Ash and Bone fe-2 Page 2

  'Buy you a drink?' The SO19 officer from the Transit, ginger moustache, was alongside her, smiling hopefully.

  'I thought the boss had put his card behind the bar.'

  'So he has. Stupid really, something to say.'

  Maddy said nothing and hoped he'd go away.

  'Graeme Loftus,' he said, holding out his hand.

  'Maddy Birch.'

  Loftus made a signal towards the barman and pushed an empty pint glass in his direction.

  'You?'

  Maddy shook her head.

  'In the thick of it, what I hear.'

  'You could say that.'

  'Lucky bastard.'

  'You think so?'

  Loftus lifted his fresh pint, spilling beer down the back of his hand. 'Never got a look-in where we were.'

  'Ask Paul Draper where he'd rather've been,' Maddy said. 'Ask his wife.'

  'Paul…? Oh, yes, him. Poor sod. Still hanging on, isn't he?'

  'Last I heard.'

  'Look,' Loftus said, 'when we're through here, you wouldn't fancy…'

  'No,' Maddy said.

  'Okay, suit yourself.' There was an edge to Loftus's voice as he turned and shouldered his way back into the fray.

  Standing a little apart, George Mallory seemed to be warming up to make a speech, his voice, now and again, sawing through the general cacophony of sound.

  Whenever Maddy closed her eyes, she saw Grant's head imploding like a bloodied rose. She drained her glass and headed for the stairs.

  Repton was just exiting the Gents, still zipping up his fly.

  'Not going?'

  'No,' she lied.

  'Good. Come and have a drink with me.' Taking her by the elbow, he steered her back towards the bar.' What'll it be?'

  'Tonic water'll be fine.'

  'Gin and tonic for the lady,' Repton called. 'Scotch for me.'

  Maddy knew better than to protest.

  Five or so years younger than Mallory, slightly built, Repton was wearing a grey suit with a faint stripe, a dark blue tie with silver fleur-de-lis. His fingernails looked to have been trimmed and buffed. Dapper, was that the word? Once upon a time it probably was.

  Repton downed his whisky at a single swallow. 'There,' he said, 'that's my bit for race relations. Letting one of our brown-skinned brethren get the better of me, eighty-seven points to thirteen.' He winked. 'Hubris. The Atkins diet of the soul. And you. No after-effects from this morning, I see. Still looking like the proverbial million, give or take.'

  Maddy had deliberately chosen a green cord skirt that was full and finished well below the knee, a loose cotton top the colour of cold porridge, American Tan tights and shoes with a low heel. 'I look like shit,' she said.

  'Young Loftus didn't seem to think so. Practically coming in his pants just standing next to you.'

  Colour flared in Maddy's cheeks.

  'Sorry,' Repton said. 'Nothing out of line, I trust. Not going to haul me up before some board or other? Sexual fucking harassment.' He winked again. 'Load of bollocks, don't you think? Empirically speaking.'

  'I've heard worse, sir,' Maddy said.

  'I'm pleased to hear it.'

  Maddy sipped her drink.

  'Oh, oh,' Repton said, nudging her arm. 'Here comes George's speech.' He gave her flesh a generous squeeze. 'Mentioned in dispatches, I'd not be surprised.'

  ***

  She left as soon as she possibly could, pulling the need-the-Ladies trick and grabbing her coat from the pile in the cloakroom below; a brisk stride to King's Cross and then the Northern Line to Archway. She could walk from there in ten minutes or less.

  When she'd first transferred down from Lincoln, three years ago now, she'd stayed in a hostel: forever taking other women's hair out of the bath; listening to their war stories in the corridors, Saturday nights when they'd been out on the pull; cleaning them up after they'd been sick in the sink, wiping their sorry faces and listening to their woes. Everyone's favourite auntie.

  As soon as she could she'd moved out, rented a room and looked around for something to buy, something she could afford. She'd been lucky to get the flat when she did, prices about to take a hike and families with young kids starting to colonise what had previously been the province of single mums on social security, economic migrants, labourers sharing three to a room and old jossers who'd been there long enough to remember the Blitz.

