When Cassie arrived at work she was keen to get an awkward conversation out of the way. Still wearing her civvies, she put her head round the door of Doug’s office.
‘I’m making tea, Doug, fancy one?’
‘Yes, please, and a Hobnob – if Jason hasn’t scoffed them all.’ He turned back to his computer screen, but then realising she had lingered asked, ‘Was there something else?’
She suddenly thought: Christ, what if he’s already lined someone else up for my job?
‘I wanted to say . . . thanks for putting me in touch with the psychology lady.’
‘It’s no trouble,’ he said.
‘And, umm, just to say . . . can I still withdraw my notice?’
Doug frowned for a moment before breaking into a smile. ‘What notice?’
*
The sight of Archie in his scrubs coming through from the clean side set off a fusillade of feelings in Cassie’s chest. Embarrassment, awkwardness, desire . . . Snap, crackle and pop.
The first thing he said was, ‘Dr Curzon has food poisoning so I said I’d step in.’ Taking care to explain why he was there.
‘Sure, no problem,’ said Cassie, trying to meet his gaze, to say it was cool, no biggie, but those ginger-lashed eyes slid away from her.
‘What have you got for me?’
‘Just two on the list, both pretty straightforward.’ She nodded over to Jason’s workstation, where a body already lay stretched out. ‘An elderly gentleman – sudden death at home – and I’ve got an RTC, a lady hit by a motorbike crossing the high street.’
RTC – Road Traffic Collision: they were discouraged from calling them RTAs, Road Traffic Accidents any more on the basis that it pre-judged a conclusion.
Archie lowered his voice. ‘I hear your floater is a murder case now.’
She murmured back, ‘All thanks to you.’
But he didn’t crack a smile. And things didn’t improve during the PM list. Jason noticed the chilly atmosphere – of course he did. Standing alongside her, waiting to weigh organs on the scales, he nodded over to Archie and murmured, ‘Somebody’s got the hump today,’ his tone sly. ‘Trouble in paradise?’
After Archie had completed his external examinations and before she immersed herself in blood and viscera, Cassie ducked out into the corridor. Having received Sean’s PM report, the coroner’s office had agreed to release the body and sent over contact details from his police service record for his mother, who lived in Kilburn. The cops had already informed her of her son’s death and the investigation, but Cassie needed to get details of the undertakers who’d be collecting his body.
‘My brother is handling the funeral arrangements,’ Bridget Kavanagh told her. ‘He’ll be cremated at Kensal Green. A very small service, just for close family.’
Parents could react in several ways to the death of a child – they could be distraught, angry, numb . . . but Mrs K sounded oddly matter-of-fact, borderline chilly.
‘Is that where you held his dad’s funeral service?’ Cassie knew from the notes that Michael Kavanagh had died when Sean was a teenager.
‘No,’ she said. ‘His father is buried in the Catholic cemetery over at St Mary’s. God rest him. At least he doesn’t have to hear that his son has gone and got himself murdered.’
Which was a funny way of putting it.
‘Can I ask when you last saw Sean?’ asked Cassie.
‘Oh, it must be ten, twelve years ago?’
So they’d clearly been estranged for a while even before Sean disappeared.
The only time any sign of emotion entered Mrs Kavanagh’s voice was when Cassie asked if she wanted to view his body.
‘No, no, not at all,’ she said, before recovering herself. ‘I’d rather remember him as he was. When he was a little lad people said he was the most beautiful child they’d ever seen.’
An hour or so later, with the PM list done and dusted, Cassie was heading out to grab a late lunch when she saw Archie waiting at the end of the lane.
‘You shouldn’t have asked me to do that histo,’ he said, his pale cheeks flushed.
‘You could’ve said no,’ she said reasonably, feeling her heart beating double time.
‘I never could say no to you’ – a bitterness she’d not heard before etching his voice.
‘Look, I’m sorry, Archie, you’re right. I shouldn’t have asked you. It was out of order in the circs. But I had nowhere else to turn.’
Instead of replying, he kissed her. And after a moment she raised her arms as if in surrender and kissed him back.