Staying Power

by Judith Cutler

  ‘“Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”,’ she told herself. ‘“A tale told by an idiot …”’ Macbeth. The play you shouldn’t quote, even to yourself. Even though she knew Cope was talking out of his arse, that, thanks to Graham, she’d logged everything, it was still frightening.

  ‘Get out. Before I forget myself and throw you out. Out!’

  She turned and marched out, pausing only to close the door quietly behind her. This time there’d be nothing she wanted anyone to overhear. However much she told herself he was out of order, she shook. Any moment now she might vomit. No, that would be to let him win. Somehow she got back to her desk, but could do no more than stand there staring at the wood. There was something she ought to do. There was a card, somewhere, wasn’t there? A card she’d put on everyone’s desk, telling people what to do in the face of bullying. That’s what she needed to do. Find that card.

  How long the phone had been ringing on her desk, she didn’t know. Shaking her head, she picked it up. It sounded like Neville’s voice. She’d better do as he said, report to his office. She glanced at her watch. She was going to get into hot water with Lizzie, too, for being late. Cramming Rona’s computer paperwork into her bag, she stumbled from the office. Where was Colin? Why hadn’t Graham called her in for a kind cup of tea?

  Neville looked at her appraisingly as she slipped into his room. He was obviously on his way to a meeting. But he smiled. ‘Go and do your stuff with Fraud,’ he said. ‘Remember who runs this Squad.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Kate, I’m running very late. Just do as I say.’

  She would if her legs would carry her. ‘Sir,’ she said. And she set off down the long corridor to the stairs.

  Colin wrapped her in a hug as soon as she stepped out of the building. ‘Come on, sweetie. You’ll be OK. With Neville and Harvey behind you, you’ll be OK.’

  ‘I’ve got to work with Cope. Every day I’ve got to work with him.’

  ‘Cope?’

  She explained briefly.

  ‘Fucking hell. So he thinks Selby’s as pure as the driven snow, does he? And you’re the one leaving dirty footprints? Well, he’s got a steep learning curve coming up, that’s all I can say. Look, I’ve got to go and twirl my green thumbs. Look the part, do I?’ He prinked, in a Barbour not even the Sally Army would have touched, and produced stained gardening gauntlets from one of the disreputable pockets. For good measure, he gave a cat-walk prowl and turn. ‘That’s better. Now off you pop and I’ll report back to you over a nice cup of tea. See you lunchtime, sweetie.’

  The drive down the M5 was shorter than she’d expected, largely because Bill kept up an insistent flow of conversation. He’d not asked her what was the matter, simply opened the passenger door of his Volvo for her with an old-fashioned courtesy that almost took her aback, and started talking. Family; his garden; his thoughts about Ofsted and what it had done to his wife; the possibility of a replacement car now this had clocked up eighty thousand. Good solid kindness.

  At last they reached the school that had expelled Nigel: an impressive pile, no doubt the unwitting model to which Queen Matilda’s aspired. She found herself responding to Bill’s chuckle.

  His eyes questioned her as she got out.

  ‘Much better now, thanks, Bill. Just a bit of strife I could have done without. I’m not sure how it’ll end, either.’

  ‘You’ll be all right. You only have to look at your chin to know you’ll lead with it sometimes.’

  ‘If I had, I wouldn’t have minded. This was just shit dropped from a great height.’

  He looked up. ‘So long as they drop my share on this car, not my new one.’

  ‘Sacked for selling grass!’ Kate could contain her laughter no longer. ‘Genuine grass!’ She slammed the car door shut and tipped her head back.

  ‘But the intention was there. The kids weren’t to know it wasn’t really cannabis. He could have been done under the Criminal Attempts Act, nineteen eighty-two,’ Bill said, rolling the law round his mouth with the air of a connoisseur – or of one preparing for promotion exams.

  ‘Absolutely. Now I’m wondering,’ she said, sobering rapidly and fastening the seat-belt, ‘if having escaped police notice once, young Nigel might not be pushing his luck. Or – given the general happiness and contentment of the Sanderson home – if his dad might not be pushing it for him. Find a lay-by, Bill, before we hit the motorway.’

