The phone rang promptly at eight. Not even daring to hope it might be Graham, Kate wasn’t surprised to hear Rod’s voice.
‘OK, it’s eight o’clock, and you said I might phone you then. So may I take you out for a meal?’ He sounded absurdly boyish.
She couldn’t resist laughing. ‘OK. Why not?’ Except there were a hundred reasons why not.
‘I’ll be with you in two minutes, then.’
‘Two minutes?’
‘OK. One minute. I’m parked right opposite your house.’
The bastard. And double bastard to flourish a bunch of flowers in her face as she opened the front door.
Her vestibule and hall were both too narrow for her to do anything other than stand back and let him through into the living room. But as soon as she could, she said, ‘Rod, you shouldn’t have bought me flowers. We’re – we’re not in a relationship any more.’
His face fell. But not for long. ‘Accept them for when I should have given them to you. Kate, shove them in water, for goodness’ sake. It’d be a shame for them to die. Come on, wouldn’t it?’
She pulled a face. ‘No more, though. OK?’ If she sounded grudging, she meant to. Assertive would have been better, but grudging was better than nothing.
He followed her into the kitchen, watching her snip the stems and add food to the water in a big cut-glass vase that Cassie had left behind. She couldn’t resist pulling one stem here, pushing another there: flowers deserved more than merely to be plonked into a container. But she knew even as she repositioned the gypsophila that she was sending out the wrong messages. She’d just have to correct them later.
He looked at his watch. ‘Kate: would you mind if we set off now? I’ve got a table booked.’
‘A table! You were pretty bloody sure of me!’ Oh, Rod would never lack for confidence: his looks, his brain, his physique, his position – they all added up to one alpha male.
‘I’d have gone on my own if you hadn’t agreed. I got a last-minute cancellation. The Siam – the Thai restaurant at the far end of the High Street.’
‘I need to change.’
‘Two minutes? It’ll take us ages to find anywhere to park.’
‘We could always walk? Ten minutes at most.’
‘There’s a storm coming up. Can’t you feel it?’
Feeling storms? Well, that was a side of Rod she’d never seen before, she reflected, peeling off her work clothes and pulling a dress over her head. She knew the colour suited her – red picked up the colour of her hair – and that the cut flattered her figure. Hairbrush, make-up, a quick check in the mirror told her that at least Rod had nothing to be ashamed of when they sallied forth together. On impulse, she dug in her drawer for perfume – what would be light enough for summer? No! Wrong message. She shut the drawer again.
‘In the police, it’s almost impossible to complain about a line manager,’ Kate said, laying her spoon in her bowl after a gluttonous final scrape. Rod knew how to pick a restaurant. ‘You must see that.’
Their conversation accorded ill with the quietly civilised decor and relaxed service.
‘Impossible?’
‘The whole ethic’s based on loyalty, isn’t it? Grassing’s the ultimate crime. At my last London nick, someone mentioned his DCI’s alcoholism – in absolute confidence of course – to his super and ended up with piles of lawn-cuttings in his locker. Every day.’
‘You could take it to the sergeants’ sector of the Federation – they’d protect you.’
‘Or they could feel that someone on the accelerated promotion scheme might just be hoping to try someone else’s desk for size.’
Rod paused while the waiter removed the soup bowls, then suggested, ‘ACC in charge of Support Services? Or whatever the job title is these days!’
‘With all due respect, being an Assistant Chief Constable doesn’t exactly predispose you against hierarchies. More locker problems, I’d have thought.’
‘Welfare officer?’
She shook her head. ‘No. What I ought to do, Rod, as one of my colleagues has made abundantly clear—’
‘So other people are aware of the problem?’
‘Everyone in the Squad, I’d have thought. What I ought to do is have a woman-to-woman talk with her. I would if I’d come to the problem …’ She hesitated. But she could say it to Rod. ‘If I’d come fresh to the squad, as it were.’
