‘I see,’ she said hastily, afraid he was about to recite all the tide times from now till Armageddon. ‘It’s pretty stable, then.’
‘Pretty stable.’ He closed his notebook and stowed it back in his pocket. ‘You have to take into account the winds and the changes in the clocks and so forth, but overall, that’s the shape of it.’
‘I can’t be sure, but going by the state of the putrefaction of the leg – first sight you understand – that limb was in the water about a week. So it could have gone in –’
‘No need for you to worry yourself over that, Doctor.’ Dudley could keep silent no longer. ‘That’s our business. No need for you to –’
‘Go on, say it!’ George said and laughed. ‘No need for you to worry your pretty little head.’
‘I’d be hard pushed to get the words out,’ he snapped. He stared at her witheringly, then turned and went away up the beach to the car to bawl at the constable for standing around doing bugger all.
Slavin watched him go and laughed. ‘He missed his morning coffee, didn’t he? Well, there it is. Some blokes in the Bill are like that. Hardened. We’re all right in the river force, of course.’
‘Of course you are,’ she said and patted his shoulder. Then she wondered if she had been the one to be patronizing, but he only grinned back at her. ‘Do something for me,’ she said. ‘I know I’m only the doctor, but I like to get involved in these tricky cases, you know. It’s kinda more fun. So will you watch out for any other pieces of body? I’d really like to be sure I get my hands on anything that turns up as soon as it does, even before the coroner hears of it. Leave it to Dudley and he might even try to get the whole job handed over to McCulloch at the forensic unit further down the river, in Greenwich.’
‘I get you,’ Slavin said. Now it was his turn to pat her shoulder, which he did with obvious pleasure. ‘I’ll tip you off. At Old East, are you?’
‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘And even if I’m not there someone reliable’ll take messages. Just ask for the Path. Department direct. Not Appointments, but Path. Department, got it?’
‘I’ve got it,’ he promised and then looked up at her slyly. ‘You’d better ask the Guv though, as well, hadn’t you? It’s not as if he’d treat you as unkindly as our inspector here.’
She looked at him sharply but he gazed back artlessly. ‘No,’ she said after a moment. ‘I get on very well with the DCI. But he’s tied up on other cases and Dudley’ll be in charge of this. Which is why I’d like you to help me. Will you?’
‘Well …’ he said and then glanced over her shoulder, to where Dudley was waving at him and shouting that they were leaving. The van had arrived, and already the leg had been double-bagged, labelled and was being borne off to the back of the vehicle for transporting the couple of miles upriver to George’s mortuary. ‘Glad to help. I’ll be in touch.’
‘I know you will,’ George said and winked at him. Then she followed him back up the beach to climb into her own little Citroën to go rattling back to the hospital for a shower, breakfast and the day’s work.
And behind them the little beach lay quietly, waiting for the last efforts of the tide to swallow it up and wash away the evidence that they, or their find, had ever been on it.
3
George liked best the first hour or so of the day at Old East. The hospital, an ill-matched conglomeration of buildings sprawling over a cramped piece of Shadwell ground between the Highway and the river, looked at its neatest and cleanest before the day’s detritus of discarded Coke cans and sweet wrappers and worse built up in the courtyards and the waiting area in A&E and the linking corridors, and while the staff and patients still looked reasonably fresh. By mid afternoon, especially on these hot summer days, everyone was frazzled and ill tempered and tired and it showed in the way patients moved sluggishly between the long corridors and the clinics, with either aggressive or shuffling steps, and in the staff’s pallid oily skins and baggy eyes, even the young ones. The place smelled tolerable in the mornings too; of all hospital food breakfast was undoubtedly the best, so the scent of toast and bacon and even coffee would wander through the wards and cheer everyone; it certainly was easier on the nose than the steamed fish and mince and puréed Brussels sprouts that seemed to dominate the lunch menus. There was in addition a faint scent of the disinfectants used overnight to wash the floors and walls, and though it could have a slightly ominous effect on patients who found hospitals alarming places, it was a great deal more agreeable than the reek of sweating sick bodies and blood and medication that filled the air as the day progressed.
