The next day, our cosy little crack squad turns into a full-scale jamboree with twice the number of people chasing up leads and striding about looking determined. I spend my time intermittently throwing up in the toilets and smiling at new faces, intently staring at my laptop in the short bursts in between, desperate to avoid direct eye contact with Parnell and Steele. Luckily they’ve both been squirrelled away in Steele’s office all morning alongside Chief Superintendent Blake and a couple of other Big Knobs – I know they’re Big Knobs because Steele told me to use the decent mugs when she sent me to make coffee. It’s the only interaction we’ve had all day.
Around three this morning, I’d entered an almost altered sense of consciousness where I convinced myself that I had the backbone to walk into Steele’s office at nine a.m. sharp and come clean on everything I knew about Maryanne Doyle. It was the right thing to do, I’d reasoned, burning with a righteous professionalism I never knew I had; in fact it was the only thing to do if I ever wanted to face myself in the mirror again, and crucially it was the timing of my epiphany that sealed it.
Three a.m., known as ‘Dead Time’ – the hour when the barrier between the living and the dead lifts and the ghosts start to move between realms.
So it was Mum telling me to come clean, basically. Or so I’d believed until the marijuana haze wore off and the clarity of daybreak returned me to a far more basic instinct – self-preservation – and a far more pragmatic perspective.
What exactly do I know anyway? That my Dad definitely didn’t kill Maryanne Doyle in 1998, but that he’d lied about knowing her?
It’s barely a line of enquiry, never mind a smoking gun.
‘So what are we calling her then?’ Flowers sticks a photo of Maryanne Doyle to the incident board, wholesome and dewy with those cushiony pink lips and blue eyes twinkling like helium stars. ‘It’s going to get bloody confusing now. Is she Alice or Maryanne?’
‘Hard to believe it’s the same person,’ says Craig, shaking his head. ‘I mean, I’m sure we all looked different in the Nineties – you wouldn’t have called me The Famine back then for a start, I was a bit of a porker, if you must know – but this Alice, Maryanne, whatever we’re calling her, she looks completely different. Like the life’s been sucked out of her.’
Renée gives a sideways glance. ‘I think it’s called age, Craig. Stress. Modern life.’
‘Stress?!’ says Flowers. ‘Living on a private island and cooking scampi and chips in the local a few times a week?’
I exchange a ‘dickhead’ look with Renée who passes it on to Ben.
‘Well, I think we should go with Maryanne,’ says Seth, ‘inside these four walls anyway. If that’s who she was born, that’s what we should call her.’
‘No.’ It bursts out of me, loud and vehement. ‘She changed her name to Alice so that’s how she wanted to be known. We owe her that courtesy, surely?’
Kinsella’s my Mum’s maiden name, you see. I was born a McBride but I changed it to Kinsella after she died. A memorial to the only person I’ve ever really trusted and an irrefutable ‘fuck you’ to my dad.
Although, I am starting to trust Parnell, I think. It isn’t anything he’s done as such. We haven’t been in any life-or-death situations together, unless you count the time we arrested a suspect outside a supermarket who tried to attack us with a frozen leg of lamb. It’s just his presence I trust, his relentless steadiness.
It shores me up, somehow. Makes me steadier.
Seth shrugs a ‘whatever’ and looks towards Steele’s office where the Chief Super and the Big Knobs are filing out. Steele’s in the centre and Parnell walks behind in his best shirt-and-tie combo, the tie bobbing on his hillock of a stomach. If it wasn’t for his nose hair, I’d say he looked cute. The Big Knobs leave but Blake stays behind, smouldering by the back wall like an aftershave model. Not yet forty, Chief Superintendent Russell Blake’s the poster boy for the Met’s High Potential Development Scheme. A politician through and through, all PR, Policy and sharp Prada suits.
This is pure rumour, of course. I’ve never actually spoken to the man, although I did once hand him a napkin in the staff canteen.
Steele bangs a desk with a stapler and we all come to heel.
‘Right, folks, I trust you’ve all made friends and I don’t need to make introductions. Couple of things – firstly, I just want to extend a big thanks to Chief Superintendent Blake for’ – she looks around the room – ‘giving us the extra resources because clearly this case has just got a lot bigger.’ Blake gives a sombre nod. ‘Secondly, because it’s now bigger, I’m going to be taking on more of a co-ordinator role – the brains of the operation, if you like – and DS Parnell will be stepping up to Acting Detective Inspector, so all roads lead back to him, OK?’
