Fever of the Bone (8 page)

‘You could have asked me to come down to your flat. Or to meet you somewhere that serves alcohol,’ Tony pointed out. Finding the arguments was tedious, but helping her back to a point where she genuinely didn’t need a drink was the best way he knew of demonstrating how much he cared for her.

Carol threw her hands in the air. ‘Give me a break, Tony. I really do have something important to discuss.’ It sounded like she meant it.

Another good reason why he wanted her to stop leaning on alcohol. Her need for a drink masked so many other things - something genuinely important to share with him, a truly difficult day - and that made it hard to read her. And not being able to read her was something he found very hard to bear. Tony leaned back in his chair and smiled, his blue eyes twinkling in the pool of light cast by a nearby reading lamp. ‘Go on then. I’ll stop being your nagging friend and revert to interested colleague. Has this got anything to do with your meeting with your new boss, by any chance?’

Carol’s answering smile was sardonic. ‘Got it in one.’ She swiftly laid out the ultimatum James Blake had given her team. ‘It’s so unrealistic,’ she said, frustration obviously gnawing at her composure. ‘We’re entirely at the mercy of what comes up over the next three months. Am I supposed to be wishing for some tasty murders, just so that I can show off how good my team is? Or fake evidence to clear up a few high-profile cold cases? You can’t apply some time-and-motion study to a specialist investigative unit.’

‘No, you can’t. But that’s not what’s going on here. He’s already made his mind up. This trial period’s bogus, for precisely the reasons you’ve laid out.’ Tony scratched his head. ‘I think you’re screwed. So you might as well just do things exactly as you would anyway.’

He saw her shoulders slump. But she knew better than to come to him for anything less than honesty. If they started down that road, the trust they’d spent years building would crumble faster than overcooked meringue. And since neither of them had anyone else in their life as close as the other, they couldn’t afford that. ‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ she sighed. She took a long drink from her water glass. ‘But that’s not all.’ She stared down into her glass, the thick tumble of her hair hiding her face.

Tony closed his eyes momentarily, rubbing the bridge of his nose. ‘He’s told you to stop using me.’

Galvanised by his acuity, Carol’s neck straightened and her startled eyes met his. ‘How did you know that? Has Blake spoken to you?’

Tony shook his head. ‘It’s the dog that didn’t bark in the night.’

Carol nodded, getting it. ‘He didn’t speak to you. I introduced you, he didn’t engage.’

‘Which I took to mean that I’m not part of his budget or his plans.’ He smiled. ‘Don’t worry about me, there’s plenty of other chief constables that still think I’m money well spent.’

‘I’m not worried about you, I’m worried about me. And my team.’

He spread his hands in the equivalent of a shrug. ‘It’s hard to fight a man who reduces everything to the maximum bangs for his buck. The truth is, I’m not the cheapest option, Carol. You’re turning out your own profilers these days. Your bosses think it’s better to go down the American route - train cops in psychology - rather than rely on specialists like me who know nothing about the realities of policing the streets.’ Only someone who knew him as well as Carol could have detected the subtle edge of irony in his tone.

‘Yeah, well, you get what you pay for.’

‘Some of them are pretty good, you know.’

‘How do you know?’

He chuckled. ‘I’m one of the people who’s been training them.’

Carol looked shocked. ‘You never said.’

‘It was supposed to be confidential.’

‘So why are you telling me now?’

‘Because if you have to work with them, you should know they’ve had the benefit of input from some of the most experienced profilers around. Not just me, other people in the same field that I’ve got a lot of time for. And these bright young officers have not had their knowledge cluttered up by having to decide on treatment regimes. They’re very focused on one aspect of psychology, and they’re not stupid. Give them a chance. Don’t dismiss them because they’re not me.’ There was another layer of meaning to his words which they both understood. Unfortunately for Tony, it wasn’t a good time to remind Carol of the bond between them that underpinned all their professional ventures.

She covered her eyes with her hand, like a woman shielding herself from the sun. ‘Blake was really snide, Tony. He implied that my reasons for choosing to consult you are grubby and corrupt. He knows that I’m your tenant, and he made it sound like there was more to it than that, that we had something sordid to hide.’ She turned her head away and drank more water.