  Compared to what she'd had in Lincoln, a new-build maisonette just a bus ride from the city centre, it wasn't much. Three rooms and a bathroom on the ground floor, the kitchen no bigger than a cupboard; French windows leading out to the strip of garden she shared with the people upstairs. Whoever had lived there before had had a love affair with red paint; when she woke up in the mornings it vibrated behind her eyes.

  Gradually, when her shifts didn't leave her too knackered, she brought the place into line, made it feel more her own. Two lots of undercoat in both bedroom and living room and then a quiet pale green on top. Doing the same to the kitchen would have meant taking down too many shelves and she resorted to covering as much as she could with postcards and old photographs. Those sunflowers in garish reproduction; the village outside Louth where her parents used to live.

  Coming in this evening she threw her coat down on the bed, kicked off her shoes, and wandered into the living room, flicking through the TV channels before switching off again. She'd missed the news.

  She thought she'd make a cup of tea.

  Waiting for the kettle to boil, she phoned the hospital where they'd taken Paul Draper.

  'Are you a relative?'

  'A colleague. I was with him when…'

  'I'm sorry. We can only pass on information to the immediate family.'

  What the hell did that mean? Maddy wondered. Did it mean he was still in the middle of some bloody operation? Did it mean he was dead?

  She took her tea back into the living room and, without switching on the light, sat, legs curled up beneath her, on the settee she'd bought from an auction room near the Angel.

  The look on Graeme Loftus's face came back to her, the scarcely veiled anger in his voice when she'd turned him down; Maurice Repton's fingers hard and quick against her arm. Was there ever a situation, she thought, when men, most men, didn't feel it their right to test the waters, chat the chat, rub up against you like a dog sniffing for a bitch on heat.

  Tired, she closed her eyes and when she did so she saw Grant in the converted warehouse, scrambling to his feet.

  'Fucking bitch!'

  As he moves towards her, his hands… what are his hands doing?… the left one reaching out towards her, fingers spread, the right… where is the right?… is it curving low, low and out of sight, reaching for something perhaps…?

  The gun in Mallory's hand fires twice, the barest of intervals between, and when she opens her eyes again, Grant is no more.

  The pistol on the floor. A Derringer, no bigger than the span of a man's hand: a weapon that, once upon a time, was only seen in Western movies on rainy Sunday afternoons, emerging from the sleeve of some two-bit gambler caught dealing from a crooked deck.

  Now you see it, now you don't.

  Maddy shivered.

  Her tea was cold.

  Setting it down, she glanced towards the French windows and, for an instant, behind the faint reflection of her own face, something moved.

  Maddy froze.

  Two seconds, maybe four, no more. Swift to her feet, she turned the key in the door, slipped back both bolts and stepped outside. Leaves from next door's fruitless pear tree were sprinkled on the grass. Shrubs and faded flowers in the borders to each side. At the garden end a thick mesh of buddleia, interspersed with holly, stood head high and dark, enough of a breeze to turn the spear-shaped leaves.

  Maddy stood quite still.

  Other than the sounds of the city shifting about her nothing stirred.

  Her heart slowed to a normal beat.

  That's all it had been, then, only something moving in the wind.

  Back inside, she locked the door, drew the curtains, went carefully to bed.

  3

  The office of the assistant commissioner in charge of the Specialist Crime Directorate was on the seventh floor: along with a number of other units, S07 came within his overall command. Just about the only things above him, ran the tale, were God and all his angels. Maddy hoped they were on her side.

  She gave her name to the civilian clerk in the outer office and declined the invitation to take a seat. When the clerk gave her the once-over she pretended not to notice. Ten minutes she'd spent that morning, polishing the black boots she was wearing with her navy blue trouser suit, bought a year and more ago at M amp; S and already showing some signs of wear.

  A buzzer sounded on the clerk's desk.

  'You can go through.'

  Maddy knocked, took a breath, and entered. Lean, bespectacled, nicely balding, Assistant Commissioner Harkin smiled from behind his desk. Tie knotted neatly and clipped, he was in shirtsleeves, cuffs turned back. Younger than quite a few of the officers below him, Mallory included, he was not so many years older than Maddy herself.