This morning, since she was particularly early, it was even pleasanter than usual in George’s estimation. The night staff were busy on the wards, so the corridors and the courtyards were quiet. On the straggling bushes in the flower-bed supposed to adorn the centre of the main courtyard, which was the hospital’s main thoroughfare, and which the Estates Department struggled to look after, there were even a couple of new pink roses. George stopped to touch one and try to smell it. It was still in too tight a bud to offer any scent, and by lunchtime, when she would come this way again, it would, of course, have gone. Visitors seemed unable to prevent themselves from snatching every flower that appeared. Well, she thought, I might as well have it myself. At least I work here. She twisted it off and took it to her own rather drab little office in the Pathology Department where she stuck it in a specimen glass on her desk.
The desk was blessedly clear and she contemplated it with lively pleasure. The amount of paperwork her job created was awesome, she would tell Gus, who would merely snort at her and point out how much more burdened with bumf he was, which was of small comfort. Most days started with a struggle to clear the most urgent material and ended with an attempt to finish the rest, which rarely succeeded. Usually there was a backlog screaming out to be done; but not this morning, and she was grateful. She was due in court at two this afternoon, to give evidence at the Old Bailey about a man who had died of injuries sustained in a fight outside a Leman Street pub last weekend, which would, if there was any justice, result in all three of the men who had attacked him going down for long stretches, but she doubted it. She had become almost as cynical as Gus and his colleagues about the lightness of the sentencing of the villains their work uncovered. That would leave her enough time to do a full work-up on the leg she had just seen at the riverside, and she stretched and went to put on her little coffee machine to get the first brew of the day ready.
Roop, she thought and grinned as she spooned the grounds into the filter and scrabbled in her cupboard for biscuits and a mug. Thought he’d scored one over on me. But not this time.
She knew perfectly well how much Rupert Dudley disliked her and resented her relationship with Gus, how suspicious and shut-out it made him feel. There was nothing at all sexually ambivalent about the man – he had a lively wife and three teenage children living in Romford to attest to that – but he didn’t like women as work colleagues. He was distant and unfriendly towards any women police who drifted into the team, an attitude that ensured that they often drifted out again as fast as they could put in for a transfer. And he had certainly been unfriendly to George when she had replaced her male predecessor in her job. It had been bad enough for him that she had not allowed herself to be dismayed by his attitude (it was some time before she actually noticed it, to tell the truth) but when she had become emotionally involved with his boss, Gus Hathaway, Dudley had been almost in despair. She knew it and he knew she knew it; and that somehow made it worse for him. What was it that plagued him? Simple inability to realize that women could do any job a man could do? Confused jealousy based on some deep and (to George) incomprehensible male bond? Or just an old-fashioned he’s-my-mate-and-I-was-here-first? She didn’t know, and frankly she didn’t care. His behaviour was just silly, as far as she was concerned, occasionally tiresome, and always a tedious waste of time.
Anyway, his tricks hadn’t worked this morning. He’d phoned Gus’
s number to reach her. The screech of the bell had woken her suddenly, but not so suddenly that she hadn’t had her wits about her. Gus had already left his flat, due to join a stake-out set up by the team he was using to deal with a series of high-profile robberies that had afflicted the whole of East London in the past few months, and she knew everyone involved would know that. If they’d wanted Gus while he was en route they’d have called him on his mobile phone, not his home. This had to be someone prying, trying to find out if she was there.
She had lain there once the phone stopped ringing, waiting, and sure enough within a few moments her own mobile had rung and she had answered it, sounding suitably sleepy, told Rupert Dudley she’d be with him as soon as she could, and broken the connection in great satisfaction. He’d clearly wanted to catch us out, she thought. Bastard.
Not that it mattered, that was the silly thing. There was no reason why she and Gus shouldn’t have the steamiest of love affairs if they chose. Neither was attached to anyone else, and it did no harm to the job, so why worry? And this time in fact, what Dudley had tried to catch them in was a piece of very unsteamy cosiness.