It was hard to understand why a man in Blake’s position would choose to undermine one of his most effective officers before he’d even seen for himself what she was capable of. But undermine her he had, and he couldn’t have chosen a more effective pressure point if he’d consulted Tony himself. With any other pair of people who shared their history, the assumption that they were lovers would probably have been right on the money. But the emotional bond they’d shared from the earliest days of their professional connection had never spilled over into the physical. Right from the start, he’d levelled with her about the impotence that had consistently blighted his relationships with women. She’d had the good sense not to decide she was the woman who could redeem him. But in spite of their unspoken agreement to keep their feelings on a limited leash, there had been times when the forces pulling them together had seemed strong enough to overcome his fear of humiliation and her anxiety that she wouldn’t be able to hide her disappointment. But each time, the world had thrown obstacles in their path. And given the atrocities that were commonplace in their world, those were not obstacles that could be overcome lightly. He’d never forget the one time she’d let her guard slip because of him, and the darkness it had unleashed. For a while, it had looked as if she could never make her way back from that particular abyss. That she had was, he believed, no thanks to him and everything to do with the power the job had over her. Tony doubted whether Blake knew anything real about their history, but the gossip factory had provided him with enough information to use him against her. He hated that that was possible. ‘Stupid bastard,’ Tony said. ‘He should be making alliances, not alienating the likes of you.’ He gave a thin smile. ‘Not that there are many like you.’

She shifted in her seat. He thought she probably wished she smoked so she would have something to occupy herself with. ‘Maybe it’s time I thought about moving out. I mean, we both only ever meant it to be temporary. While I decided if I wanted to be back in Bradfield.’ She raised one shoulder in a half-shrug. ‘While I decided if I still wanted to be a cop.’

‘You seem to have settled both those questions,’ he said, trying to hide the sadness her suggestion had provoked. ‘I can see why you might want somewhere that feels more like your own place. A bit more room. But don’t feel you have to go on my account.’ A lop-sided smile. ‘I’ve almost got used to having someone around I can borrow milk from.’

Carol’s smile was pained. ‘That’s all I am to you, is it? A source of midnight milk?’

A long pause. Then Tony said. ‘Sometimes I wish it was that simple. For your sake as much as mine.’ He sighed. ‘I really don’t want you to move, Carol. Especially if we’re not working together. Living in different places, we’d hardly see each other. I’m not good at holding on to people and you work insane hours.’ He stood up. ‘So, do you fancy a glass of wine?’

Gary Harcup licked the grease from his fingers then wiped them on his jeans. The pizza had been cold for at least three hours, but he hadn’t noticed. He ate from habit, he ate as a pause for thought, he ate because the food was there. Savour had nothing to do with it. He loved that he lived in a world where you could have food delivered to your door 24/7 without even having to pick up a phone. A click of the mouse would see him supplied with Chinese, Indian, Thai or pizza. Some days, he only left his computer to take in deliveries and to go to the bathroom.

In the community he inhabited, Gary’s life was far from unique. Most of the people he knew lived a variation of his daily existence. Every now and then they had to emerge blinking into the daylight to interface with clients of one sort or another, but if they could avoid it, they did. If they’d been a separate species, they’d have died out in a couple of generations.

Gary loved his machines. He loved moving around in virtuality, travelling through time and space without ever having to leave the womb of his small, smelly flat. He found immense satisfaction in solving the problems his clients offered up, but he also knew the deep frustration of occasional failure.

Take this job for West Mercia. A lot of what they wanted from him was the product of simple number-crunching. Tracking down the whereabouts of particular machines, for example. It was the sort of thing where you keyed in information and set the software off and running. A child of five could do it.

