness of being promoted, nay valued, by your boss?’
‘Right, so we’ve got no clean pants,’ she says, bending down her fingers with each point. ‘The phone’s been broken for weeks – we never fix anything. There isn’t a single item of food with any nutritional value in our kitchen, and don’t bring up tinned sweetcorn again; we are incapable of booking a decent holiday, we eat too many takeaways, our furniture is ugly. And there are no clean pants. So I can’t think about complex investigations because, my darling perpetuator of the patriarchy, my mind is full of pants.’
‘Don’t think about the pants,’ he says. ‘Ignore the pants. Right, it’s true what you say, but a) the only people who ring the landline are relatives and cold callers b) I love takeaways and so do you c) ignore the pants. You can reverse pants or put on swimwear d) we are good at booking shit holidays and e) who gives a fuck about ugly furniture? We sit on it, we don’t look at it.’
‘I do.’
‘Well, stop.’
He doesn’t, she notices, say, ‘I’ll do the pants.’ (And even if he did, it wouldn’t last more than a week.) Instead, he says, ‘I think she’s right. Heading up this case will be great for you.’
Mark sidles over to her, hands on her hips then up and under her top.
‘How about, y’know … later,’ he says, eyeing Teddy and winking at her. ‘To celebrate. What d’you think?’
‘Again?’ she says. ‘Seriously? Oh fine, Thai or Indian?’
In fact, he says he feels too sick to eat anything at all – practically unheard of for Mark.
‘You look … yellow,’ she tells him. ‘Your eyes are the colour of urine.’
‘You say the loveliest things.’
In bed that evening, as they are falling asleep, she says, ‘I want you to get us some porn to watch. Liven things up a bit.’
‘Righto,’ Mark says.
‘But nothing weird. Conventional stuff for people like us. Nothing … out there.’
‘Middle-aged
