Maud walked towards the station. The nearer she got, the slower she walked. It was rush hour. The roads were clogged with traffic and the pavements thick with people on their way to work, heads down against the wind.
This part of London felt as unfamiliar to her as a foreign country. She had been born in London and lived all her life there, but she was an East Ender. She had grown up on a housing estate in Newham where her father, a roofer, still lived, as did two of her four brothers. For the past eight years she had lived in Hackney, where two years ago she and her partner had bought a tiny flat. They had been planning to start a family. But then Silas had left her. They had sold the flat and Maud had been promoted westward, a promotion that she knew was also a punishment and a warning: do what you’re told, don’t question your superiors, be a team player.
She saw the station ahead of her and for a moment came to a halt. It was a Victorian building in need of restoration. Its bricks were stained and its gutters leaking; there was a down-at-heel air to it. Inside, there was a public-facing desk with a metal grille across it because too many people had been drunk and aggressive to the officer on duty. Its formal priorities were to reduce violence and drugs in the area, but Maud knew that a lot of this was a tick-box exercise. Officers were encouraged to take cases they could easily solve.
‘Good morning,’ said a voice behind her. ‘You don’t look very eager to get to work.’
She turned to find Danny Kemp grinning at her.
‘Hi,’ she said coolly.
She wasn’t keen on DI Kemp. He was a bullet-headed, barrel-chested man with protuberant blue eyes and a conceited air. He was married, but behaved like he wasn’t. He had a special responsibility for domestic abuse and other ‘female’ crimes. ‘It’s a good way of meeting women,’ he’d once said to her. Maud knew that he disliked her, perhaps even hated her, and that he was always bad-mouthing her to other officers, spreading scurrilous rumours. At the same time, he wanted her approval, endlessly boasting about his cases and his conquests to her. He resented her promotion, was rivalrous, wanted to humiliate her, would shaft her if he could. All the while, he pretended, in a faintly derisive way, that they were friends.
‘How’s it going?’
‘Not great,’ she said. ‘The case looks like it’s going to run into the sand.’
‘Tough,’ he said, a smile twitching at his mouth. ‘Especially when you’ve spent so much time on it, and nothing to show for it.’
‘And you?’ she asked, when he showed no sign of moving away.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Very good. A quick result, which is what the boss likes.’
‘I heard there was a young woman who killed herself.’
‘That’s right. Twenty-three years old. Hung herself in her flat. It’s not going to take much time. Except get this, now one of her neighbours is convinced there’s something suspicious about her death.’
‘And you’re sure there isn’t?’
‘It’s as open and shut a case as any I’ve dealt with. And anyway, the neighbour’s got her own problems.’
He tapped his head. Maud looked at him, raising her eyebrows slightly.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Hears voices. Was sectioned a few months back.’
‘Have you talked to her?’
‘I don’t need to talk to her. I’m a DI. I delegate.’ He bent towards her, his eyebrows raised questioningly. ‘Do you know that word?’
‘But if she has any grounds for—’
Kemp frowned, suddenly not pretending to be pleasant any longer.
‘She’s a fucking fantasist and this is my case, O’Connor,’ he said. ‘You do your job, if you can, and I’ll do mine.’