by Andy Maslen
“I beg your pardon?” she said, heart bumping against her ribs. Then, as Linda drew a breath to repeat her question, continued. “How am I feeling? How the fuck do you think I’m feeling?”
“Stella, please,” Linda said, placating now with a smile and the head cocked to one side. The other side, this time. “There’s no need for bad language, is there? I’m only doing my job. We have to see how ready you are for a return to what, as I’m sure you don’t need me to remind you, is a very stressful occupation. I mean, it’s not as if you’re a secretary, now is it?” Another smile. But was that a glint of steel behind those baby blues?
Stella breathed in deeply through her nose and let it out the same way, her eyes hard. She leaned forward and placed her elbows on the desk.
“Well, Linda, one year, four days and,” she checked her watch, “fourteen hours ago, some evil little fucker,” a pause to allow Linda to blink at the ‘bad language’, “called Edwin Deacon drove into my husband’s car on our own safe little road, and killed him. His head was smashed in by a pillar box. So, on a scale of one to ten, where one is ‘couldn’t give a shit’ and ten is ‘mightily pissed off, angry and occasionally so fucking sad I can’t stop crying’, I’d say, ten.”
Having delivered herself of this speech, she removed her elbows from the desk and slumped back in her chair. Linda smiled again. That infuriating expression, equal parts sympathy and professional patience.
“Oh, Stella, I do sympathise, really I do. I know you must be hurting terribly. If there’s to be any justice in our world, evil people like that man will all meet sticky ends. But we do, still, have to compete this questionnaire, I’m afraid, and it will make both our lives easier if we could run through the rest of the questions without any more melodrama. You see, here’s the thing.” She pointed one beautifully shaped and red-varnished fingernail at Stella. “I have to write an evaluation for DCS Collier. And if you seem unfit to return to work, I could recommend a further period of rest. So, let’s have a little bit less fucking-this and shitting-that and a bit more civility. Shall we? Now. Question six.”
Struggling to comprehend the last few words uttered by the neatly dressed woman opposite her, Stella heard her next question as an indistinct mumble. She was asking about her sleep patterns.
“Eight hours. Every night,” she answered. “Lola sleeps through, and the nanny’s always there if she wakes, so lucky me.”
She noticed that frown again. “Good,” Linda said, after a pause. “Us girls must get our beauty sleep, mustn’t we?”
Unconsciously, Stella reached up to twirl her ponytail through her fingers. She knew she needed a cut to restore her hair to its former sleekness. But booking appointments with hairdressers had slipped way down her list of priorities.
“It’s ‘we’,” she said.
Heath smiled and crinkled her brow. “I’m sorry?”
“It’s ‘We girls’, not ‘Us girls’.”
Two spots of pink blossomed high on Linda’s pale, creamy cheeks. “Goodness me! A detective and a grammar expert. What other hidden skills do we have?”
“Sorry. Old habits. My Mum was a stickler for correct English.”
As the questions came at her like bullets, Stella began daydreaming. Delegating the answers to that part of her brain trained to provide the right sort of information to officialdom, she thought back to her first murder.
A carpenter had been found in his workshop, face up on the floor with a one-inch chisel stabbed so deep into his right eye that only the worn handle remained visible. She’d turned away and vomited on the concrete floor of the converted garage, to the laughter of the other cops gathered round the gruesome scene. Bloodied but unbowed, she’d returned to the body, even going so far as to squat by the head and take photographs of the wound with her phone.
The wife and business partner both had solid alibis, and it was only after weeks of legwork that Stella had picked away at the wife’s version of events to unravel the story. The two of them had been having an affair and had decided to get rid of the husband, pocket the life insurance and move to Portugal. As with so many cases nowadays, the key piece of evidence was data on the wife’s mobile phone proving she couldn’t have been at her book group on the day claimed. Not for the whole evening, anyway.
The older detectives had been adamant the murderer wouldn’t be a woman. “They tend to go for poison, Stel,” her DS at the time, a stocky East Londoner called Brian Gentry, had said. “No way a woman’s going to have put a chisel through her old man’s eye is there? Too bloody brutal.”
