Maddie asked for Henry to be brought up to an interview room, kindly made available on the orders of DI de Roque. It was late in the day. The visit would be short.
She hardly recognised the defeated looking man ushered into the room and unceremoniously dumped onto a chair at the small metal table.
“Henry, it’s not as bad as it feels. DI de Roque has to interview every sex offender, with a priority of every paedophilic offender on the list. You know that. You will have to go to prison until this is cleared up. Don’t worry, I’m on your case and I don’t want you in prison for one unneeded day, all right?”
He nodded, his eyes still downcast.
“But the body of the child who died was found in the Thames not far from your block of flats.”
“My flat’s not that near the river,” he murmured. “There’s a road, quite a big embankment, the towpath and a strip of bushes and trees on the riverbank. I love the view, but it’s more than a few minutes’ walk to the water.”
“The paths, some of them cross the grassland not far from you, don’t they? And you’d know the area now.”
“I walk there lots, yes. As do masses of people, especially those of us in tiny flats.”
She frowned.
“Don’t look at me like that. I used to walk to Horscliffe a lot when I was a teacher there. About a twenty minute walk from my old house. A little less from the flat, I’d guess. But I used to walk along the towpath for part of the way. A little longer route, but more attractive. So, yes, I know the area. It’s not close to the school. Besides, you know how I had to jump through all the hoops when I wanted to buy the flat. It passed all the proximity rules.”
She nodded. She’d supervised the process. “Kids play there?”
“Lots of them do. Kids on bikes and skateboards. Most with families, though. Where was the child actually found?”
“No idea. But if she walked to school that way….”
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Look, Mrs Brooks, my daughter’s wedding is tomorrow. Is there any way my being here can be kept out of the papers?”
She felt for him. “I don’t think DI de Roque is all that concerned about you. But, to be honest, there’s no way we can know what any others think. Leaks happen. You’re vulnerable, for sure. We’ll just have to keep fingers and toes crossed.”
He didn’t smile. Or sit straighter. He sighed. “Just one more day. Then they go off to Spain for their honeymoon.”
“Your daughter won’t hear anything from me,” Maddie said, “but she’s a witness about that time frame.”
“Is that when the child was killed? When we were at the restaurant?” He looked up.
“At least you can prove you were in the public eye during that lunch,” she said. “To answer your question, nobody has told me when she died. But that’s the sort of detail that gets into the papers. I’ll watch the news tonight; buy the papers in the morning. Let you know.”
A knock on the door before it was pushed open. The guard to take Henry back to his cell.
Maddie rose to her feet. “I’ll see you here about eight tomorrow morning if I can arrange it now.”
“Thank you,” he muttered, flicking his eyes briefly to Maddie’s.
She caught an anguished look. Was it guilt that his sordid crime had been discovered? Or concern about spoiling his daughter’s big day? Or was she noticing him feeling utterly defeated because this was a repeat of last time?
Maddie walked to her car parked behind the Probation Service building, her steps slow and almost painful.
When had her boundless enthusiasm for her job disappeared? Obvious. When Romania had taken over. No, not quite. To be brutally honest, it was when she’d heard she’d not been appointed. That meant this lethargy was not due to Romania’s presence even though it was exacerbated by the woman’s behaviour to her; it was merely due to her own discontent. End of an era of doing a good job that was highly appreciated.
Wayne was watching some game on television when she arrived home.
“Hello light-of-my-life,” he called without taking his eyes off the screen. “What’s for supper?”
“Catfood à la king,” she said, half to herself as she dumped groceries onto the kitchen table.
“Sounds good,” he said, still immersed in the game.
She climbed upstairs to her home office and sank into the chair in front of the computer. She’d have a quick look at the Service Officers’ outlines before cooking. Pork chops, boiled spuds and broccoli. Easy and quick.
Agatha had got it. She’d produced a small outline of 63 words and had tried out how she could smooth the first point into a proper sentence. She ended her email by asking if that was what Maddie was after.
Maddie replied with an enthusiastic ‘Yes!’ and a request to treat the other points the same way. She suggested that Agatha search through her outline to discover whether any point could be best combined with any other point, thus organising the report intro efficiently. She hit ‘send’.
The second and third Service Officers had made reasonable fists of her instructions but the fourth had not understood what Maddie was getting at. She’d turned each sentence of her verbose report into a point, all 127 of them. Was she taking the mickey? Maddie sighed and told the young woman to see her at … she glanced at her online calendar … nine-thirty the next morning. She copied and pasted Agatha’s email, changed it to read as an instruction with an example, and sent a copy to both of the other Service Officers. Much better than having four deadly dull bits of prose to amend and re-write knowing full well the authors would carry on forever producing shoddy work. She gave half a second’s thought to Romania’s annoyance. Tough.
With a slightly lighter tread, Maddie went downstairs to start dinner. Wayne was sitting at the table biting into a large sandwich.
“Dinner will be in half an hour,” she said trying to keep the irritation from her voice.
“Didn’t have lunch,” he said between bites.
“Couldn’t you wait?”
“Didn’t know it was so soon, did I? You weren’t making anything.”
She bit back a retort. Obviously, at almost six, dinner was due shortly. But not all dinner preparations take a long time.
“No Jade?” she asked.
“At Freya’s place. Studying for English. The exam is coming up. She’s been invited to stay for a meal. Salmon on the barbie.”
“Lucky for some,” Maddie said. Freya Dymock and Jade had been friends for a number of years. Both were going through a Goth phase, which had engendered a few phone calls back and forth between the parents. Sharon Dymock was something in women’s fashion and her husband Donald, a teacher. Nice people. They lived in a large home on Ham Common, north of the main part of Kingston, the size of the property presumably due to the fashion business. Sharon was Australian and somehow had convinced Donald to take over barbecuing and it seemed he loved his barbies, no matter the weather or time of year. “So, you and me for dinner. But now, presumably, not you.”
Wayne looked sheepish. “Sorry. But I was hungry. Not anymore. So don’t bother about cooking for me.”
Maddie stifled a sigh as she returned the chops into the fridge. She’d cook herself an omelette. “I really don’t want to work in Probation anymore,” she said.
“Butchy-Bitch getting at you?”
“Please, Wayne.”
“Sorrrry.” He drew it out.
She sighed. “Getting at me? Yes and no. Yes, today she was showing her true colours once more. No, I can take her silliness. Annoying though it is. And, no question I’m frustrated because of her incompetence. But she’s not responsible for my attitude right now. Mostly, anyway.” It was as if she’d come to a stopping place. No way forward, just endless circling going nowhere. Romania was a blockage, no question, but it would have been anyone appointed instead of her. Her own character weakness, she concluded.
“So, no more talk about not wanting to work?”
She shot him a glance. “Why? Because you’d have to get a job?”
“Don’t turn it onto me, Madeleine Brooks. You know damn well we have a mortgage to pay. No more talk about quitting your job, okay?”
Maddie got up to do the dishes, turning her back on her husband.