Double Fault (8 page)

‘I'm sure it will, any moment now, when we get round to telling them about the skeletons, of course …' Fran smiled grimly.

‘You are implying that you haven't issued a press release, Chief Superintendent?'

Before she could respond, giving reasons she was sure they'd all appreciate, someone chimed in, ‘Sir, might we have an update on the search for the child? I'm sure we'd all be grateful. A girl of four just disappearing into thin air …'

Diverted, Wren nodded. ‘
Maidstone's Maddie
is not a headline I'm enjoying. Nor the questions asked in editorials –
have the police learned nothing from Portugal
?'

Ray blushed to his ears. ‘First, sir, I must emphasize that we followed procedure to the letter. I've had very profitable informal contact with the MIT already, but now I'm requesting more formal assistance.' He looked across at Fran.

Fran stared. Where on earth could they find all the officers that implied, particularly if Don was half as ill as he looked?

‘The sooner the better,' Wren snapped. ‘Even if you have to put your skeletons on a back burner, Harman.'

‘It'll be hard to, sir. Although we've not made a formal press announcement yet, I gather we've already started to contact the families whose kids disappeared at the salient time to warn them there may be news. They're bound to talk. Meanwhile, we're pursuing the person who seems to Don and me the likeliest suspect. While we absolutely don't want to get Livvie out of the headlines, something as big as this is bound to attract attention, sooner or later. What I'd like to do is bring the editors together and ask for an embargo, just for a while longer. I don't know if they'll cooperate: you know how the media love a serial killer.'

‘I'd rather we didn't use that term at the moment.'

From the back of the room, a voice asked, ‘How many skeletons to date, sir?'

Wren looked at Fran. She took it as permission to respond. ‘Eight.' The ensuing murmur suggested her colleagues thought she'd been right to use the term. She waited just long enough before adding, ‘But we think that that's all. As I say, we have a prime suspect, the man who was the youth worker at the time. But there is someone else in the frame. Whether he stays there depends on the DNA results.'

‘DNA tests on eight bodies … It would keep Livvie in the headlines if we didn't prioritize them, perhaps.' They could all see him doing the mental arithmetic and not liking it.

‘Don's not the sort of person to let grass grow, sir: I should imagine tests on the first four, the ones uncovered last night, are already underway. And I don't see how we can prioritize some and not the others.'

‘So what do I have to cut to pay for them?' Wren snapped. ‘None of you realize that the budget isn't bottomless. A few hundred here, a couple of thousand there – it all has to be paid for somehow. Possibly by making officers redundant. Not just people you know. People in this room.'

Fran blinked. The threat felt personal, and not just to her. But she threw down a gauntlet she knew she might regret. ‘Sir, I'd be happy to fall on my sword – I'm sure the few of us older ones still left would, too. But every team needs a leader. We've got temporary appointments, teams left to run themselves, people taking two roles. If jobs are to be done well, we need the resources – and they include officers with experience, sometimes, and certainly with authority.'

More murmurs: the mood of the meeting had certainly swung in Fran's favour. But she was taking it in the wrong direction. And then she got distracted further. Her phone throbbed. Dizzy Aziz? Headed SOS? ‘This looks urgent, sir. May I take it?'

He probably assumed she would with or without his permission, so he graciously gave it.

Her face must have told her colleagues there was a problem. ‘Don Simpson, sir. Running MIT,' she added, in case he couldn't place such a senior officer. ‘Appendicitis heading briskly for peritonitis. They're operating as soon as they can.' She looked around. While most of her colleagues looked genuinely worried for Don, a good few were clearly already considering staffing implications. As it happened, she was too.

And so was Wren: ‘I assume that since you're involved in the skeletons case, you can take over Don's role.'

‘I've run two major sections at once in the past,' she said frankly, ‘but that was in the days before staffing was cut to the bone. Still, we do have DCI Murray, even if he's only on secondment. Would it be possible to give him a temporary upgrading so he could run the Major Crime Review section? He knows the team and how they work. And although DS Tom Arkwright's due to take up a promotion in Tunbridge Wells in a couple of months, perhaps he could be persuaded to take up a temporary upgrading here. He's been with the team from the start and is utterly reliable.'