‘You’re saying that you two have a history? I didn’t know that.’ Rod stopped to smile as a waiter topped up their glasses.
‘For no apparent reason. We simply never have got on.’
He checked that neighbouring diners couldn’t overhear. But the tables were widely spaced, and he continued, dropping his voice anyway, ‘You know how quickly you and Graham Harvey became friends?’
She hesitated: last time they’d spoken about her and Graham’s friendship – when they were, quite simply, friends – Rod had chosen to tell her that a pair of gloves she’d thought lost lurked in Graham’s desk. She’d no idea whether he guessed the present situation – she hoped and prayed he didn’t – but her reaction then must have been sufficient to warn him against scoring any more cheap points.
‘Yes,’ she said neutrally.
‘Rumour has it that she and Graham were an item years back. But he went back to his wife.’
Kate had heard the same rumour. The arrival of their main course spared her having to say anything.
‘So she might well hold that against you,’ Rod continued. ‘Has she said anything about you and Graham?’
She took a risk. ‘To my face? I don’t know about behind my back. To me, though, no more than she’s said about you and me. Pretty efficient, the rumour machine, isn’t it? Which is another reason I couldn’t come to you to discuss her problems. And why I’m talking to you in absolute confidence. I hope.’
He smiled. ‘Can you think otherwise? Let’s discuss this again later: it’s a shame to waste wonderful food by talking shop. Now, try some of this Kang Pet Kung.’
‘Provided you try some of my Kai Preo Waan.’
‘Who could resist?’
At this point, the lights flickered, there was a simultaneous thunderclap so loud their glasses seemed to rock, and the storm Rod had predicted well and truly arrived.
It had not abated an hour later. By now they and their fellow guests had succumbed to weather watching from the restaurant’s front window. As well they might. The manhole covers had blown, and the High Street was awash with floodwater. Any cars made huge bow-waves, leaving curling wakes. Rod’s car was only twenty yards away, but they’d have been soaked to the skin in half that distance. In any case, to open the restaurant door would be to admit the floodwaters.
She could feel him leaning closer: could feel the warmth of his arm through his shirt. She shifted slightly. If only she’d been with Graham, they could have paddled to the car, arms round each other under the inadequate umbrella, falling into each others’ wet arms as they reached safety. But even as she fantasised, she knew that Graham would never behave like that. He wasn’t, was he, a man for shedding inhibitions.
The rain stopped as quickly as it had started. Another cup of coffee and the pavement was passable. Rod made no attempt to touch her, either in the car or as he saw her to her doorstep.
To the accompaniment of water dripping from roofs, from gutters, even from the leaves of her tiny new clematis, he coughed. ‘Kate. I behaved intolerably when – when … I can tell you don’t want to start again where we left off. And I can’t blame you.’
She said nothing, but regarded him steadily in the light from the streetlamp.
‘What I’d like – what I’d very much like – is for us to become friends again. Just friends, OK? And do things friends do. And if – if your feelings changed – then maybe …’
‘There’d be a hell of a lot of gossip,’ she said crisply.
‘I know. Which is why I’d like us to do nice public things. Straightaway. To show we’re not afraid to be seen together. Like you and Colin.’
‘Not quite the same,’ she laughed.
‘No. But you know what I mean. In fact, let’s start next week. I know you like art: I’ve got tickets for a private view at the Ikon Gallery. How about that?’
Kate nodded. ‘That’d be good.’
But as she closed the door behind him she collapsed in giggles. Somehow she didn’t expect too many of her police colleagues to crowd into a gallery best known for its obscure conceptual art installations.
‘You’ve made a complete dog’s breakfast of it, as far as I can see. Fancy letting the scrote bugger off like that,’ Lizzie exclaimed first thing the following morning. She shook her splayed hands, raising her eyes heavenwards. ‘God grant me patience.’
Kate added her silent prayer. ‘He’ll be back tomorrow, ma’am. Thursday, according to his neighbour, is his day for travelling.’
