Power Games

by Judith Cutler

  ‘I’d love to, Gaffer. But I’ve got to be in court in an hour’s time, remember.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ Masters said. ‘It’d be nice to have an attractive young lady gracing our canteen.’

  Putting her hand on Masters’ arm, Rowley winked at Kate. ‘You pop off, Kate, and I’ll give our friend here a bit of equal opps. training over the bacon butties.’

  Kate and Graham almost collided on the steps to the police station’s main entrance as she ran the last few yards from the car park.

  Before he spoke, he looked at his watch. There was no indication in his face that only twelve hours ago they’d sat side by side examining buttons. Perhaps she was grateful. All she had on her mind at the moment was showering away the fire smells and getting on with routine. Anything to keep at bay the memory of those teeth grinning at her from between the blackened lips.

  ‘The second morning you’ve been late,’ he said. ‘And you’re due in court in forty minutes, for goodness’ sake.’

  If she didn’t want tenderness, she didn’t want this crap, either. Hadn’t he eyes to see, a nose to smell, where she’d been? ‘Major fire, sir. This time there was a victim. I’ve only come away because of the court case.’

  He flinched, half lifted a hand. ‘You’re all right?’

  She nodded, but wouldn’t respond to the concern in his voice. ‘I can shower off and change in ten minutes flat. I won’t be late.’

  He nodded. ‘I’ll see you there, then.’

  He was waiting outside the Law Courts clutching a take-away coffee and something in a paper bag.

  ‘In case you’d lost your breakfast,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘I did. Twice. Thanks.’ The coffee was cool and weak, almost unpalatably sweet; the little bag contained a Danish and a smoked salmon bagel. ‘It’s just—’

  ‘No time to talk. Just get it down you. We don’t want you fainting in court.’

  Kate didn’t faint in court. She didn’t do anything in court, and neither did Graham. The whole day was filled – wasted, in their terms – by legal wrangling that could have taken place before the trial started. At least they’d been set free early. Would Graham assume they were going back to do a couple of hours’ work – which she needed to do? Or would he suggest a delicate bit of bunking off?

  His behaviour all day had given no clue. He, like her, had taken advantage of the wait to attack piles of portable paperwork, and their lunch-sandwich conversation had been about the frustrations of waiting and details of the fire. Should anyone have bothered to try to overhear what they’d been talking about, they’d have been impressed by their professionalism.

  In the watery sun that greeted them as they emerged into Corporation Street, he turned. ‘I wonder what time the museum closes? You haven’t talked to an archaeologist yet, have you?’

  It sounded almost like an accusation, which was rich since he knew exactly what she’d been doing all day. But his face implied no criticism.

  ‘Not yet,’ she said mildly. ‘I’ll phone them from the office, as soon as I get in.’

  ‘Why not pop up now?’

  Now that was an interesting suggestion from a man who’d bollocked her for bad time-keeping less than eight hours ago.

  ‘Paperwork, Gaffer, that’s why. And then filing said paperwork. Plus, if the truth be told,’ she added, allowing a dimple to show, ‘I’ll bet the place would be closed by the time I get there – closed to casual visitors, at any rate. And it looks as if it’s about to rain.’

  So they walked back briskly together, in a peaceable silence.

  Was it coincidence that they left their offices for home at almost the same instant? Possibly. It was on her part at least. At any rate, they fell into step.

  ‘Did you get your filing done?’

  ‘All of it. And I got through to the museum. They’ve got someone called an Assistant Keeper for Archaeology.’

  ‘Have they indeed?’

  ‘I presume they’ve got a keeper for him to be Assistant to. But my buttons aren’t grand enough for him. Anyway, I’ve arranged to take a couple round tomorrow lunchtime, other things being equal.’

  ‘Meanwhile, they just lie there?’

  ‘Well, they’ve lain there happily for the last hundred or so years. And Alf’s covered the site as tenderly as if it were a baby.’

  ‘All the same …’ He held the door open for her. ‘Actually, Kate – I wonder if I might ask you a favour. My car’s in for a service, today – would you mind dropping me on the bus route?’