  'Detective Sergeant. Maddy. You'd rather sit or stand?'

  'Stand, sir, if that's all right.'

  'Of course, whatever you're comfortable with. I'm sure this won't take long.'

  The room was airless but not unpleasant, a faint background odour of antiseptic and flowers. Anonymous paintings on the walls. A water carafe and glasses on a narrow table to one side. It reminded Maddy of the lounge at Gatwick Airport, the one time she'd been bumped up to business class.

  Harkin tapped papers on his desk. 'You've not been in the unit long.'

  'No, sir.'

  'Settling down?'

  'Yes, sir. I thin
k so.'

  'Yesterday,' he said. 'First thing that has to be made clear, the manner in which you acquitted yourself, first rate. Absolutely first rate.' He beamed as though he had been praising himself. 'Everything I've heard, the Detective Superintendent's report – well, you heard him last night, of course, extolling your virtues at great length – it all points to a good job well done. Initiative. Steady head. Guts. Above all, guts. Going up against an armed man. Commendation material, I'd not be surprised.'

  'Thank you, sir.'

  'Do you no harm when it comes to promotion. None at all. You've taken the inspector's examination, I dare say?'

  'Twice, sir.'

  'Hmm. Well, qualities will out. Eventually. Your kind of quality. In the field.' He coughed into the back of his hand. 'There'll be an inquiry, of course. Fatal shooting. Officers from another force. Standard procedure.'

  'Yes, sir, I understand.'

  'And you've no concerns, I take it?'

  'Concerns, sir?'

  'Regarding the inquiry. Sequence of events and so on.'

  'Sir?'

  'No doubt in your mind as to how it all played out?'

  Maddy could feel the sweat prickling beneath her arms. 'No, sir.'

  Harkin nodded and glanced towards the window as if something outside had suddenly claimed his interest. 'Detective Superintendent Mallory's actions, appropriate, you'd say, to the situation?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Good. Excellent.'

  Once she'd noticed a slight tic in the assistant commissioner's left eye, Maddy was finding it difficult not to stare; she looked at the floor instead.

  'You, personally,' Harkin said. 'Incidents like these, violent death, sometimes takes a little while for them to settle in the mind.'

  'Yes, sir, I'm sure.'

  'If there's any help you feel that we can offer… a little personal time, maybe. A chat with someone versed in these things, someone professional…'

  'A psychiatrist, sir?'

  'That sort of thing.'

  'I don't think there's any need. Really. I'm fine.'

  'Yes, yes. I'm sure you are.' Harkin rearranged papers on his desk. 'If there's nothing else then…'

  'DC Draper, sir, I was wondering if there was any news?'

  'Ah.' Harkin removed his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb. 'A shame about DC Draper. Great shame.'

  ***

  One of the first things Paul Draper had done, he and Maddy chatting together on their first day in the squad, was to show her a photograph of his wife and kid. Alice and Ben. On holiday somewhere in the north-west. Blackpool. Morecambe. A faint suggestion of sea on the horizon. Alice in a two-piece swimsuit, not a bikini exactly, her figure not yet back to what it once had been, Ben in a little all-in-one on her knee. Alice having to narrow her eyes slightly against the light, but smiling nonetheless, her skin pale, as if unused to the sun.

  'You must come round,' he'd said. 'We'll get a takeaway, eat in. Alice'd be chuffed with the company.'

  Maddy never had.

  Now she sat awkwardly on the edge of a chair. Alice slumped back on the two-seater settee opposite, the child fretting at her breast. Cups of tea on the table, half-cold. Biscuits, some broken fragments of rusk. There'd been photographers outside, a few; one reporter, insistent, from the local whatever-it-was, Journal or Gazette.

  'Alice…'

  At the sound of Maddy's voice, tears appeared again on Alice Draper's face. How could she not cry? Maddy thought. Twenty-three and a wee boy of no more than six or seven months and then this…

  Maddy forced herself to her feet. Through the partly drawn curtains she could see the flats opposite, identical to the one in which she was standing; balcony upon balcony busy with tubs of flowers, rusting bicycles, washing twisting in the late-afternoon breeze. The dark already falling into place.