The drinks had been on Brian the night they closed the case.
“Stella?”
“What?” Stella started out of her fantasy and refocused on Linda, who was eyeing her as if she’d wandered out of a lunatic asylum. “Are we done?”
“Yes. I just said. Do you have any questions for me before you go?”
“Just one. When do I get my reassignment to active duty form signed?”
Linda smiled. Stella felt the anger boiling up in her throat again. She held her temper. Just. “Let’s not run before we can walk. I need to type up my report for Adam, I mean, Detective Chief Superintendent Collier. Won’t be too long, though. I’m a fast typist.”
“We’re done, then?” Stella asked.
Linda nodded, already turning away from Stella to her monitor and tapping those glossy red nails on the keyboard.
Twenty minutes later, Stella was sitting opposite The Model in his immaculately tidy office. A large, blood-red, glazed pot stood in its matching oversized saucer on the carpet. Stretching from the surface of the compost almost to the ceiling was some kind of palm tree. Stella wasn’t good with plants. Names of them or care of them. She’d had a spider plant at home, but after the accident she’d stopped watering it. For a while it clung on, turning paler and paler until its leaves lost their green and white stripes and became translucent. Then it bolted, throwing out dozens of babies on runners like a mobile. Finally, it turned brown, withered and died.
He looked up at her and smiled. His full lips parted, revealing the unnaturally white and even teeth that office gossip held had appeared during a Collier family summer holiday in Florida. As always, his hair was clean, shining, and parted with military precision on the left, the narrow white strip of scalp an even two millimetres in width all the way from hairline to crown.
He motioned for her to take a seat opposite him. Then he folded his large hands on the desk. She glanced down at the wide gold band on his wedding finger and a large gold signet ring topped with an oval of incised red stone on the middle finger of his right hand. Coarse black hairs curled on the backs of his knuckles. She wondered, as she often had before, why he didn’t pluck them out; they were so at odds with the rest of his tailored appearance. He spoke.
“Welcome back, DI Cole. Stella. How are you feeling?”
“On a scale from one to ten, sir?”
He frowned. “I beg your pardon?”
“Sorry, sir. Just come from an interview with occie health. I don’t think I ever realised how thorough they are.”
“Linda? She’s new. Has a doctorate in occupational psychology, and an MBA if you can believe it. Part of our professionalism drive to elevate operational standards. Don’t worry. It’s PBP now across most of the Met. Came in while you were, ah, away.”
“PBP, Sir?”
“Professional Best Practice. It’s a new one. You’ll get used to it. Now, I expect you’ll want to know about your new assignment, yes?”
Stella frowned. “New, sir? I thought I’d be back on my old duties.”
Collier frowned. “The murder investigation teams are all operating with a full complement of detectives, Stella. I’ve taken a good, hard look at our orgchart, but they’re all fully resourced. In any case, I’m not entirely convinced that’s our best course of action for you right now.”
“What do you mean, sir? You must have read my pre-return psych eval from the shrink at the hospital. I’m
fine. I’m off the pills, and the booze as well. Going to meetings. The whole works.”
Collier leaned back and stared at the ceiling before returning his cold gaze to Stella. “I did read it. And it’s very encouraging. Really encouraging. You have made amazing progress. But–”
“But?”
“But I don’t want you on the front line. Not yet. Give yourself time to reacclimatise to the job. It’s not like going back to work as a librarian, after all.”
“But I need it, sir. Please. There must be an MIT that needs me. Or what about another command? Special operations. Counter-terror. Sexual offences.” Now give me the bad news.
“No, Stella. My mind’s made up. I’m giving you an easy run in. There’s a new cross-divisional administrative task force been set up. You’re being temporarily reassigned there for a few months. Just until we can see how you’ve settled in. Light duties.”
Stella barked out a short, sharp, bitter laugh. “Admin, sir. Really? You’re putting me on the filing cabinet task force?”