  ‘What do these here vitamin tablets look like?’ She spread Rona’s results across her lap so he could see the data too. ‘Little white pills, not unlike homeopathic pills. What do E’s look like?’

  ‘Little white pills, not unlike homeopathic pills,’ Bill said promptly. ‘Bigger. With little pictures engraved on them.’

  ‘And what was young Nigel’s best subject at school? Art. What did the Head say? A real talent for engraving. Remember the delicate little woodcuts he’d done to illustrate that school magazine story? Nigel got into bad ways and his father brought him back home where he keeps him under a tight rein. OK, I bet he does his homework for fear of getting the push from Queen Matilda’s, but how does he spend the rest of the time? Scribing doves and dollars on vitamin pills!’

  Bill snorted, and pulled back on to the road. ‘Better than some of the stuff they put in. Jesus, a mate of mine in Drugs said they were pushing some so-called E’s full of cow anaesthetic round Coventry.’

  ‘You couldn’t get him to get some others analysed, could you? See if they’re actually good for you?’

  ‘No probs, as my kid would say. What next? Talk to the kid?’

  ‘At Queen Matilda’s, not at home. And after lunch. Depending, of course, on what Colin Roper turned up this morning. Bill – this is a complicated little case.’

  He grinned. ‘You wait till you’ve been with us a few months. We’ll show you what complicated is.’

  ‘If he hit her,’ said Colin, reaching for his glass, ‘it was where the bruises couldn’t be seen.’

  They had, on Lizzie’s insistence, settled for an informal meeting in a pub some way from the usual police haunts. ‘If I’m seen with him in that coat they’ll know I’m not Chief Inspector material,’ she’d said.

  ‘But do you think he did hit her?’ Kate asked.

  ‘She looked cowed. But then you say she normally looks cowed. I gave her some phone cards, like you said, which sort of identified me. She didn’t seem to avoid me after that. Tell you what, she’s good with those kids. Well, they’re not kids. Adults with learning difficulties. But she got them making Christmas wreaths like anyone’s business. Never a cross word; never a raised voice. She’s a nice woman.’

  ‘Do you think she’s got it in her to be party to any of her husband’s activities?’ Lizzie asked.

  ‘Intellectually, no problem. Morally—’ He shook his head.

  ‘Kate wants us to recruit her as an informer. Any ideas?’

  ‘It depends if you can put any pressure on her: she’s put up with her husband all these years. Maybe if we wave her son under her nose.’

  ‘She’s already told us that her son’s got to be part of the bargain, remember,’ Kate put in. ‘What Bill and I hope to do, Colin, is get the kid to sing this afternoon and hope he’ll implicate his father. A bit of informing from him wouldn’t come amiss.’

  ‘All the same,’ said Ben, who’d been too busy attacking a sandwich to speak before, ‘the net’s closing in. I’ve spent a happy morning on the computer, and I’ve pulled together all sorts of threads. We should be able to truss him up by the end of the week.’ But his glance moved from Kate’s face to a point above her head.

  ‘That’s nice,’ said Graham’s voice. ‘We could do with some good news.’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The others, ostensibly driven back to Lloyd House by a mixture of urgent work and the bitter wind, left Kate and Graham to follow more slowly. Not that Kate had much time: she and Bill wanted to catch Nigel before he left the soi-disant college for what
ever comforts his home might offer.

  ‘You didn’t look very well this morning,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d check you were OK.’

  She bit back the obvious response, that he’d been quite aware of what had upset her, and had made no effort for at least four hours to do anything about it. ‘I was very shaken,’ she admitted at last. ‘What with Selby and Cope—’

  ‘Cope?’

  ‘Heaving me out of the squad. Or threatening to. I don’t know that he can, not without your say-so. And Neville’s.’

  ‘I think you’d better explain.’

  She did.

  She wasn’t sure what response she expected. She’d have liked maybe a reassuring hug, at least a hand gripping her shoulder as he told her Cope was a bullying thug who wouldn’t get away with it this time.

  What she got was a face so grim the corners of his mouth pulled down. ‘This is very serious. Have you any defence?’