She’d gone to Gus’s flat last night to make him dinner, something she did occasionally when neither of them wanted to go to one of his restaurants, and she’d fallen asleep on the sofa, waiting for him to get home so that she could grill his steak. He’d come in at midnight, almost dead on his feet, and wanted no more than an omelette, and by the time she’d made them and they’d eaten, it hardly seemed worth getting into her little car and driving back over the river to her own flat in Bermondsey.
So they’d curled up and slept like an old married couple without an atom of passion between them. Just the sheer comfort of being together. It had been, she thought now as she settled at her desk and sipped her coffee gratefully, really rather nice. It wouldn’t set the world alight with excitement but it was very nice.
But whether it would go on being so nice was another issue. He’d been working these crazy hours, seven days a week, for almost a month now and it was really getting rather much. He looked thinner and more pinched with fatigue (though it would take a lot to extinguish the humour in that square face or to flatten the exuberance of the dark curly hair that covered his skull) and certainly was abstracted in his manner. They hadn’t worked together on a case in all that time and had hardly talked at all; she missed that: sharing the digging out of facts in tricky cases was the best fun she knew, even more fun than sex; though that was there too when they worked together. Somehow there had always seemed enough time and energy left over for themselves. But at the moment there was no slack at all for him in which to live his own life, or to share hers. All she could do was make sure she went to the flat, as she had last night, to remind him of her existence and herself of her need of him.
It would be worth it though, eventually. She knew that. Gus, despite the financial security provided by the nine fish-and-chip-shops-cum-restaurants that had spread themselves right across the East End of London, and which were threatening to move northwards into more upmarket areas like Islington and Dalston where trendy young media types were colonizing, remained as ambitious a copper as he’d ever been. And now he was about to become a superintendent. It was just a matter of time.
She thought about that as she finished her coffee. Gus, in charge of an Area Major Investigation Team, responsible for all the big cases that came into ten nicks. It was so heady a prospect for him. And perhaps for George too. If she could become the forensic pathologist permanently attached to Gus’s AMIT, wouldn’t life be fun? No longer to have any responsibility for Old East’s pathology services, to be able to concentrate entirely on being with and working with Gus. She stretched as luxuriously as a cat as she thought about it. Lovely.
Just a matter of time, he had told her, when it had all started. ‘Get this case sorted, get the whole bloody lot of ’em in the dock and I’ll be free to go on my assessment course and then way-hay, just watch me!’
‘Assessment course?’ she said, surprised. ‘Ye Gods, Gus, how much more do they have to know about you? Haven’t you been a cop long enough?’
‘A coupla years,’ conceded Gus. ‘Twenty or more. But this is different. A hundred of us go off to Hendon assessment centre for two really intensive days, and after that you know eventually, yes or no, whether you’re in or you’re out. I’ll be in, no question, and then it’s just a case of waiting for a berth.’
‘You mean they don’t just give you a super’s job right away? That doesn’t seem fair. Once you’re ready for it and have passed their crazy assessment, surely –’
He’d shaken his head. ‘I don’t want any old job, darlin’. I want this one. AMIT taking in this patch. I don’t want to leave my manor! But no sweat, not a bit of it. Old Cumberland’ll retire once he knows I’m ready, willin’ and able. He’s dying to get out to his garden and spend all day fiddling with his asparagus. And artichokes and antirrhinums. He’s got this plan to have an alphabetical garden, see? All the way to zinnias. But the job’s kept him stuck at A for the past ten years. So, like I said, it’s just a matter of time. I’ll get this case sorted in time for the assessment and then just you wait! By Christmas it’ll be a new life for yours truly. And maybe for you …’
She’d thrown a sharp glance at him at that point but he’d merely grinned back with an expression as open and innocent as a child’s, so she hadn’t pursued the point. The number of times they’d come close to talking of the future were matched by an equal number when they’d both hurriedly skated away from any such discussion.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘I hope you’re right about getting this one sorted out in time. When’s this assessment thing?’