A murmur of ‘fair play’ rings around the room. I’m obviously pleased for him but I can’t help getting a pang of new sibling syndrome. More people to manage means less time steadying me.
‘So the brother’s ID’d the body and he’s confirmed it’s his sister, Maryanne Doyle.’
‘The moron brother’, as Jacqui used to call him
‘Maryanne went missing from Mulderrin, a small village on the west coast of Ireland, in 1998. Not a call or a letter or a proverbial sausage since. We’re obviously waiting for a DNA comparison before we go public but basically, it’s her. He was able to tell us several distinguishing features.’
‘So might the killer,’ I say.
‘What? He kills her then draws attention to himself?’ muses Seth. ‘He’d have to be supremely confident, or supremely mad.’
‘It’s not unheard of.’
‘And confident fits with the relaxed dude on the CCTV,’ adds Ben.
Steele picks up the stapler, tosses it from hand to hand. ‘Mmm, I think the brother’s a bit taller than CCTV man, although it’s hard to say for definite so I wouldn’t rule him out. Anyway, look, the file’s been sent from Ireland but I’ve been warned it’s a bit thin on detail, and I’m not sure how much attention we should be paying it, in any case. It was eighteen years ago, people go missing all the time, and “Maryanne Doyle” was alive and well and living as Alice Lapaine until yesterday so there may be absolutely no relevance at all.’
I cling to Steele’s words yet feel sick at their implications.
Could I have been wrong about Dad all this time?
But then why? Why did he lie?
In the cold light of day, with doubts flooding my head, this question starts to seem naïve at best. OK, Childhood Me might have allowed herself to believe in the steadfast honesty of Grown-ups, but Grown-up Me knows that people lie all the time, and for an abundance of reasons, not all of them sinister.
But he knew her.
He flirted with her.
She disappeared.
Then he lied.
Pieces of a puzzle I completed a long time ago. Could I have been wrong?
However, now isn’t the time for regret or introspection. Now is the time to get hold of that file.
‘I’ll go through the Ireland stuff,’ I announce, maybe a little too eager. ‘Let you know if I think anything needs following up.’
Steele looks to Parnell, formally passing the crown.
‘No, I want you to interview the brother,’ says Parnell. ‘He’s coming back in, after work.’ He refrains from adding ‘the heartless git.’ ‘Go easy, but see if you can sense any motive, because if we’re looking for reasons for why she might have been in London, the brother’s a reason, isn’t he?’
I nod, there’s nothing else I can do. It’s an instruction from a senior officer and a favour from a friend. A patronage of sorts. But rather like the Mafia, Parnell’s public show of faith means I now can’t let him down without bringing him down, and yet I’m letting him down just by sitting here with my memories – Maryanne serving ice-cream, licking Rizlas, putting my Tinkerbell pendant into her denim jacket pocket.
Flirting with Dad. Calling him the Diet Coke man.
Acting Detective Inspector Luigi Parnell deserves far better than me.
‘Right, back to the grindstone folks,’ shouts Steele, waving ta-ta to Chief Superintendent Blake as he slips out. ‘Parnell’s off to the post-mortem later so news from that very soon.’
‘Lucky me,’ says Parnell, who after nearly thirty years’ service still shudders at the sound of the rib shears.
Renée picks up her bag. ‘Think yourself lucky, Boss. I’ve been lumbered with telling Thomas Lapaine that his wife had been lying to him about her identity for the past fifteen years. Wanna swap?’
He doesn’t. Most of us would take stomach contents and rib shears over the awkwardness of emotional pain any day.
‘I’ll tell you who is lucky though – that one, there.’ Renée points at me, grinning. I’m confused. ‘Ah, of course, you didn’t see Aiden Doyle when he came in first thing, did you? Well you’re in for a treat, lady, the man is an absolute D.I.S.H.’
‘Sexist!’ shouts Flowers, and for the first time today I crack a genuine smile.
*
Much later, I walk into the ‘soft’ interview room – the squishy, pastel sanctum we preserve for children, vulnerable people and now smokin’-hot brothers of dead Irish colleens – to find Aiden Doyle tapping on his smartphone, left knee bouncing. Six feet something of pure crackling energy and cheekbones you could cut turf with.
I can’t fault Renée’s taste. The moron brother doesn’t look so moronic now.