  ‘Defence? Only you, gaffer! You told me to document everything, which I did. As you told Selby this morning, in fact.’

  ‘That’s just the computer business. What about other things?’

  ‘Apart from him pretending to rape me? And him taking a note from my desk which might have prevented Alan Grafton’s death? OK, I’ve asked him to do some work – including checking up on carpeting firms which might have tried to do over my house. I’ve had no report on that whatsoever.’

  ‘Cope had already asked him to check up on crime reported in that phone-in programme.’

  ‘Cope himself took him off that to check the burglary theory.’

  ‘Are you quite sure you haven’t exceeded your authority? Or handled him badly?’

  Kate turned her head slightly. The wind was whipping tears into her eyes. ‘Have you ever been on a course on how to question rape victims?’ she asked. And walked away.

  Lizzie was calling her as she turned down the corridor: ‘Kate – phone for you! Kate Power! Phone!’

  At least she could blame the scurry if her voice wobbled.

  ‘Kate, light of my benighted life!’

  ‘Hi, Dai!’

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘Been running.’

  ‘And look who’s run bloody marathons without even breaking into a sweat.’

  ‘That was then. Out of training, that’s all.’

  ‘OK, well no doubt you’ll tell me another time. What it is, see, is what we were talking about the other day. All those drugs thefts from that great miasma half way up the M6. And I said everything was a bit amateurish: we make our own, down here, with our own little chemistry sets. Remember?’

  ‘I gather they’ve been making them with cow anaesthetic near here.’

  ‘Oh, aye. Kettamin. What these silly kids will do to themselves. Anyway, we’ve got some silly bleeders down here stuffing themselves with something else. Not so nasty, like.’

  ‘E’s made from daffodil bulbs? Or leeks?’

  ‘They’d be all right. Wouldn’t like to try the daffs, though. Not after Holland in the war. No, our kids are busy taking the healthy option, see. Lite E’s, you might say.’

  ‘Don’t tell me.’ Colin had used almost the same words, hadn’t he? In Mr Hill’s burgled pharmacy. ‘Don’t tell me, Dai.’

  But she couldn’t stop him: ‘Vitamin pills, my lamb. Bloody vitamin pills.’

  ‘Hand-crafted in sunny Birmingham?’

  ‘That’s what our informant says. I’ll fax through all the details, soon as I’ve typed my report. How’s that? Now, when are you going to come back down here and let me serenade you, shepherdess of my flock?’

  Nigel, a young-looking eighteen, sat the far side of the teacher’s desk in a classroom that had probably once been a servant’s bedroom. Kate pulled her chair to the side of the desk. Bill brought his even further round, so Nigel had to slew round to face them both.

  ‘At this stage,’ Kate said carefully and clearly, ‘we just want to ask you some questions.’

  He nodded, eyes huge, Adam’s apple convulsing. ‘Like, how long will it take? I mean – I got to—’ He looked at his watch.

  ‘Not long enough to make you late home, if that’s what you’re afraid of. Because you are afraid, aren’t you, Nigel?’ Bill’s turn.

  ‘What we want to know is what you’re afraid of. Tell, us, Nigel, why did you leave your last school?’

  His eyes filled. Then he got a grip. ‘I don’t see that’s any of your business.’

  Kate shook her head. ‘You know it is, don’t you? So let’s just hear it from you.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to caution me or something?’

  ‘You’re not under arrest: we told you that.’

  ‘And shouldn’t Mum or Dad be here?’

  ‘Only if you’re a minor. But there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be if you want them. If you’re sure you want them? Do you want me to call your dad?’ She flourished her mobile. ‘No. I didn’t think you did. What about your mum?’

  He shook his head. ‘She can’t. …’

  ‘She’s got a car. She could come over.’

  ‘She can’t.’

  ‘What do you mean, “can’t”? People with cars can dash round all over the place.’ Kate winced at the hardness she put into her voice. ‘If they want to. Wouldn’t she want to come and help you out?’

  Bill took over, as she hoped he would, kind as a favourite uncle. ‘Or is there something stopping your mum coming? Is that what you’re trying to say?’ He smiled even more kindly. ‘Something? Or someone?’