  She pointed to the rain swirling across the street. ‘I’ll drop you at home – or wherever it is you’re heading,’ she said. So it hadn’t been coincidence. But why hadn’t he asked earlier? Because, no doubt, his wife would expect him to go by bus; whatever the weather, she wouldn’t approve of the current arrangement.

  ‘Thanks. I see you’re not taking any time off for the Easter break.’

  ‘No. It always rains, and you only end up in miserable traffic jams. But I am off to watch the tennis on Sunday at the National Indoor Arena.’

  ‘You’re getting very keen, aren’t you?’ He sounded amused.

  Squad gossip occupied the rest of the journey. And Graham started new topics whenever one ran dry. But he kept off the one thing she wanted to know – had almost been briefed to find out.

  At last, just as she was to turn into his road, she asked, point blank. ‘So are the rumours true, Gaffer? That you’ll be leaving us for fresh fields?’

  ‘It’s actually, “Fresh woods and pastures new”,’ he said mock-pedantically. ‘And – just over there, on the right. By the pillar box.’

  ‘And will you?’ She turned and slowed, looking for his house.

  ‘Just drop me here. This is fine.’

  Though she could have sworn there was a good hundred yards to go. Still, if he preferred a soaking to a door-to-door delivery, who was she to argue? Particularly as they both knew who would be waiting behind the door.

  She pulled into the kerb, and cut her lights and the ignition.

  ‘Thanks.’ He reached for the door handle.

  ‘Just one thing, Gaffer, before you go.’

  ‘I’m very late, Kate,’ he said, suddenly severe. ‘I promised my wife I wouldn’t keep supper waiting.’

  ‘Won’t take a second. Yes or no to the rumours?’ He couldn’t get out anyway – she always kept the doors on central locking when she was driving through town.

  It was too dark to see the look he gave her, but his voice mixed exasperation with something else. It didn’t seem to be amusement.

  ‘As it happens, the rumours are wrong. Now, I must go. Thanks for the lift.’

  She released the lock before he touched the handle – perhaps he wouldn’t realise he’d been locked in.

  ‘That’s OK, Gaffer – no problem. All you have to do is ask. Just one thing!’ she added, as he got out and turned to slam the door. ‘Your case – it’s on the back seat.’

  Chapter Five

  Easter Saturday afternoon saw Kate not sitting in the rain in an enormous traffic jam but squatting in the sun in her back garden.

  ‘Button-making was a home industry, you see, like nail-making or chain-making in the Black Country. I’d say this brickwork –’ Stephen Abbott, the man from the museum, brushed away earth from a section which had lain under her shed – ‘was the foundations of a late eighteenth-early nineteenth-century workshop.’

  She pounced, excited. ‘What if Worksop Road were a corruption of “workshop”?’

  ‘Hmm. Could well be.’ He sounded doubtful. But surely an archaeologist would know that sort of thing. ‘Monday, I’ll nip into the Reference Library and check on documentation there – old maps, trade directories, that sort of thing. What I’d guess is that when they built your row of houses, they just flattened this. Now I’d say this could be an important site – of its type. Which is, I’m afraid, not in itself as important as – say – a Bronze Age kiln we found in someone’s garden a
few years back. So I can’t see you getting a huge grant to preserve it. On the other hand, I’d quite like to spend a little time looking at it, and recording it, before it disappears under your garden pond, or whatever. Look,’ he said, holding a button between finger and thumb, ‘at this one – you can see the pressing marks. Excellent. And aren’t they in good condition? Why they should make bone buttons too I’ve no idea. I’d need to check the archival material for that, too.’ He stood up. Stereotypical grey-haired, stoop-shouldered archaeologist Stephen Abbott was not. Nothing dry-as-dust about him. Apart from his job title, of course. He was probably no older than Kate, and not a lot taller. He had exactly the right sort of bum for jeans. Broad shoulders. Under his sweat-shirt there seemed to be muscles to die for. The whole lot was topped off by a nicely-shaped head, under a mop of blond curls, now glinting in the sun. And the face – well, Kate had always considered herself proof against a pretty face, but now she found that she might not be.