I half expect to recognise him but there’s nothing, not one single recollection. I’m not sure why I’m so surprised as I didn’t really register boys when I was eight. Boring, non-pop-star boys anyway. To me, every teenage boy was just another superfluous version of Noel – spiteful, monosyllabic and unwashed – whereas teenage girls embodied everything I thought was good about life – giggling, glitter and clip-cloppy high heels.
Maryanne was wearing candy-pink peep-toes the day we gave her a lift.
I offer my hand. ‘Detective Constable Cat Kinsella.’
‘Kinsella. There’d be Irish in you then?’
His west-coast accent curls around my heart like an old blanket. Gran, cousins, aunts, old men with old sheepdogs. Nice people I never saw again after that holiday.
‘My Mum’s side,’ I say, sitting down. ‘Thanks for coming back in, Mr Doyle – and thanks for sorting a photo so quickly. I’m sure this has been a huge shock and I’ll answer any questions you have the best I can, however I’ll warn you, we have far more questions than answers at this stage.’
‘No problem.’ He stands up, dwarfing me. ‘And call me Aiden. Mr Doyle makes me think of my old fella and believe me, it’s not a happy thought. Do you mind if I help myself to tea?’
‘If you don’t mind that it tastes awful.’
He smiles and goes about his business. No obvious signs of distress. Although in fairness, eighteen years is a long time. Maryanne’s been out of his life longer than she’d been in it.
He sits back down, sighs. ‘Well, yeah, it’s been a shock, all right. Not that she’s dead, I mean, I kinda assumed she was dead. It’s more that she was alive all this time, you know?
You and me both, mate.
‘I looked out for her for years,’ he goes on. ‘Like, I went to Galway once for a piss-up, just after the leaving cert, and I thought I saw her in the queue for the Alley.’ He smiles. ‘As if Maryanne would have been seen dead in the Alley, of all places. Always thought she was a class above, you know.’ There’s no side to that statement, just fact. ‘Then I thought I saw her at a football match. Mayo v Roscommon. Spent hours and hours rewinding and pausing the tape, convincing meself it could be her from a certain angle, if you added a few kilos. I suppose I just wanted to think that she was out there somewhere, having a good time, going to nightclubs, watching the match. She was football mad, you know. Well, footballer mad.’
I let him talk, tactically and for pure enjoyment.
‘I stopped looking after a while, though. Then after seven years, this woman from some new set-up, Missing in Ireland Support Services, rings up and says we can apply to have her declared dead if we want.’ He raises an eyebrow. ‘“If we want,” she says, like it’s a great fucking option.’ Then, ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t swear.’
‘Swear away. You’re not in confession.’
‘Ha, not in a long time, Detective. Same as yourself, no?’ I smile. ‘Anyways, we didn’t have her declared dead. I mean, what would be the point? She didn’t have an estate or anything, unless you call a crate of shit CDs and more shoes than Imelda Marcos, an estate.’ He scratches at his head like he’s tearing at his brain rather than tending to an itch. ‘Jesus Christ, I just can’t believe she was right here in London, right under my fucking nose.’
He doesn’t apologise this time.
‘We think she was only in London for a few weeks. She lived in Thames Ditton, in Surrey.’
A quick hunch of the shoulders. ‘Don’t know the place. Don’t know London that well, to be honest. I’ve not been here long meself, got transferred from the Dublin office two months ago, and it’s been non-stop work, work, work. I need to get out more.’
I want to ask what type of work allows for distressed denim jeans and threadbare grey T-shirts but it’s not exactly relevant. We’re not on a date. ‘Aiden, we’re trying to find out why Maryanne was in London in the weeks prior to her death. We’ve spoken with her husband . . .’
‘Yeah, your boss said she was married. Fair play to her. I’d like to meet him.’
One suspect meeting another suspect? I don’t think so.
‘Now’s really not the best time . . .’
‘O’ course. Jesus!’ He gives me a look that says, ‘what do you think I am?’ ‘I meant when the dust settles a bit, maybe . . .’
I nod vaguely, bring things back on track. ‘Her husband tells us she wasn’t the greatest fan of London.’
‘Sure, who is? You can’t get a pint for less than a fiver.’
I can’t help but bite. ‘Christ, I don’t know where you’re drinking? The tourist traps, I bet. You’re right, you definitely do need to get out more.’
If it sounds like flirting, I’m not. Flirting implies a certain amount of effort and guile and I’m capable of neither today.