Wren nodded. ‘Excellent heads up, Fran. We'll have a conversation after this meeting. Twelve?'

Whatever happened to
Good idea
–
let's talk later
?

A uniform superintendent asked, ‘How about recruiting back on short-term contracts some of the officers already made redundant? Other forces have done it. And asking others back in a voluntary capacity? I'm sure they'd be glad to help out in the Livvie search.'

Ray Barlow said, ‘I've already had extensive help from the old ACC.'

Why couldn't he keep his trap shut? Big mistake, unless Fran was very much mistaken.

‘Mark Turner? Hell, man – what if the media get hold of that? Can't you see the headlines?
Disgraced ex-cop back with the force!
Get rid of him, now.'

Wren had every reason to dislike Mark, she had to accept that. No one would want to come into a new post to find the popular choice had turned it down and had swiftly become a mouthpiece for the resentment about mandatory cuts sweeping through the whole service. Then to have the same man behaving oddly in the extreme and resigning with maximum speed – it put the force in a bad light. But their resources were now so depleted that she might have hoped Wren would put aside his natural resentment and embrace the return of a highly experienced officer working as a volunteer.

How many pairs of eyes were on Fran? But she wouldn't allow herself to catch any of them as she took a calming breath. ‘With due respect, sir, I hope that's not going to be minuted,' she said quietly. ‘Mark left because he was having a stress-induced episode.' Loathsome term but useful. ‘He saw retirement as the only option. Personally I'd rather he spent his time looking after his grandchildren and playing tennis, and I have a deep-rooted objection to anyone being asked to do highly skilled work for free, but surely a volunteer of his calibre is worth ten pressed men.'

Ray decided to risk his career. ‘Mark chaired the APCO committee that instituted the nationwide policy that is now driving the investigation; he reported the child as missing before anyone else realized there was so much as a problem; he's come up with two good leads and provided vital international help, thanks to a contact.' He shot the swiftest glance at Fran. ‘Given the present situation, I'd say his presence was worth the tiny risk that the media might not approve. In any case,' he continued slyly, ‘TV Invicta might put a different spin on it –
Have-a-go-police-heroine's husband back in the saddle.
That sort of thing,' he added with a blush, as he recalled they weren't yet married. But he came up with one more argument. ‘And who, really, is to know? He's offered to join the team taking phone calls from the public: he'll be completely anonymous.'

A uniform superintendent mimed applause. ‘There is just one thing, sir – while all this talk goes on, we're not doing what we're paid to do: fighting crime. There's a child to be found. There's a mass murderer wandering the streets. What are we doing sitting on our fannies chewing the fat? You want cuts? It's your job to make them. Or to fight shoulder to shoulder with the other chief constables and resist them. That's up to you. But if you'll excuse me I've got a major traffic incident on the M20 to sort out.'

The meeting didn't so much break up as disintegrate.

Twelve-five, and here she was, waiting like a naughty schoolgirl outside the head's study. She expected, and probably deserved, a bollocking. But she might, if she were quick enough, wrong-foot him. And she knew from Alice that he had to be out of the building by twelve-fifteen at the very latest.

At last she was admitted to the Presence. She made no effort to sit – no point. Even while Wren was drawing breath, she said, ‘DCI Murray's upgrading, sir?'

Taken aback, possibly by her lese-majesty, he said, ‘It was a surprising suggestion.'

So he knew – of course he did – that she and Murray disliked each other.

‘Never look a gift horse – or an intelligent officer – in the mouth.'

‘What are his feelings?' he asked, closing his laptop and stowing it in a very nice leather case. Designer, by the look of it. Somehow she didn't think he'd got it at discount at the Ashford Outlet.

She'd have loved to ask if he'd remembered to encrypt the data. ‘I've not been able to consult him. He's taken time off in lieu to go to a Met colleague's wedding. His former guv'nor.'

‘What? With all this going on? And you
let
him?'