But trawling through the scattered detritus of deleted files, that was a different matter. Pulling out fragments, identifying which belonged where, fitting them together like a vandalised jigsaw - that was man’s work. After a cursory exploration, he’d reluctantly had to admit that his software wasn’t up to it. He needed something better - and he knew just where to go. Over years of working in this twilight zone, Gary had built a network of allies and contacts. Most of them he wouldn’t have recognised if they’d been sitting next to him on a train, but he knew their screen names and cyber-IDs. For what he needed today, Warren Davy was his man. Warren, the man who could almost always come up with the goods. When it came to masters of the virtual universe, Warren was one of the best. They’d known each other since the earliest days, back before there had even been an internet, when the only way for teenagers like them to communicate in the ether had been bulletin boards populated by hackers, phreaks and geeks. Warren, in Gary’s view, was the man.

A quick email, then he’d have a shower. It had been a day or two, and he’d noticed he was itching in the places where a man welded to a computer chair inevitably overheated.

When he returned to his desk, dressed in clean boxers and T-shirt, the reply was already there. You could always rely on Warren, he thought. Not just one of the smartest tools in the box, but one of the most open-handed too. It was thanks to Warren that Gary had a lot of the software that allowed him such free access to other people’s information.

Good to hear from you, Gary. I’m stuck in Malta on a security set-up job, but I think we’ve got something that might do the trick for you. I can let you have it at cost. It’s called Ravel and you can download it from the DPS site. Use code TR61UPK to login, we’ll bill you at the end of the month as usual.
You’re right, there is something newer and shinier coming down the pike from SCHEN, but it’s going to cost you about three times what Ravel does. I know Bradfield Police are beta-testing it, so maybe West Mercia could get you a deal when it’s up and running.
Good luck with the trawl.

Gary gave the screen the thumbs-up, relieved that he was going to be able to put on some kind of a show for Patterson. Warren had come through. But even though Warren was so on top of things, he had a pretty rose-tinted view of how closely cops co-operated. Whatever the deal was with SCHEN and Bradfield Police, Gary knew there was no way West Mercia would be getting in on the ground floor with it. SCHEN were totally notorious for playing their expensive cards close to their chest. Gary had been aware of them for years. He even knew the guy behind them used the screen name Hexadex. But he’d never been able to get alongside him. All he knew was that the guy had developed some shit-hot analytical software over the years and that he had some kind of deal with Bradfield cops, who always seemed to be the ones beta-testing any crime-fighting apps of SCHEN’s new kit.

Gary sighed. He’d never had the kind of creativity that had propelled SCHEN to gigabucks and Warren to megabucks. But at least he had his clutch of steady clients who didn’t know that he wasn’t one of the big dogs. And thanks to mates like Warren, hopefully they’d never have to find out.

Daniel Morrison slumped in front of his computer, his blue eyes sulky and his wide, full mouth turned down in a scowl. His life was so fucking boring. His parents were, like, dinosaurs. His dad acted like they were living in the Stone Age, when there was nothing to do except go to football matches and listen to records. Records, for fuck’s sake! OK, so some vinyl was retro and cool, but not the stuff his dad liked to spin on his turntable. And the way he talked about girls . . . Daniel rolled his eyes back in his head and let his head loll. Like they were innocent little dolls or something. He wondered if his dad had the faintest idea what went on with girls in the twenty-first century. It would blow his stupid little mind if he knew.

Daniel would’ve bet that every single one of the girls he hung out with had forgotten more about sex than his dumbfuck father had ever known. He could never decide whether to laugh or groan when his father tried to talk to him about ‘respect’ and ‘responsibility’ when it came to girls. Maybe he hadn’t actually done it yet, but he’d come close, and he had a full range of coloured and flavoured condoms ready and waiting. He wasn’t going to be lumbered with some screaming kid, no thank you. God. He’d tried telling his father that he knew what he was doing, but the old man wasn’t hearing what he had to say. He still wouldn’t let him go out clubbing or to gigs with his mates. Said he could only go if they went together. Like he was going to show up at some event with his sad dad in tow. Yeah, right. That would happen.

Usually, his mother let him do pretty much what he wanted. But lately she’d been sounding more and more like a clone of his dad. Talking about homework and focus and shit like that. Daniel had never given a toss about homework. He’d always been smart enough to get by without trying. Even if it wasn’t as easy to bullshit his way through some subjects now he was heading towards GCSEs, he could still get by better than pretty much anybody else without doing all the grunt work they had to put in.