Still, I overcompensate by going in for the kill.
‘Aiden, Maryanne’s husband can’t think of any reason why she would have been in central London. Maybe you can?’
If he’s annoyed, his face gives away nothing. ‘I haven’t seen my sister in nearly two decades, she could have had an appointment with the feckin’ Queen for all I know?’
I lean forward. ‘Or maybe she was visiting you? You could be the reason?’
His chin lifts. ‘I’m not following.’
‘Well, it just strikes me that here we have a woman who, by all accounts, can’t stand London, who never visits London, who seems content living her very quiet life in a sleepy village in leafy Surrey, and then her brother arrives in the capital two months ago, and all of a sudden London isn’t such a bad place?’ I leave it hanging for a second. ‘So can you see where I’m coming from? Can you see why I might make a connection.’
‘I can,’ he says, nodding, completely agreeable. ‘But there is no connection because I haven’t see her, and God knows I’d have been easy enough to find if she’d wanted to. She might have reinvented herself, but I’m still plain old Aiden Doyle. Same bloody haircut since time began. Same great big scar on me cheek where she slammed me with the hurley. Same cringy picture on the company website for years with the same bloody email address and contact number. If she’d wanted to find me she could have. She obviously didn’t.’
He glances at his watch, almost certainly trying to give the impression that if she’d hadn’t the time to care, then neither does he.
‘Can you confirm where you were on Monday evening/Tuesday morning between the hours of say, eleven p.m. and five a.m.’
I get the expected ‘are you having a laugh?’ look but that’s all. No gaping mouth flapping about in outraged protestation. No demand to see ‘who’s in charge of this investigation’, right before Steele makes them wish that they’d kept their mouth shut and stuck with little ol’ me.
‘I was at home, in bed.’
‘Can anyone verify that?’
‘Sadly not.’ He swipes his hand across his mouth, suppressing a tiny smirk. ‘I’ve been working like a dog since I got here and I haven’t had time for much verification in the bedroom department.’ A little laugh. ‘And that’s going to go against me, is it? Here was me thinking I was being a good lad, not stringing some young one along for an easy ride when I haven’t time to wipe my arse most days.’
‘With regards to your alibi.’ He laughs again – most innocent people do when an evening’s ironing suddenly becomes sworn testimony. ‘Did you speak to anyone on Monday night, between the hours I mentioned? Even a text could help rule you out. That’s all I’m trying to do here, Aiden, rule you out, so we can get on with finding whoever did this.’
He thinks about this. ‘I texted a mate in Oz at some point during the night, will that do? Bloody text from him woke me up and I gave him shite for it. Guess I owe him a pint now, eh?’ He scratches at his head again. ‘I suppose it must have been about oneish, I’d been in bed a while, anyways. I usually turn my phone off before bed but me old fella’s not been well so I’ve been leaving it on.’
A flash of Jonjo Doyle. A ratty little man who hated kids in pubs, ‘filthy’ foreign lager and all things English.
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Not sure I am. He’s not got long left, I reckon another clean shirt would do him, as we say back home.’ He stares into his mug for a few seconds and then looks up suddenly. ‘He was a cruel, useless man, Cat, the cruellest of the cruel, but he’s still me dad, you know? I’d have preferred he’d gone to his grave not knowing this . . . Ah sure, maybe I won’t tell him . . .’
I nod my understanding, enjoying the sound of my name from his mouth. The familiarity.
‘There were rumours he’d killed her,’ he says, almost amused. ‘Well, not exactly rumours, just pub talk. Gobshites making up stories ’cos they’ve got nothing better to talk about.’
‘That must have been very hurtful. For you and your dad.’
He doesn’t milk the sympathy. ‘Oh, don’t get me wrong, he was handy with his fists, all right. He’d clumped her once – in public, too – so don’t go feeling too sorry for the bastard. But murder? No. No way. It hit him hard enough when Mam died. He’d never have harmed Maryanne, no way. Well, I mean, proper harmed, you know.’
The west coast lilt, the cheekbones and now a dead mammy. If I could marry him here and now, I would.
‘What do you think happened, Aiden? Why do you think your sister disappeared?’
Answer me the most significant question of my life.