‘His day for travelling, is it? And I suppose you know where he travels to?’
‘Not yet, ma’am. But I will when I talk to him tomorrow.’
‘Don’t tell me: Friday is his day for coming home.’
‘I hope so. Though now he no longer has to look after Mrs Barr he may be tempted to spend more time away from home. But he’ll be back. He loves the garden, you see.’ Even to her own ears Kate was sounding fey. She added, infusing irony into her voice, ‘Not to mention the valuable wine and other untold riches in the butler’s pantry.’
‘The moment he returns, you wheel him in for questioning: right? Meanwhile,’ Lizzie added with an ominous smile, ‘although today is Thursday, you aren’t travelling anywhere. How do you propose to occupy your time, Sergeant?’
‘Superintendent Neville wishes to see me at some point this morning, ma’am. And I thought I might set about notifying the Foreign Office that we have two witnesses on foreign soil from whom we may need statements.’
‘What the hell for? Oh, your commission interrogative or whatever it’s called.’
Kate, whose French was decidedly GCSE full stop, though it might be commission rogatoire, but wouldn’t have placed any bets on it, especially in the present circumstances.
‘Well, you can forget all about that. Takes bloody months to go through official channels. There are ways round that. For a start, get on the bloody phone to the witnesses.’
‘But—’
‘That’s how I do it, Power. And that’s how you do it. Now.’
Kate stood up. ‘Ma’am.’
‘And don’t even think about contacting the FO. They’re the last people you want to involve. That’s an order, Power.’
‘Ma’am.’
‘So you can see, Rod, why I can’t ask after her health,’ Kate said, sipping some of his wonderful coffee. She’d told him nothing of the details of her most recent run-in with Lizzie, just the general tenor.
‘I still think you ought to. Next to her you’re the senior woman in the squad. You’ve seen her change. You’re a decent, concerned human being. QED.’
‘Or, more likely, RIP. OK, Rod. I’ll try. But I’ll have to pick my moment very carefully. If it goes pear-shaped, our working relationship goes pear-shaped too. And I’m in the middle of an intriguing case.’
‘And I, I’m afraid, am on the verge of a far from intriguing meeting. Redeployment of already overstretched resources to comply with the latest government initiative. Kate,’ he added, rising as she did, ‘remember that my door is always open. And Kate – I’m glad we’re friends again.’
‘So am I,’ she said. And meant it.
If Kate’s French was limited, her Portuguese was non-existent. At least her German was reasonable, thanks to her father’s brief relationship with Astrid, a woman involved in the marketing of Bosch products. The two women had got on so unexpectedly well that, even though Astrid and her father parted company quite quickly, Kate had still been invited to stay in Cologne a couple of times.
Even as she dialled International Directory Enquiries, Kate was scratching her head about why Mrs Barr had chosen witnesses from so far afield. Not Mrs Barr, of course. Max Cornfield had chosen the witnesses because his friends were the only people to visit the house. So why had he chosen such conveniently inaccessible friends? Horowitz was living on the Algarve, and Steiner in Berlin.
More to the point, why hadn’t she asked him that very question when she had the chance? Because she wanted him to be innocent, that’s why. Cursing herself for her laxness, her lack of professionalism, her downright stupidity, she dialled the first number.
Her German skills were hardly exercised. Dr Steiner spoke immaculate English. If he were taken aback at being addressed by an English policewoman, he did not show it. Yes, he had witnessed Mrs Barr’s will. He’d been in Birmingham at the time to attend a chess convention at the National Exhibition Centre, and it had been natural for Max to invite him over.
‘We go back years, Sergeant Power. Forty, fifty years. I always visit when I’m in the UK. Naturally.’
He would be only too delighted to send her a sample of his handwriting – why not, she suggested, an account of the occasion the will was witnessed – and yes, he was right-handed.
All she got of Mr Horowitz was his answering machine. She left a message, asking for the same handwritten account, and an indication of with which hand he wrote it. And prayed it was the left.