  ‘I suppose the spring isn’t the worst time to be working outdoors,’ she said tentatively. Despite the sun, there was a cold wind, and she wished that vanity hadn’t meant she’d left her fleece indoors.

  ‘Not bad at all. The days are getting longer, for one thing. And I may have to make this a private project, working in my own time, so it could take – well, several weekends. Are you sure you’re prepared to put up with that sort of inconvenience?’

  Put up with several weekends of Stephen? Not half! Despite the fact that the garden designer wanted to plant the shrubs and roses in early May at the latest.

  ‘If it’s covered with garden path, it’s gone forever, hasn’t it?’ she said, reflectively.

  ‘It depends on the path. In one sense, a few inches of solid concrete are a very good way of preserving your site. Think about all those city-centre sites that are preserved under tower blocks.’

  ‘But people can’t see them. Not,’ she added hastily, ‘that I’m thinking of opening my place to the public. But I wouldn’t be putting concrete on this – blocks on top of hard-core. No?’ She too stood up as gracefully as the knee would let her: certainly not as elegantly as Stephen. ‘Then it seems to me I’ve no option, morally at least. Your show must go on!’ She made a grand gesture.

  He nodded briefly. ‘OK.’

  She was taken aback by his lack of enthusiasm. ‘Cup of tea?’ she asked at last. She had, after all, added goodies to her Friday evening’s Sainsbury’s trolley in the hope that Stephen – whom she’d met briefly at the museum in her Friday lunch break – would stay. Her social life might be improving, but it currently didn’t include attractive male company – not heterosexual male company, at least. Colin was the most delightful friend, and she was more than happy to be his beard. Potential lover he was not, however. And her last relationship had shrivelled on the vine. As for Graham …

  ‘Why not?’ he said. He stopped. ‘I ought to tell you you won’t be able to claim treasure trove or anything.’

  ‘I wasn’t expecting to. Isn’t there some new legislation …?’ Interesting it might be, but it wasn’t at the core of every officer’s knowledge.

  ‘That’s right. A new Treasure Act. There’s a portable antiquities recording scheme.’

  ‘Is there indeed!’

  ‘Hmm. Run by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport,’ he said. ‘Known in the trade as “duckmess”,’ he added, with a grin that lit up his whole face.

  But the transformation was short-lived.

  They trudged down her building site garden towards the kitchen door.

  ‘What are you having done, precisely?’ Stephen asked, staring at the holes, still awash with water after Thursday’s downpour.

  ‘Having tree stumps removed. The trees – three or four sycamores – were towering over the house. And my neighbours’ houses.’

  ‘Nasty things, sycamore roots. And then? I mean, there’s not much you can do with a patch this size.’

  She bridled. ‘Oh, I don’t know. OK, it’ll never be Chatsworth, but with a bit of clever planting, a bit of trompe l’oeil, it could be quite attractive.’

  Hands on hips, he looked around. ‘You’ll still be overlooked by all those houses. That’s the trouble with terraced houses. I prefer a bit of space.’

  ‘So do I, but beggars can’t be choosers.’

  He stared at her. ‘Come on, you’re in the police, aren’t you? You’re not on local government rates.’

  She stopped by the back door to pull off her shoes. Mud and gravel and new kitchen floors didn’t mix. He scraped perfunctorily at his boots, but seemed inclined to keep them on.

  ‘Would you mind going stocking-footed? Otherwise I shall have to be like my mum, and lay down newspaper wherever you’re likely to walk.’

  ‘I can’t think why you didn’t have quarry tiles – they’d have been more appropriate for a house this age.’

  ‘Two factors. Money – sorry, but even police officers have cash-flow problems. And the fact that things like plates don’t bounce on quarry tiles.’

  The prospect of his company every weekend was beginning to lose its attraction.

  ‘True.’ He pulled his boots off.

  She gestured to a seat at her kitchen table. Muddy jeans wouldn’t mix with her new three-piece suite, courtesy of the January sales. And the kitchen, with its new paint and bright prints, was very pleasant, with the mid-afternoon sun warming the light maple of her units.

  ‘Tea or coffee?’

  ‘Coffee, thanks.’