‘October,’ he said. ‘Middle of October.’
‘And what’s this case?’
He had become vague then, waving his hands in the air with a sort of flapping motion. ‘Oh, do me a favour, ducks! I’ve got fifteen bulging files and Gawd knows how many floppy discs, and you want me to explain what it’s all about, just like that? All I can tell you is it involves not only armed robberies but insurance scams and protection rackets and a good bit of money laundering. There’s even a fella pushing out Ecstasy to half the country’s kids – but that’s not all. It’s the way the whole lot of ’em interconnect – they’ve turned it into a network thing. A lot of villains gettin’ the notion that they can operate like a legit business. And I won’t have it. Business plans and long-term strategies, for Chrissakes!’ With which gnomic utterance she had had to be content, because the phone had rung to disturb their rare treat of a shared lunch on his desk at Ratcliffe Street nick and he’d had to go. So she wasn’t much the wiser about what the case was than she had been when he started on it.
But that it was important to both of them she did realize. Maybe when he was a super running an Area Major Investigation Team he’d have a little more time for a normal life? Maybe he’d have enough inspectors and so forth working for him that he’d be less overworked? And in addition, there was the matter of George’s own involvement: maybe he’d be able to put even more interesting cases her way? That would be great.
‘Great,’ she said aloud, rolling the R so that she sounded like a cat with an unusually loud purr, and then laughed as a startled face appeared at her door.
‘Hullo, Sheila,’ she said, choosing to ignore the puzzled expression the face bore. ‘You’re in early. It isn’t half-past eight yet.’
‘Got a lot to do,’ Sheila said importantly and with an air of being hard done by. She inserted the rest of herself into the room, glancing across at the coffee pot, still bubbling on its little hotplate.
‘Help yourself,’ George said amiably.
Sheila did and came to perch on the edge of her desk. ‘I don’t want to fuss, Dr B.,’ she said, ‘but I really must say –’
‘Here it comes!’ George said. ‘As soon as you say that I know there’s going to be one.’
‘What?’
‘A fuss.’<
br />
‘I’m not the one making it,’ Sheila said virtuously and drank her coffee, looking over the rim of her mug with wide doleful eyes. ‘I do my best to keep the peace but –’
‘What has he done now?’ George interrupted in a resigned tone.
‘It’s not him,’ Sheila said and lowered her cup. ‘It’s Jane.’
‘Jane?’ George said, and frowned. ‘But Jane’s a marvellous technician. One of our best. You’ve always said so!’
‘I dare say she still would be,’ Sheila said tartly. ‘If she wasn’t so cow eyed over Dr Short. I really do think we ought to keep them apart somehow. She works better when she doesn’t have to work with him, if you see what I mean. We could put her on the forensic stuff that Jerry usually does and then –’
‘Now hang about a bit!’ George was angry now. ‘This is nonsense, Sheila, and you know it. It’s been fixed for almost six months now that Jerry Swann is on the forensic budget, so he does all the forensic work. He’s a good chap, and mucks in with the path. lab work when you’re pushed, and does a great job, but that doesn’t mean he’s entirely interchangeable. Jane is officially employed by the Old East Trust without any input from my forensic budget. Although they both work here, you know as well as I do that I have to keep an eye on the way various staff are deployed. I’m not having that damned Archer woman down on my back for misuse of Trust budget moneys. She’s a pest, but she’s also a bloody good Director and manager and she’ll spot it the minute you try doing things like that. So it won’t work, ducky. You’ll have to send up another bird.’
‘You’re beginning to talk like Chieflnspector Hathaway,’ Sheila said with a flash of spirit. ‘It sounds very peculiar with an American accent. You ought to watch out.’ She slid off George’s desk and flounced to the door. ‘Don’t blame me if none of the work gets done because Jane Rose and Alan Short are canoodling at each other all day. I’ve done my best. I wash my hands of the pair of them.’ And she went out, only just not slamming the door behind her.
Third Degree Page 3