Collier leant forward, fixing Stella with those dark eyes of his. “Yes, I am. Effective immediately. Report to Christine Flynn on the seventh floor. Corporate affairs. She’s got the reins on this one. Now, if you’ll forgive me, and it is good to have you back, believe me, but I have a meeting at the Home Office in forty-five minutes and I need a fresh shirt.”
Stella stood. Swallowing hard, she looked down at Collier.
“Thank you. Sir.”
6
Descent into Purgatory
Frankie O’Meara made Stella a cup of the station’s barely drinkable instant coffee – something to do with the water was the most commonly stated, and believed, explanation – and then leaned back against the counter, putting her lips to the rim of her mug and blowing.
“So, admin. Bummer. Thought we’d have you back with us, boss,” she said.
Stella shrugged, before taking a cautious sip of her coffee and grimacing. “Me, too, Frankie. But The Model’s got his mind made up, and you know what he’s like.”
Frankie stood straight and frowned at Stella. “I’m sorry, Stella. My mind’s made up,” she said, in a comically deep voice. “I have to consider what’s best for the command.”
They both laughed at the pinpoint accuracy of Frankie’s impression of DCS Collier, only to choke back their laughter as the man himself popped his head round the partition between Homicide Command and the kitchen area.
“That’s right, DS O'Meara,” he said with a disarming smile. “I do. A word, please.”
The immaculately groomed head disappeared and the two women glanced at each other, then snorted with more suppressed giggles. “Oh, shit, boss. I’m in for it now.”
“Don’t worry. Just do your ‘sorry, sir’ act and stick your chest out. You know he’s got the hots for you.”
“Guv! It was one drunken snog at a Christmas party. Two years ago!”
“I know. And look how it affected him. Must have been the pressure of your thirty-four Ds against that starched white shirt of his.”
Frankie blushed a fetching shade of plum-red. “Got to go, boss. Pray for me.” Then she winked and hurried off.
Stella blew on her coffee, took another sip, scowled, then carried the mug, which was decorated with the words, ‘Not Now, I’m Doing Paperwork’, along the corridor to the lifts. As she waited, she wondered why Frankie hadn’t thought to ask about Lola. Perhaps tiny babies weren’t her thing. Not all women had that maternal instinct.
She jabbed the call button and stood, looking at the digital number on the screen to the left of the doors as it flipped and shimmered downwards: 10 … 9 … a huge pause …
“Oh, come on, for fuck’s sake,” Stella groaned. “What are you doing up there, getting your old granny in with you?”
Finally, after what seemed like minutes, but was probably only ten or fifteen seconds, the lift was on the move again. Twenty seconds later, the control panel bleeped and the doors hissed apart. A group of detectives strode out, grim faced, one nodding at Stella before they wheeled left in lockstep and headed off towards SC&O Command’s CID office.
Stella stepped into the lift and poked the button for the seventh floor.
“Hold the lift!” a male voice called.
She looked down, flustered, found the Open Doors button, and held her fingertip on its impressed surface until the voice’s owner arrived and slid in beside her.
He was a bearded man in his early forties. More hair on his cheeks and chin than his scalp, which was shiny and pink from the forehead back to the crown of his head. He wore gold-rimmed, rectangular glasses on a thin, black, leather thong. His sizeable gut strained the thin, sea-green cotton of his shirt so that the spaces between the buttons gaped, revealing hairy ellipses of pallid skin.
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t DI Cole. How’re you keeping Stella?”
Stella turned to face him. She smiled a thin-lipped smile and stared at his piggy little eyes.
“Oh, you know, Pink, mustn’t grumble. Just started work again today, actually.”
“Listen, sorry about, you know. I mean, fucking awful way to go.”
Stella maintained her stare. “You weren’t at the funeral, were you?”
DI Howard “Pink” Floyd had the good grace to blush just slightly. “No. No, I wasn’t. Thing was, Carol had tickets to see Celine Dion. I wanted to come, Stella, really, but those things are like fucking gold-dust. I did send flowers.”