  ‘Cafetiere or espresso?’

  ‘Instant decaff. If you’ve got such a low form of refreshment.’

  ‘Oh, even highly-paid police officers sink to instant occasionally,’ she grinned. ‘Come on, Stephen, don’t you ever get presents? Or do you still have to drink out of a jam-jar?’

  He had the grace to look sheepish.

  ‘And, if you like, I could offer you a dry crust, while I sit and stuff amaretti biscuits? Or there’s a treacle tart?’

  She made tea for herself, coffee for him, plonking milk still in its carton in front of him. Yes, she’d produce plates, too – no point in getting crumbs everywhere. And then she sat, knife poised over the treacle tart, looking at him ironically.

  ‘I suppose if I asked for sugar,’ he said, grinning, ‘you could offer me white or golden granulated sugar lumps, or demerara, or muscavado—’

  She laughed. ‘No, this is the only stuff to help the medicine go down.’ She passed the sugar basin, full of ordinary Silver Spoon. She slapped a hand to the side of her head. ‘D’you know, I do have some sweeteners, too.’

  Straight-faced, he declared, ‘I never accept sweeteners.’

  ‘So I truly don’t know what to make of him,’ she told Midge, as they took their places in the National Indoor Arena.

  Midge – and her colleague Lorraine – were the officers who’d promised to improve Kate’s social life. Apart from encouraging her to play tennis, they’d now brought her to watch it.

  ‘My life seems full of moody men at the moment,’ Kate continued.

  ‘Don’t give him a thought. Just think about mean men instead. Golly, doesn’t Henman look young!’ Midge exclaimed, as the entire auditorium rose to its feet to cheer him and the rest of the Davis Cup players on to court. ‘Except that you haven’t had much luck with men recently, have you? I mean, we hoped you’d hit it off with Cary Grant, and then there was Pat the Path – weren’t you two an item for a bit?’

  ‘It just – sort of fizzled out,’ Kate said. There was no way she would reveal even to friends exactly how. ‘God, look at those quadriceps …’ What wouldn’t her bad knee give for them?

  ‘And then,’ Lorraine put in, ‘there was a very strong rumour that Someone Senior was after you.’

  Kate hoped her face was entirely blank. It was inevitable that she and Graham should have become objects of gossip, but she thought she’d scotched any rumours months ago. ‘Not that I ever noticed. Who – come on, you can’t leave me hanging in mid-
air like that!’

  ‘Why, young Rodney, of course. Superintendent Smarm. Ah! Go on, Tim! Go on!’

  And they were only knocking up, so far. What sort of volume would the crowd produce when Henman actually won points?

  So it wasn’t Graham who’d got the job: it was Rodney Neville. So how would Graham feel about that?

  But now the match was starting in good earnest – with Courier looking in ominously good form – she would postpone thinking about it. And concentrate on willing Henman through.

  If only …

  Bank Holiday Monday morning was living up to its reputation, weatherwise at least. There was a bitter wind confronting a rainy sky. The bonus was that the traffic was light. She’d worked steadily through the piles of paperwork avalanching over her desk when the phone rang. Another person working over the holiday: Patrick Duncan. He was in strictly professional mode – no one could have guessed he was a fizzled-out ex.

  ‘You’re still on that warehouse fire case?’ he asked, with no preamble.

  ‘“Still”? Is there any reason why I shouldn’t be?’

  ‘Come on, Kate, you know what rumours are like in this business … Anyway, if you are, I thought you’d like to know your stiff was a woman.’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ That the blackened flesh – once a woman like her.

  ‘Are you still there? … It’s the pelvis that gave it away, of course.’

  She must pull herself together. ‘Of course. Anything else about – about her?’

  ‘I’d say not young. And the teeth were in pretty poor nick. Fits in with the Fire Service view that she was a dosser. Bag-woman. Meths drinker. Whatever. Kate – are you OK?’

  She tried for a laugh. ‘It’s just that even in this job you get an attack of “but for the grace of God”.’

  ‘You mean your drinking? Kate, you’re over that now,’ he said forcefully. ‘You can even drink socially.’