He twisted, picked up his watch from the bedside cabinet and squinted at it. He had set the alarm for 1 p.m. … it was 12.45 p.m. He sighed — he could have had fifteen minutes more — and with a curse he rolled out of bed, putting his eye to the peephole in the door.
‘One second,’ he called. He massaged his face quickly, grabbed his trousers and dragged them on before opening the door to the deputy chief constable.
Underneath her trench coat, which she quickly removed, she was in full regalia, with all the ‘bird shit’ emblems associated with her rank on the epaulettes on her narrow shoulders and lapels, which seemed to weigh her down. She looked bright and fully awake, very well turned out and sweet smelling. Her eyes did a quick once-over of Henry’s bare stomach and chest, making him inhale quickly, suddenly devastatingly aware he had far too much loose skin and flab hanging around. Her eyes rose.
‘I thought I’d see how things were progressing,’ she explained. ‘I’ve got a short break before my next meeting.’
‘Oh, OK,’ Henry said, holding his left arm across his chest, feeling vulnerable. ‘It’s going all right,’ he began.
‘I know it is,’ she said throatily, her eyes sparkling with lust. She eased herself past Henry, her soft hands touching his arms as she moved him gently aside. He watched her as she switched on the TV, turning the volume up slightly, then turned back to face him. It was only a small room and there was very little distance between them. ‘Unfinished business,’ she said.
Her right hand went to the back of his neck, pulling him down to her and forcing her lips on to his. At first he resisted — slightly — but she tasted and smelled delicious and he couldn’t hold himself back. His arms encircled her and she crushed against him, her hands running up and down his naked spine, sending shocks through his nerve endings, making him shiver. Finally they broke apart, Henry almost bursting out of his trousers.
‘This is so dangerous,’ he said.
‘I laugh in the face of danger,’ she said mockingly, throwing back her head, exposing her neck. ‘And in case you hadn’t worked it out, I get what I want. My looks deceive people.’
She bit Henry’s left nipple, making him utter a tiny squeal like a kettle, then she divested herself of her uniform in what seemed to be a well practised manoeuvre. In a moment she was standing there in a functional white bra, frilly knickers and — completely amazing Henry — stockings and suspenders.
‘Dear God,’ he slavered.
She unhooked her bra and tossed it aside, then slid her hands into the waistband of his pants and drew him towards her, unzipped him and eased them down his legs, kneeling in front of him.
Not completely sure it hadn’t all been a dream, Henry grabbed a prawn mayo sandwich and coffee-to-go at the training centre canteen. He guessed there was a Race and Diversity course running because he recognized a transvestite and transsexual sitting together at one of the tables, then hurried back to headquarters. He was still wearing the clothes he’d had on for the last two days, but at least he’d had a shower and had quickly ironed everything in the laundry room before putting it all back on, hoping the steam would force a bit of freshness back into his gear. He had plans to dash home and get changed before this afternoon’s post-mortems.
Two members of the SPMS were waiting for him when he bustled, red faced, back into the Special Projects office. Graeme Walling and Jenny Fisher sat there patiently and he knew they knew. Everybody knew. He had just had amazing sex with the deputy chief constable in one of the rooms in student accommodation at the training centre. It was bound to be common knowledge. Not that it was unusual for cops to have sex in those rooms — they even sold condoms in the training centre shop, for God’s sake — but it was usually confined to young, horny probationers going wild or macho detectives on their initial CID course proving how manly they were. Not two high-ranking, experienced officers and in the middle of the day.
‘Hi guys,’ he said, flushed. ‘What news?’ Each waited for the other, until Henry said, ‘Jenny?’
Her task had been to liaise with the Telephone Unit to get details of the phone bills from Eddie Daley’s office. Simple enough on the face of it, and something the police did in a lot of cases, but it was usually a slow, bureaucratic process. Getting it done quickly was hard.
She held up a few sheets of paper. ‘Success,’ she said, smiling.
‘Oh, well done,’ Henry said genuinely. He saw her blush with pleasure and he guessed she probably hadn’t had many pats on the back before, that very simple motivational tool, rarely used by managers.
‘Eddie had a BT account from that office … and you were right,’ she said. Henry crossed to her and looked over her shoulder. Her finger pointed to a frequently dialled ‘0845’ number. ‘That’s the number for Orange pay as you go internet service. It used to be Freeserve.’
‘So he did have a computer in that office?’
‘Looks like it.’
Which confirmed Henry’s brainwave he’d had whilst looking through Jackie Kippax’s flat in the early hours. He noticed Jackie had a computer and it had suddenly clicked with him that a computer wasn’t something he had seen in Eddie’s office, yet he recalled Jackie telling him how much Eddie used one. It stood to reason, therefore, that someone carrying on the dubious profession of a gumshoe would have one in his office. Who the hell didn’t these days?
Henry had seized Jackie’s computer and then, with Bill, had driven the short distance to Eddie’s office over the shop and entered what was still a crime scene.
No computer.
But Eddie, being such a slob, never dusted and it did not take a mastermind to look at his desk and see the faint outline in the dust of a circular stand on which the monitor had rested. But there was no monitor, no keyboard, no computer, no wires and no printer.
Hindsight, being such a powerful tool, made Henry wish he had spotted this gap before; made him wish he had asked different questions of Jackie; made him realize, or at least guess in an educated way, that whoever had killed Eddie had also stolen his computer. Which begged the question, why? What was on the computer that was so precious? Was it something that pointed to the killer? And this was why he had tasked two of his team to find out if Darren Langmead had a computer, or if he had got Eddie’s computer stashed away somewhere.
Henry looked at Graeme Walling. He knew that Walling was a bit of a computer nerd and had given him Jackie’s computer and asked him to go plug it in somewhere and see what was on it. After all, it wasn’t such a long shot to imagine that Eddie also used Jackie’s computer. ‘What’ve you got?’
Before he could answer, the office door opened and Angela Cranlow came in, slid into a seat at an unused desk. She smiled encouragingly at everyone. ‘Don’t mind me.’
Her hair had been pulled back into a ponytail because she’d been unable to tame it back into a smooth bob after Henry had finished with her. She still looked the business, he thought.
‘I’ve been through her computer, as you asked.’ Walling indicated the computer on the desk at which he sat. ‘There’s some interesting stuff on it. Lots of visits to porn sites, some white supremacist stuff, BNP.’ Walling’s face creased with distaste. He beckoned Henry to stand behind him. He, Jenny and Angela took up a position behind him and Henry twitched as Angela tweaked his rear. ‘Let me just log in … there’s no security on this, by the way, no passwords, nothing … but that’s pretty usual for home computers.’
The computer was already switched on. Walling selected an icon from the desktop and double-clicked the mouse. The Orange Internet screen came up and he pressed ‘Connect’. The computer began to make the horrible screechy connection noises as the modem found the server and the Orange homepage appeared. Walling then went to the Google homepage and clicked the history button and allowed the cursor to hover over a website address.