Annie raised an eyebrow. “Your friend in Human Resources again?”
Nerys grinned. “Another one, this time. Records.”
“My, my, but you must have a lot of friends.”
“No. That’s the problem. I don’t. I’ve never felt so alone. So isolated.”
“But that’s ridiculous,” said Annie. “You AFO teams have a reputation for being close and tight-knit. Your lives depend on one another.”
“It’s true enough on the job,” said Nerys. “It’s our training. But it doesn’t always work that way off duty.” She leaned forward in her chair and looked Annie in the eye. The directness and intensity of her gaze were disconcerting. “Look, I’m a woman in a man’s world. More than that. I’m a gay woman in a man’s shooting club. You might think they treat me like one of the lads, but they look at me more as a freak.”
“I’m sure that’s not the case.”
Nerys’s upper lip curled in a sneer. “What do you know?”
“Nothing, I suppose,” said Annie. “What got you into it in the first place, then? I mean the Firearms Cadre?”
“I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I mean, in the force. I did all the courses-surveillance, vehicle pursuit, worked undercover, even traffic. I was all over the map.”
“And?”
“I suppose it was my dad, really. He was a para. Real macho. Got killed in Iraq two and a half years ago. Another sniper. Dad was really a perfectionist, a technician. I grew up around guns, the smell of them, the mechanics. Christ, I could dismantle and reassemble a Hechler and Koch or a Parker-Hale in the dark, going by sound and touch alone.”
“That sounds like a useful skill,” said Annie. “Well, you never know.”
“But you never thought of this before, when you first joined?”
“Not really. It wasn’t as if I wanted to follow in my dad’s footsteps. Not until he got killed. Then it all seemed to make sense. And I’m good at it. They fast-tracked me. I’m the youngest on the unit apart from Warby.” They let the silence stretch for a while, as Nerys no doubt thought about her dead father and Annie thought about Banks. Where was he? Los Angeles? Reno? Tucson? She knew he was somewhere in the American southwest. She wished she were there with him. “I don’t want to be on Firearms Cadre forever, though,” Nerys said.
“Ambitious?”
“A bit, I suppose. I’d like to work in counterterrorism eventually.”
“Sounds challenging.”
“I like a challenge. That’s also why I’m worried about…you know…all this…”
“A big blot on your copybook?”
“Yes.”
“There’s probably not an officer in the service who hasn’t made a mistake. I mean, there’s some people would say DCI Banks is a walking disaster area. Our friend Chambers, for a start.”
“What’s he really like?”
“Chambers?”
“Yes. He reminds me of that fat comedian with the bowler hat, the one in those old black-and-white films.”
“Oliver Hardy?”
“That’s the one. But seriously. Do you think he supports gay rights? Has a soft spot for cuddly lesbians?”
Anne couldn’t help but laugh. She topped up their wineglasses. The level in Nerys’s was much lower than hers, she noticed. “No, I shouldn’t think so. He’s more the kind who thinks every woman he meets can’t wait to drop her knickers for him. And he probably believes that all a lesbian needs to cure her is a good stiff twelve inches of Reginald Chambers. Though my guess is it’s closer to three or four inches.”
Nerys laughed. “But what do you really think about him?”
Annie swirled the wine in her glass, then drank some more. She didn’t like remembering her time with Chambers; the memories weren’t good ones. “Let’s just say we didn’t get along too well and leave it at that, shall we?”
“So what can I expect? He’s going to try to crucify us, me and Warby, isn’t he?”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” said Annie. “Don’t be so bloody melodramatic. He’s not that bad. There are plenty worse than him around. I said we didn’t get along. That’s all. It was probably as much my fault as his. It wasn’t exactly my dream posting. I don’t get on with very many people, if you must know.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Annie checked her watch. “Look, I hate to rush you, but if you’ve finished…” There was no way she would be able to get back to her meditation now, not after this disruption, not to mention the wine, but at least she could watch TV or something and veg out. Almost anything would be better than this.
“I’m sorry,” said Nerys, her lower lip quivering. “I didn’t mean to spoil your evening…I mean, I just wanted to know if I could count on you, if you’re on my side. I’m sorry to waste your time. I’m just worried, that’s all.”
Then Annie saw tears in her eyes and softened. She hated herself for it, but she was a sucker for tears. Worse than any man she’d ever met. “Come on,” she said, pouring more wine. It was going down quickly; the bottle was almost empty. “Pull yourself together, Nerys. Look, Chambers isn’t going to crucify you. After all, it wasn’t you who fired the Taser. He’s an arsehole, yes, and a bully and a male chauvinist pig, but as far as I know he plays straight. At worst, he’ll play up to the media and give them what they want. He’s a PR man at heart, not a copper. But he’s not going to fit you up, for crying out loud. He’ll discover the facts and play it by the book, obnoxious bastard as he is.”
“But that’s just it, isn’t it? That’s the problem. The facts. What are they? And doesn’t it all depend on how someone else interprets them? What version will the media want? There could be as many different stories of what happened on Monday morning as there were people present.”
Annie knew that was true. She had once seen a film called Rashomon, one of her father’s favorites, which told the same story from several different viewpoints. Same facts. Different stories. “Perhaps,” she admitted. “But there’s nothing you can do about that. And he’s got his team from Greater Manchester to keep him on the straight and narrow. He’s not a law unto himself, much as he might like to think so.”
“I just need to know what to expect, so I can be prepared. What did he do to you when you worked with him?”
“Didn’t your friend in Human Resources tell you?”
“Nobody really knows but you.”
Annie took a deep breath and followed it with a draft of wine. “It was a long time ago,” she said. “Seven, eight years or thereabouts.” And why does it keep coming back to haunt me? she wondered. She thought she had finally seen the end of Janet Taylor, Lucy Payne and the Chameleon case over a year ago, when it had come into her life again with a vengeance. Now Chambers was back. “Chambers himself didn’t do anything to me,” she went on. “Back then he was simply a lazy, lecherous, time-serving arsewipe who got others to do his dirty work for him while he got all the glory. Whatever glory there is in a job like that. Mostly he got his jollies from what he saw as his vindication in the gutter press. He always swayed with the wind of public opinion.”
“Why didn’t he retire when he’d put in his twenty-five? I heard he was practically living on the golf course.”
“The reorganization gave him a new lease on life, a renewed purpose. More power. Now he just seems to want to put as many coppers away as he can before he retires. But it’s not as if some of them don’t deserve it, and like I said, he’s not bent. He plays by the book.”
“But he has an agenda?”
“Oh, yes. With Chambers, you’re always guilty until you’re proven guilty. Especially if the newspapers say so.”
“So I’m right to be worried?”
“The two cases are very different,” said Annie. “PC Janet Taylor, the one I was working on, killed a notorious serial killer who had just hacked her partner to pieces in front of her eyes and was about to do the same to her. Unfortunately, a civilian called John Hadleigh, who had shot a burglar in his home about three hundred miles away, was convicted of murder around the same time. It would have appeared bad if a police officer had simply walked away scot-free after killing someone. End of story.”