  The boy’s face tightened, and he chewed on a hangnail. He shifted in his chair. ‘What do you want to ask me?’

  ‘I want to know how you spend your evenings, Nigel,’ Kate said. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘I got work to do. For my A levels. They really check up on you. Can’t miss a class. Have this pile of homework. Tests every two weeks. Talk about cramming. I feel like one of those geese. You know.’ He gestured at his stomach. Then his teeth returned to the back of his thumb.

  ‘They want to make sure your parents get their money’s worth, maybe,’ Bill said. He sounded as though he sympathised. Perhaps he did. He had children, an expensive luxury, didn’t he?

  ‘They sacked this kid the other day. Done nothing wrong, had he? Just failed a couple of their bleeding tests, that’s all. No, not failed.’ His voice changed: ‘Not done quite well enough. There you are. Seven k. down the tubes.’

  ‘So you have to work very hard, or there’ll be trouble. What sort of trouble, Nigel?’

  ‘Nigel?’ Kate prompted.

  He pushed to his feet and headed for the window.

  ‘Nigel?’

  ‘You know what happens!’ He could have been in tears.

  ‘If I did, I wouldn’t be asking.’

  Although it wasn’t yet three the heating had been turned off long since and the shabby room was getting cold. It was a dispiriting place for a major chunk of this kid’s personal tragedy to be played out.

  Bill was on his feet. ‘Come on, kid. It’s getting late. And your mum’ll be getting worried. I think it’d be a good idea if we went back to Brum and sent a car to get her, don’t you?’

  ‘She can’t come. She can’t come.’ His voice rose to a scream. ‘Christ, don’t you fucking pigs understand anything?’

  Kate and Bill withdrew to the corridor and left him to stew, just as if they were in fact giving him a formal interview.

  ‘My instinct is to turn him loose and start again tomorrow morning,’ Kate said, pulling her lip. ‘I’m certain that woman’s at risk if he comes home late. What do you think?’

  ‘Are you sure Sanderson won’t do anything to harm her this evening?’

  ‘It’s more likely if we delay Nigel. Tell you what, let’s see what he says.’

  ‘Risky.’

  ‘It’s all risky. Look, what do we want to get out of this? That Sanderson’s at the heart of a nasty money-making empire. You and Ben are well on the way to doing that. That he makes his son for
ge E’s. To do that we’ve got to interrogate the son and get a confession that he forges the E’s. And I don’t fancy doing that without a solicitor present. Which would delay things and make him late back home and put his mum at risk.’ She traced a circle in the air. ‘Back where we started.’

  ‘There’s one other thing Lizzie said you wanted out of this. To prove that Sanderson killed Grafton.’

  She pushed her fingers through her hair. ‘You know, I’d lost sight of that.’

  ‘All this hassle – come on, we’ll talk about that back in the car. Let’s put this lad out of his misery.’

  Nigel had bitten hangnails back far enough to draw blood. He was inspecting his efforts when they returned, as if surprised his hands belonged to him.

  ‘What time do you need to start home to get there at the usual time?’ Bill asked bluntly.

  ‘In about ten minutes.’

  ‘OK. And if you don’t get home, your dad’ll take it out on your mum?’

  Nigel nodded.

  ‘Can you tell us how, Nigel?’

  ‘She won’t talk about it. Tells me not to get upset.’

  ‘But you do get upset. Do you get upset because he takes it out on you, too?’

  Nigel found loose skin round another nail, and started on that.

  ‘I think we take that as a yes,’ Kate said quietly. ‘Nigel, we’re going to want to talk to you again. We think you have a lot to tell us. But I’d like it to be at a time when your mother can be present, and, preferably, a solicitor as well. In the meantime, don’t say anything to your mother, because we don’t want to worry her further. And obviously, you won’t be telling your dad about this conversation. Just tell me one thing: why did they sack you from your last school? Just for the record.’

  Nigel smiled briefly. ‘Not a bad scam. Not really. I dried some grass and flogged it to these kids: said it was cannabis.’

  ‘Neat idea. Selling them something quite legal by pretending it wasn’t,’ Bill said, smiling.

  Nigel returned the smile.