‘Anyone seen Austin?’
‘Out.’
No one in the CID room looked round.
‘How long has he been out?’
No reply.
DS Lois Dancer went to her own desk and sent the DCI – Austin Rolph was acting head of CID in Simon Serrailler’s absence – a text message. Urgent. Important. Call me.
Three hours later he had not called and Lois had had to leave the building to attend to a case of a missing teenager who turned out not to be missing, and the case of a stolen car which turned out not to have been stolen. He did not call her until she was about to go off shift.
‘What is it, Lois? I’ve been at this car-shunting workshop. Can it wait till the morning?’
‘It ought not to. It’s not so much urgent but it’s pretty sensitive and I’m not sure what to do.’
‘Use your intelligence – it’s why you’re a DS.’
‘Yes, but –’
‘Tomorrow, Dancer.’
‘Bastard,’ she muttered, knowing he had already switched her off. The DCI was one who thought that as women aspired to be treated in the same way as men in the force, they should be spoken to in a way no male officer would tolerate.
Rolph was a good copper, an instinctive one with a great record, and he was a decent enough stand-in for Serrailler as head, in the sense that the administration flowed smoothly, but he had no tact and no empathy. He was not a team player, he simply expected to provide the lead and for them to follow, without much question. If they objected or put forward their own ideas or point of view, he would always listen, before ignoring them.
She joined a couple of the others from CID for an hour in the pub, went home and had a Skype call with her sister and family in Vancouver, got her gear ready for her Territorial Army weekend assault course, watched a particularly violent horror film with her husband Lee, then went to bed. And all the time, she thought about the bombshell that was in her notes, the bombshell she had to present to Rolph. She had liked Shelley and more importantly, had believed her story, though she knew nothing about the Super’s father, beyond his name and reputation. But that the case was a ticking bomb, whatever the outcome, she had no doubt.
She had only been at Lafferton a couple of years, having transferred from Bevham on promotion, and did not know DCS Serrailler well. They had worked together, he had been approachable and was good at delegating and trusting his juniors, but there was a reserve about him. He would be forgiving of any genuine errors, especially those made by rookie cops, but hard on stupidity, even harder on disloyalty, and he would never dream of calling her ‘Dancer’. But clearly, in spite of his apparent openness, he was a very private man who might not cope well with anything like this, so close to home. Given that his whereabouts and the length of time he was likely to be away were unknown, at least to most of them in CID, Lois didn’t envy Austin Rolph, to whom she would be handing over the Shelley Pendleton file.
She was in the office well before eight o’clock but it was after eleven by the time Lois saw Rolph drive onto the forecourt.
‘Right, DS Dancer, what’s all this about? You’re like a cat on hot bricks.’
She followed him into his office and set the file down on the desk.
‘Can you look at this now. It’s tricky.’
‘Why?’
‘Just look at it – sir.’
The DCI was putting his things down, taking off his jacket, opening his laptop, at the same time as he started reading the first page of Lois’s report, and for a few seconds and to her annoyance, he was clearly only paying it cursory attention. And then he let his jacket fall onto the floor and sat down, reading rapidly.
‘Why didn’t you show this to me straight away?’
Lois simply looked at him.
‘Right, OK.’
He sat back and put his hands, folded together, up to his face.
‘Has anyone else seen this yet?’
‘No.’
‘What’s the latest with Mrs …’
‘Shelley Pendleton.’ Lois filled him in.
‘What was your advice?’
‘That she press charges.’
‘Right.’
He was silent for a moment, drumming his fingers on the desk. Then he said, ‘Nothing’s going to happen until forensics report on it, so you leave this one with me and get on with whatever else you’ve got on.’
‘I was going to see Mrs Pendleton.’
‘No. Leave this to the St Catherine’s lot, it’s what they’re for. And for the time being, the name of the accused doesn’t go further than you, me and the report. File it separately, password protect it and that’s that.’
‘Sir …’
‘I’m talking about discretion until we know more. These things always boil down to he says/she says, especially when the two are well known to one another. Right now, you can take someone down to Carter’s Buildings – there’s a body. About a hundred years old from what I gathered but uniform want a presence.’
Lois went back to the CID room with pent-up anger like heartburn in her chest. ‘Discretion’? Cover-up? Where was the difference? She resented Rolph’s implication that she was not able to maintain confidentiality and his assumption that Shelley had been exaggerating, and that the sexual encounter had been ‘six of one, half a dozen of the other’. He had not talked to her or assessed her state of mind and the shock she was still in. He had not taken her to St Catherine’s, white-faced and shaking, but still quietly sure of what she had experienced. And now, because the man was related to a top cop, Rolph wanted to brush the whole thing under the carpet.
Well, that wasn’t going to happen. It was her case, she had the details, she was not going to let it dematerialise. Nor, she suspected, would Simon Serrailler want that. Oddball he might be but he was straight and honourable and the last thing he would ever entertain was so much as a hint of a cover-up.
She collected a brand-new, shiny DC and went off to find the hundred-year-old body, filing the Shelley Pendleton case at the back of her mind – pending, not forgotten.
The DCI put in a call to the Bevham Police HQ and asked for a meeting with the Chief Constable that day.
‘He’s out till after four on the other side of the county. Can I help?’
‘No, it’s urgent that I see him today.’
‘I’ll get back to you, Chief Inspector, but I’ll need to know something of what it’s regarding.’
‘Just tell him it’s highly confidential and sensitive.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ the Chief’s secretary said wearily, ‘but I can’t promise – he’s got one hell of a week.’
Rolph was in the Chief’s office at twenty past five, for an appointment at half past, but Kieron Bright was delayed, having been asked to meet a government minister who was visiting the county, and it was well after six before he appeared, briskly apologising.
‘I can’t give you more than ten minutes, I’ve got to go home and change and be straight out to a dinner. But I’m sure you can give me a digest in less than that.’
Austin Rolph had not liked the previous Chief, privately because she was a woman but publicly because he felt she was soft. He had hoped for a senior male figure as her successor, and got Bright, considerably younger than him and, as he had quickly decided, too full of himself. But when Bright had appointed him acting head of Lafferton CID in Serrailler’s absence, he had changed his mind.
He told him about the rape case in succinct detail, waiting for the other man’s startled reaction when Richard Serrailler’s name was mentioned. There was none.
‘We have a delicate problem, as I’m sure you agree, sir.’
‘You could have sent me this stuff by email,’ was all the Chief replied.
‘Well, hardly, sir, with respect … emails aren’t totally confidential.’
‘Mine are, though my secretary sees them, but that’s not my point. Even supposing someone intercepted this one, which is a bit cloak-and-dagger, what precisely is the problem?’
Rolph was caught off guard for a second.
‘With respect –’
‘What you’re thinking is that because the accused happens to be the father of a detective chief superintendent, and also happens to be a prominent local figure and a Freemason, this makes it somehow a special case. Different.’
‘No, but –’
‘Yes. Are you a Mason?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Nor am I. But even if we were it would be irrelevant, just as the police connection is irrelevant. I don’t know what you were thinking I would say or do – maybe even hoping – but this case proceeds like any other.’
‘Sir. But ought you not to warn the Chief Super?’
‘If he were around, he would be told, and by you, or by DS Dancer, as a matter of courtesy. But he isn’t. He’ll have to find out when he gets back.’
‘From …?’
‘Time I left. Incidentally, to be clear – I don’t believe in cover-ups and on my watch the phrase “special treatment” isn’t part of the language.’