Stella looked up at the green dot-matrix display above their heads as the numbers worked their way to seven. Why is the lift so bloody slow?
“I know you did. Red roses. Very romantic.”
“It was all they had,” Floyd said.
“At the garage, you mean?” Stella closed her eyes. Please let me get out, God. Please speed up this fucking lift.
God evidently had other ideas. With a jerk that sent Stella sideways against Floyd’s corpulent belly and a squeal of machinery from somewhere far above them, the lift came to a halt. The lights flickered, went out, then came on again.
“Bollocks!” Floyd said. “I’ve got a meeting in five minutes.” He reached sideways and began jabbing his index finger at the button for the seventh floor. “Come on, come on,” he urged the button. Then he screwed up his face into a snarl. “Well, fuck you, then!” he shouted and kicked the doors with the toe of his pale-grey, slip-on shoe.
Stella reached across and pressed the alarm button. “Relax, Pink,” she said. “What’s the matter, claustrophobia?”
“As a matter of fact, it is that,” he said. “I’ve had hypnotherapy and everything for it.”
“Take a few deep breaths then and try to stay calm. They’ll have us out of here in no time.”
Even though she would cheerfully kick the fat man’s arse all the way down the stairs from the top floor to the basement, Stella also had a compassionate streak a mile wide. She didn’t like to see people frightened, or in any kind of pain if she could stop it. Floyd was breathing steadily and deeply, though she noticed a film of sweat on his forehead and top lip. He’d closed his eyes too. Sweat patches had darkened under his arms, and she could smell the tang of his anxiety.
Then the speaker above the panel of buttons squawked into life.
“Hello? This is Orion Customer Response Desk. Who am I speaking to, please?”
To whom am I speaking? Idiot. “This is DI Stella Cole. Can you get this lift moving please?”
“Yeah, no worries, mate,” the speaker squawked again. “There was a power outage in the master control unit. Just rebooting it now. Be about three minutes. You all right in there?”
“We’re fine,” Stella said, looking across at Floyd. His eyes were closed, and he was leaning against the wall and clutching the polished, stainless-steel rail that ran round the three enclosed sides of the lift. “Just get a move on, will you.” She turned to Floyd, who had turned an unhealthy shade of pale green. “Hang in there, Pink. Help’s on its way.”
&
nbsp; “I’m fine,” he gasped. “Doing a lot better than that Lord Psychopath who got his last month.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, come on, you must have heard. The Right-Fucking-Honourable Nigel Golding. Took a hit from the Cowboys and Indians Brigade trying to leg it from a prison transfer van. It was on the news, the web, Facebook, everywhere. What are you, a hermit or something?”
“Don’t watch a lot of TV, to be honest.”
“Well, you should have. You would have seen His Lordship take a few in the face. Bloody bastard. Got off easy if you ask me. Mind you–”
“Mind you, what?”
Floyd turned to Stella and leaned closer, beckoning her to lean in to hear what he had to say.
“It wasn’t as much of a coincidence as you might think.”
“What wasn’t?” she asked, breathing shallowly to avoid inhaling any more of his flop sweat aroma.
“What d’you think? Him getting drilled like that.”
“Like I said, Pink, I didn’t see the story.”
Floyd tapped the side of his nose, a typically comic-book response. “Look, I’m probably telling tales out of school, but let’s just say he got what was coming to him. He might have got some clever Oxbridge-educated brief to get him off on an insanity defence, but there are people who see through all that flimflam. Powerful people, who can make sure justice gets done whatever those numpties on the jury bench say.”
Stella was just about to ask him what he meant when the lights flickered again and the lift jolted into motion. Ten seconds later, the doors were opening on the seventh floor and, with a sigh and a shudder, DI Floyd squeezed through the opening doors like a cork leaving a bottle of cheap sparkling wine.
Frowning and shaking her head, Stella turned right out of the lift and walked the twenty metres along the green-painted corridor to her destination: an office door marked, “Christine Flynn, Corporate Affairs.” As she knocked and reached down for the handle, she smiled quietly and nodded. You did it. Stage One complete.