Tempted though she was to point out that Sean was Wren's protégé, not hers, it would not have improved the situation. Nor would reminding him that Murray had been wished on her without any consultation. As for Murray's ongoing relationship with the Met, that had been Wren's decision, too.

He picked up his case.

Fran answered his question: ‘Technically his line manager's in the Met, of course, and he'd already granted him leave. No reason not to – he wasn't to know we were about to have two major cases on our hands within five minutes of Sean's leaving the building. If you were to consider his temporary upgrading, you might want his position to be regularized, so he's answerable to someone here. I know you're in a rush, sir – shall I contact HR and get them to do the necessary? And for Tom Arkwright, of course.'

What he'd have said had his secretary not popped her head round the door to tell him his car was waiting, she didn't know. ‘Yes, I'm on my way,' he snapped. But it was clear that whoever was expecting him was of more importance than a stroppy DCS, so she could walk away congratulating herself on having – at least temporarily – got away with it again.

Human Resources were having their own crisis, by the look of it, but at last she got someone to fish out the appropriate contract details and email them off, together with a short explanation. Once she knew the offer was official, she thought she might do the friendly thing and phone her congratulations through herself. His phone rang out, not even going to voicemail. OK, a text, then, asking him to make contact immediately to hear good news. There. She'd better learn to think of it as good news herself. As for Tom, she'd test the waters before offering him the step up. After all, he had a perfectly good promotion in the pipeline, and since his relationship with Sean wasn't much better than her own, he might prefer to head off into the glorious sunsets of Tunbridge Wells.

‘Acting DI sounds good,' Tom said, summoned to her office with a request to pick a sandwich for them both en route. ‘Of course there's a downside, or you wouldn't have asked me quite so cautiously.'

‘The downside is that I wouldn't be your boss any more. Not directly. You'd be answerable to Sean Murray; he's being offered a temporary upgrading too. You'll have heard on the grapevine about Don Simpson.'

‘About young Dizzy Aziz carrying him like a baby into the doctor's surgery and then into A and E? Blues and twos and topping a hundred, Fran.'

In other words, topping a hundred and twenty. ‘That bit hadn't reached me. Good for Dizzy. So Don's going to be off for the duration, which means I take control of MIT as well as keeping an eye on our Review team.'

He looked at her sideways. ‘Will the leg be up to it?'

‘The medics say I should be able to drive in ten days or so,' she told him, lopping four days off their estimate. ‘Meanwhile, I've got Dizzy or Hilary.'

‘So you have. What's your advice, Fran?'

She pulled a face. ‘Two months' salary at the new level, then you move anyway? Money in the bank and CID status to take with you? But I'm not sure what sort of a guv'nor Sean will be: you might prefer the status quo and less hassle. Perhaps,' she said, by way of explaining Murray's abrasiveness to her, ‘he's just one of those blokes that still don't like being answerable to a woman.'

‘The women at my level certainly don't like him. Look, can I think about it over the weekend? Not that I shall be gallivanting round the country, unlike others I could mention. I shall be working, of course,' he added as he left. ‘You need someone to keep their eye on you.' A waving hand was all that was left of him.

T
he door had scarcely closed and her grin still hadn't faded when someone else knocked: Ray Barlow appeared first, followed by one of the most glamorous young women in the force, Donna Stewart. Unlike Ray, who always looked in need of a good night's sleep, Donna clearly spent a great deal of time in the gym and was generally known as Madge – as in Madonna. She was one of Don Simpson's best DCIs, though one whom he often seemed to sideline.

‘It seems to me, Madge, that you're more than capable of keeping the search going for Malcolm Perkins and Christopher Manton. Right? Any problems, raise them at each day's briefing meeting, or with me if they're urgent. Until the DNA evidence comes through with ID for each skeleton, there's not much you can do on that front – but I want you to keep me informed each time you get a new name. I met some of the parents at the time, and though my training in breaking crap news is out of date, it might give them some sense that Kent Police care if they dredge up the officer they knew then to meet them once again. And I know it takes time, and I haven't got time to scratch my head, but that's what I want to do if I can.'