He puffs out his cheeks. ‘Sure, you wouldn’t know what to believe. Some folk were saying – when they weren’t saying that me old fella had killed her and set fire to the body – that she had a bit of a thing for older blokes. There was talk of some married one in Galway, a doctor, but I never went for that.’ A tiny laugh. ‘Not that I wouldn’t believe it – Christ knows she’d make eyes at the pope himself – but it didn’t explain why she never got back in touch. With me, anyway. I mean, we weren’t dead, dead close, but still . . . you’d think . . . well . . .’ He stops talking, wipes a thumb at an imaginary mark on his face. ‘Ah, d’you know what, fuck it.’
Hurt swathed in layers of front. Boy-hurt.
‘What about her friends? Teenage girls talk. Did they have any theories?’
‘Friends,’ he says, sourly. ‘She was joined at the hip with these two bitches, Manda Moran and Hazel Joyce. God forgive me, but they were a right pair of wagons.’
Manda Moran draws a blank but Hazel Joyce steps forward. Red hair clamped back in a tight ponytail. Imitating Jacqui’s accent, making her sound like Eliza Doolittle.
‘I did think to meself that if anyone knew anything, it’d be them, so I pounced on them one night coming out of Grogan’s. Thought I’d put the frighteners on them. Play the big man, you know.’ He almost smiles at the memory. ‘Ended up making a proper tool of meself, I did. Hazel Joyce had these two big brothers coming up the rear and they knocked seven shades of shite out of me. And do you know all they said, well the Joyce one said, as I was lying on the ground coughing up a lung – “If you hear from Maryanne, tell her she still owes me twenty quid.” Can you believe that? She was always mad jealous of Maryanne, though. Maryanne was good-looking, you know, and Joyce had a face a dog wouldn’t lick . . .’
He reaches for a glass of water, pours me one too.
‘When did you stop believing Maryanne was alive?’
‘I don’t know, after a few years, I suppose. And then when that one started going on about declaring her dead, well, it just kind of confirmed that something bad must have happened. And she was always hitching into town, you know? Jumping into the first car that stopped, not a bother on her. “Too fucking lazy to walk,” me old fella used to say. From him! A man who’d been on the social his whole bloody life.’
‘What did the Guards make of it?’
‘Bog all, really,’ he shrugs. ‘Me old fella wasn’t exactly on great terms with them so that didn’t help. Although to be fair, she was seventeen and she was known for being a bit wild. She’d ran away before, you see – only to Ballina for some festival but she was gone a few days, so I don’t think they paid much mind. Maybe I should have pushed them more but I was only fourteen. They’d have laughed me out the station.’
‘No other siblings?’
‘We’ve an older brother. He’d left home years before Maryanne went missing though and he’s in Canada now. We haven’t spoken properly in years. I get the odd Christmas card, pictures of his kids – well, they’re not kids now, they’re in their teens. I suppose I’ll have to give him a bell now . . . tell him about Maryanne, me dad . . .’
‘He doesn’t stay in contact with your dad?’
‘Nope. Let’s just say my folks weren’t really cut out to be parents. Both too fond of the sup. Mam was a happy drunk, at least. That’s how we saw it anyway. When the old fella was pissed, he’d dole out punches and rebel songs, but me mam, she’d be all kisses and promises. You know, things she was gonna buy us, places she was gonna take us. You knew it was baloney, but it was nice baloney. I miss her.’
‘How old were you when she died?’
‘I was twelve, Maryanne was fifteen. Cirrhosis of the liver. It wasn’t a nice death.’ A pause. ‘The women in our family don’t have much luck, do they?’ He reflects on this for a second but he’s not a wallower. ‘Come here, you said you’d answer any questions I have and I do have one. My question is, “what’s with all the questions?”’ What has Maryanne doing a runner out of Dodge all those years ago got to do with her being murdered yesterday?’
I steel myself to answer in the entirely politic, non-committal way that I’m paid to do.
‘We’re not sure at the moment. We’re just trying to get an idea of who she was. It could be the key to everything or it could mean absolutely nothing. I’m sorry, but that’s the most honest answer I can give you.’
And because screaming, ‘Wouldn’t I like to fucking know?’ in your face really wouldn’t benefit either of us.
‘Fair enough,’ he says – genuinely, I think.
He looks around the room, dwelling a beat or two on a canvas of pink poppies that I think he’s supposed to find soothing.
