Kathy hung her head, feeling defeated by Suzanne’s passion. ‘I’m sorry. He felt he had to stay here for the time being, so then it seemed better not to alarm you. His leg’s the main problem. The doctors say the rest will mend quickly.’
Suzanne shook her head in exasperation. ‘It’s ridiculous! He’s too old to be fighting in the street like a twenty-year-old.’
‘It just came out of the blue. No one expected something like that. He and Bren were caught. It could have happened to anyone. He was rather heroic, actually. You’d have been proud of him.’
But Suzanne wasn’t ready to listen to that. ‘He should never have been in that situation. He shouldn’t be in that job at all.’
Kathy looked at her in surprise. She hadn’t heard this from her before, but she remembered the oddly stilted conversations she had had with Suzanne about her own career choices, and guessed that this was a long-running issue.
‘He should have moved on like everyone else, into senior management. Or if he doesn’t want that, he should get out completely.’ She wasn’t offering a point for discussion. She said it with absolute certainty, as a fact that would be obvious to any right-thinking person, and Kathy felt she was seeing for the first time the underlying tension in the strangely on-off relationship between the two of them.
She imagined them at some point putting their cards on the table, two people of determined views, and, finding that they couldn’t agree, settling on a kind of mutual half-life together. It made her feel vaguely stupid, as if she ought to know how to help, but couldn’t. She’d lived with Suzanne for a couple of weeks, after all, during which time Brock had stayed overnight two or three times, and yet she still didn’t know for sure if they were sleeping together.
‘You don’t agree, of course.’ Suzanne said it flatly, a demand to know if Kathy was an ally or an enemy.
‘I wouldn’t like to say what’s best for him, Suzanne,’ Kathy said cautiously. ‘I don’t think he would be happy in senior management, to be honest. As for doing something else… I don’t know.’
Suzanne turned away, as if Kathy had confirmed her suspicions. ‘Why does he have to stay here, exactly?’ she asked coolly. ‘Someone else has taken over the case, surely? He’s invalided out, isn’t he?’ There was a note of suspicion in Suzanne’s voice now, as if she suspected Kathy of some duplicity, or felt threatened by her professional relationship with Brock.
‘Yes, but the new people have been consulting him-’
‘There’s an invention called a telephone, I believe.’
Kathy hadn’t heard this sharpness from Suzanne before. She was obviously very hurt, and not stupid. ‘There’s also an internal inquiry been set up into what happened. Brock hasn’t said to me, but I think he’s worried about it. It wasn’t his fault, but he’s taken it badly, that the man they had arrested was killed in their charge.’
‘All the more reason he shouldn’t lie around here moping while he waits for things to happen.’ Suzanne turned back to face Kathy. ‘And what about you?’
Kathy felt herself flush, suddenly aware that all this time she’d been holding Brock’s front door key in her hand. ‘Me? I’ve just been looking in from time to time, and doing a bit of shopping for him.’
‘I meant, what are your plans these days? I’ve hardly heard from you since the weekend. Tina wanted to speak to you, but she couldn’t get you at your flat. She had some news about your interview. You should contact her.’
‘Yes, of course. Since I came back up to town, everything’s moved so fast… I’m sorry, I’ll do it straight away. Look, Suzanne, I think you’re right about Brock getting away from here for a while. I can keep my ears open for him here, and there’s Bren and the others. Why don’t you have another go at persuading him to go back with you to Battle?’
‘So you’re staying in London, are you?’
‘I think I will. I’ve got so much to catch up on here,’ she lied. ‘The break with you was fantastic, just what I needed, but I feel OK now.’
Suzanne sighed. ‘Maybe you should tell him. I don’t seem to be having much success at telling him anything at the moment.’
The tension had ebbed from her voice, and Kathy said, hanging the key on a hook above the worktop, ‘Let’s have some lunch. We can both work on him.’
13
K athy’s sense of detachment intensified in the days following Brock’s departure to Battle. Over lunch he had bowed to the inevitable and accepted Suzanne’s invitation to stay with her for a while with good grace and even, Kathy thought she detected, some relief. When he asked how the two grandchildren, who had on a previous occasion found his presence around Suzanne threatening, would deal with it, Suzanne had said grimly that everyone would have to cooperate and make compromises. He didn’t try to argue. She added that his crutch and bandages would probably do the trick, and if not he could try a parrot on his shoulder. So they had packed a couple of bags of clothes, books and Brock’s laptop and set off for the coast, leaving Kathy to return alone to her flat in Finchley.
In her mail was a letter reminding her that, under the terms of her sick leave, she was required to attend a further session with the staff psychologist before she could obtain clearance to return to work. Kathy had come to regard her reluctance to make arrangements for these sessions as symptomatic of her disillusionment with her job, and again she hesitated, put the letter aside and opened the next. This one was from the agency in the West End, informing her that she had been accepted as a client subject to completion of the enclosed contracts.
She thought about that for a while, then rang Tina the travel agent in Hastings, who told her that she had herself spoken to the woman who had interviewed Kathy.
‘But I thought it went so badly,’ Kathy said. ‘I turned up late and had no languages.’
Actually the woman had been impressed, Tina said, but made a habit of never showing it. She should do something about the languages, and there were some other courses she should do, but yes, they thought she could make a go of it.
Kathy replaced the receiver and stared out of the window for a while. ‘Hell,’ she said at last, and dialled the number on her first letter and made the appointment with the psychologist. She was told it would be at least a week before she could report back to duty. Another week of limbo.
She thought often of Leon Desai over the following days, but didn’t ring him, nor did he try to contact her. But in a moment of weakness she did ring Wayne O’Brien and suggested they try another Indian. He sounded regretful. That would be magic, he said, and he’d like nothing better, but things were a bit dodgy. His girlfriend had miraculously recovered from her imagined infatuation with the third member of their household, who had now departed. And despite his earlier doubts, Wayne had found it in his heart to forgive and make up, so it didn’t look as if he’d be able to manage a return match with Kathy. Much to his regret, incidentally, but he wasn’t that sort of guy. Kathy said that was fine, in a tone that suggested she had so many competing claims on her time that she hardly knew which way to turn. And was he still involved with the Springer/ Khadra case?
He hesitated, the way an undercover man might, weighing up how much to say. ‘The case is dead as a dodo is what I hear, Kathy,’ he said finally. ‘No conspiracy, no terrorist plots. It was never really one for Special Branch, as it turned out. Shame really. I understand there’s been some new forensic evidence. Your lab liaison, Desai, has been working on it. You should talk to him.’
Kathy didn’t, but she did ring Battle. Suzanne answered, sounding out of breath and happy. Everything was going well, she said. As she had predicted, Brock’s bandages and crutch had given him an heroic status with the grandchildren. In the background Kathy heard the cry of children and felt a twinge of regret.