  'It's not bad,' Draper had said. 'Not bad at all. Ex-council, couldn't afford it else. But okay. You wait till you see.'

  He looked a little like that guitarist, Maddy had thought, the one who used to play with Morrissey.

  Alice had said very little. Before being finally pronounced dead, her young husband had said nothing at all. Flowers from the Metropolitan Police Commissioner lay by the sink, waiting to be put in water. I'll do it before I go, Maddy thought. Wash these cups, make a fresh pot of tea. See if I can't persuade Alice to eat something, a sandwich at least.

  While she was waiting for the kettle to boil, Alice switched on the television news.

  'Alice,' Maddy said, 'are you sure this is a good idea?'

  Colours unnaturally bright, Paul Draper's face flickered for a moment on the screen, then disappeared.

  'Alice…'

  Seated behind a bank of microphones, the Assistant Commissioner looked sombre yet purposeful.

  'From all the information available to me, I have no doubt that the operation was carefully and professionally planned and executed with a high level of competence that does credit to all the officers involved. With regard to the tragic death of a young detective constable…'

  Regardless of Alice's wishes, Maddy leaned forward and switched off the set.

  Ben was wriggling in his mother's lap, whimpering against her chest.

  'Alice, Alice. I think you might be holding him too tight. Do you want me to take him for a minute? Here. That's it. Just while you drink your tea.'

  The baby's pale eyes looked at her in wonder when she lifted him towards her and Maddy felt something kick, hard, against the hollow of her insides. When Alice picked up the cup it slipped between her fingers, spilling tea across the table and the floor.

  'Never mind,' Maddy said. 'I'll clean it up.'

  Alice looked back at her blankly. 'Paul,' she said. 'Paul, Paul.'

  ***

  'Poor cow.' Vanessa Taylor broke off a piece of chapatti and used it to wipe up what remained of the chicken massala. 'What kind of life's she got now?'

  A good year they'd been doing this, Maddy and Vanessa, meeting up every week or so, when shifts allowed, a drink or two first and then a curry. A good goss and a natter. Bit of a bitching session, sometimes. Rules and regs. Pay. All that dyke or station-bike innuendo that was supposed to have been knocked on the head once and for all.

  At twenty-nine, Vanessa was not only younger than Maddy but shorter and broader too, a figure on her and she didn't care who knew it. Before joining the force, she tried secretarial, then nursing, but not for long. Glorified bloody chambermaids, that's all you were. More blood and piss than the pubs in Kentish Town, which was where she was currently stationed. Three years as a uniformed constable and she still wasn't certain she'd stick with it.

  Maddy had met her on a training course soon after moving down to London: 'Integrating Police Work with the Ethnic Community'. Vanessa sizing up the Asian community worker who was leading the afternoon session. 'Wouldn't mind integrating with that,' she'd winked. 'Given half the chance.' It turned out Vanessa lived no more than a few streets away from Maddy herself, Upper Holloway.

  This evening, eyeing up one of the waiters whenever he passed their table, Vanessa reminded Maddy of that first occasion and asked her had she ever, you know, been with anyone Indian, Pakistani?

  Maddy said she didn't think she had.

  'I had this lad once…' Vanessa said, lowering her voice as she leaned forward. 'Student nurse at the hospital. Great big eyes.'

  'Just the eyes?'

  'Stop.' Laughing. 'Lovely-looking he was, beautiful skin.'

  'You'll be telling me next you had him in the storeroom cupboard amongst the bandages and bedpans.'

  'Better than that. Upstairs, on one of the empty beds. Ward was temporarily closed down because of the cuts.' Her face was flushed but it was probably due to the curry.

  'What happened?' Maddy said.

  'What d'you mean what happened?' Vanessa laughed again, louder than before. 'Too long ago to remember? Draw you a diagram if you like.'

  'Not that, you idiot. I mean what happened to the bloke?'

  'Oh, him. I dunno. Next week he'd moved on to Obstetrics. Good, though. Top Ten, I'd say.' She grinned. 'How about you? Top ten shags of all time.'