‘You know, Maryanne was a pain in the hole from the minute she got up in the morning until the minute she went to bed but she was my big sister, you know? She didn’t deserve . . . this. She wasn’t a bad person.’ He drags his eyes away from the poppies, plants them on mine. ‘Ah, would you listen to me, Cat. I haven’t set eyes on her in eighteen years, I’ve no idea what type of person she was. She could have been some gangland crime boss for all know. The Don Corleone of, where’d you call it, Thames Ditton.’ His smile gets broader. ‘Yeah, I could imagine that. Totally. Always had big plans, did Maryanne. Always so sure she was going to be someone. Be famous, like.’ A sharp rueful laugh. ‘She’s famous now, isn’t she?’
*
The office is quiet as I slink back in. Not exactly empty, but empty of anyone who’d have the remotest interest in what I’m up to. Seizing my chance, I breeze towards Steele’s office, smiling at people as I pass, even hovering for a few minutes to give my dishonest opinion on a pair of fleece pyjamas some Romeo has bought his lucky Juliet for Christmas.
Cool. Calm. Collected.
Just a lowly DC walking into a mighty DCI’s office and raiding her desk like a junkie scavenging for a fix.
Nothing to see here, folks.
I find the featherweight file under a pile of overtime sheets and there’s not much to see there either. They definitely weren’t joking when they said it was light on detail. I quickly scan the pages, all three of them – one standard Missing Persons form and two faded sheets which I’m loath to call witness statements as they read more like a sketchy Who’s Who of Mulderrin – a Sergeant Bill Swords’ private census, complete with withering observations and snippy little asides.
Martha Higgins – neighbour. Nothing relevant, couldn’t get any sense out of her, not playing with a full deck.
Manda Moran – friend. Hasn’t seen MD in days. Suggested some fella in Galway? Colette Durkin told her about him (Hazel Joyce told Durkin). Durkin a fierce liar though and M. Moran would believe the moon was made of cheese.
Colette Durkin – friend. Saw MD in the Diner on Sat morning (30th). Said she had ‘a right puss on her’. Denied knowledge of any fella in Galway. Wouldn’t know what to believe. Slippery as the day is long.
Pat Hannon – neighbour. Scuttered, uncooperative. Says MD has a ‘dirty mouth’ but a harmless old soul.
I find what I’m looking for three-quarters down the final page.
Jacqui McBride, fourteen, visiting from England (Agnes Kinsella’s crowd). Doesn’t know MD well, last saw her Thursday 28th sitting on St Benedict’s wall. Spoke briefly with parents. No relevant info.
So Jacqui had told the truth. She’d admitted she was a bit-part player and hadn’t tried to plant herself firmly in the thick of things like she normally did, back then more than ever.
In total it looks like Sergeant Bill Swords spoke with around twenty people. Not quite the ‘bog-all’ that Aiden Doyle suggested but perfunctory at best. A pass-muster B minus. Even the official Missing Persons form has a whiff of ticked boxes and jaded indifference.
Is the person suspected to be a victim of a crime in progress, e.g, abduction? NO |
Is the person vulnerable due to age, infirmity, or any other factor? NO |
Are there inclement weather conditions which would seriously increase risk to health? NO |
Does the missing person need essential medication or treatment not readily available to them? NO |
Does the missing person have any physical illness, disability or mental health problems? NO |
Is there any information that the person is likely to cause self-harm or attempt suicide? NO |
Has the person previously disappeared AND suffered or was exposed to harm? NO |
Are there any indications that preparations have been made for their absence? Brother says bag is gone but nothing else obvious |
Are there family and/or relationship problems or recent history of family conflict? Jonjo Doyle well known to Guards for petty violent incidents |
School, college, university, employment or financial problems? NO |
Drug or alcohol dependency? NO |
There’s part of me – the painstaking, zealous part that makes me tailor-made for Murder, despite what Steele thinks – that’s sick to my stomach at the thought of a teenage girl vanishing off the face of the earth and it warranting no serious follow-up. Yet tonight, as I crouch in Steele’s office, I could kiss Sergeant Bill Swords for his slap-happy half-job. For doing no more than what was absolutely required.
‘Spoke briefly with parents.’
And for his interpretation of the word ‘briefly’.
Because that’s not how I remember it. I remember two pots of tea drunk. A whole plate of fig rolls and half the coconut creams too. I remember the ‘Angelus’ ringing out at six p.m. and a big fat man, presumably Supersleuth Swords, leaping out of his chair, shocked that they’d been gassing for well over an hour when he had crimes to crack on with and cows to bring in.
But then, time always flies when Dad’s on good form.
And he was on sparkling form that day.