Brock appeared not to notice. ‘Surely there must have been someone, a student friend, a priest, a doctor, someone she would have confided in?’
Kathy said, ‘I’d like to release her picture to the press, and a statement saying forensic tests indicate she was poisoned, and giving a general warning to the public to be alert. But I don’t want to say anything about arsenic at this stage, not until we find its source.’
‘What do we know about it? Does it have a taste? What does it look like?’
‘According to Sundeep it depends on the particular compound, but in general arsenic has very little taste, just a mild sweetness, comes as a white powder and can be made in a soluble form. It used to be deliberately contaminated with taste and colouring to stop it being taken accidentally.’
‘Used to be?’
‘In the days when it was publicly available. But now… well, I suppose we’d have to be looking at a laboratory of some kind, or as part of some industrial process. Sundeep’s first thought was that it might have been brought in from overseas.’
‘The terrorist angle.’
‘Yes. I haven’t had anything back on that yet.’
They waited while Brock made the call to Westminster Borough Command, setting up a meeting for Kathy at West End Central police station, not far from St James’s Square. ‘They’ll take care of you, Kathy. They understand the situation. Get over there and get them organised.’
She left Pip checking Missing Persons. ‘And I want her phone records, Pip,’ she said on her way out, not bothering to hide the irritation in her voice. ‘I want to know everyone she phoned in the past six months.’
She decided to cut through St James’s Park, and had turned the car into Birdcage Walk when her phone rang. It was her friend Nicole Palmer from Criminal Records.
‘Hi, Kathy. Just wanted to tell you I’ve confirmed our bookings for this weekend.’
‘This weekend?’ Kathy groaned. ‘Oh no, I thought it was the one after.’ She’d completely forgotten about the trip they’d been planning to Prague. Nicole’s brother, a jazz guitarist, was appearing in a club there and had persuaded them to go. ‘It’s impossible, Nicole. I’ve got this case just blown up…’
‘You’ve always got some case just blown up. It’s only the weekend for God’s sake. You can take the weekend off.’
‘Yes, normally, but there’s this crisis.’
Nicole’s voice became firm. ‘Kathy, Rusty’ll be devastated if I don’t go, and I’m not going on my own. I’ve paid for the flights, and the hotel room. You were so keen.’
‘Sorry I can’t talk now, Nicole. I’m due somewhere. I’ll call you tonight, okay?’
She rang off, feeling a tightness in her chest. It was still there when she arrived at West End Central where, it was rapidly made plain, Brock’s assessment of their ability to help was wildly optimistic.
‘I can let you have one PC and a couple of PCSOs for the best part of tomorrow,’ the inspector said. ‘That’s about it.’
After prolonged haggling, he promised to see if the West End and Chinatown Team could spare another constable and another police community support officer.
She felt as if she were running in soft sand, making no progress. It was dark when she emerged from West End Central, a light rain falling, and she drove back to Queen Anne’s Gate with the swish of windscreen wipers and the glitter of lights on raindrops. When she got to her office she found Pip looking fiercely busy at her desk. There had been no missing person reports for Marion, she said, and someone from the media unit had left a draft press release on her desk for her urgent attention. Kathy checked it and rang them back with a couple of amendments, then forced herself to sit down with a cup of coffee and think.
Towards seven, typing up a report, she became aware of Pip checking her watch and looking edgy.
‘Time you went home,’ Kathy said.
‘Will that be all right? Only I’m supposed to be going out.’
‘Of course. Have a good evening.’
‘Thanks.’
Kathy watched her go with a touch of envy. Pip had a private life, it seemed.
A little later she took a call from an officer in the Counter Terrorism Command. They were inclined to discount a terrorist angle to Marion’s death, he said. It didn’t fit with anything else they had, but they’d be pleased to hear if anything new cropped up.
She also heard back from someone in the Environment and Planning department of Westminster City Council. They had collected over a thousand tonnes of rubbish on the third of April, and whatever Kathy was interested in had almost certainly been incinerated by now.
She rubbed her eyes, feeling suddenly exhausted. This was not going well. She stared at the picture of Marion Summers that she’d propped up beside her phone. ‘Why does nobody know where you live?’ she murmured. ‘Why is your phone blank? Where is your boyfriend?’
She was distracted by the smell of food and looked up, puzzled. She had thought she was the last one left in the building. The door of the office opened, and Brock stood there holding a cardboard pizza box. ‘Hungry?’
She realised she was-very, and he nodded and said, ‘Let’s go down to the pub.’
In the basement of the Queen Anne’s Gate offices was a small Victorian bar, the Bride of Denmark, assembled by earlier owners of the building, and it was there that Brock would go when he needed a quiet retreat, or inspiration. He got a couple of bottles of beer from behind the bar, and they sat at one of the tables and ate and drank in silence for a while, overlooked by the large salmon and stuffed lion in the glass cases mounted on the walls.
Finally Brock wiped his mouth and asked Kathy about her day. He nodded sympathetically and said, ‘Tell you what, why don’t we just get West End Central to take over the whole case? There’s plenty of other things you could be doing. I’ll square it with Sundeep.’
‘No.’ Kathy surprised herself with the firmness of her decision. ‘No, I’ll run with it.’
He gave her a little smile. ‘You’re intrigued.’
‘Yes, well, it is different.’
‘And the victim, Marion, she interests you.’
Kathy shrugged. He was right of course, perceptive as always.
‘Okay.’ He yawned and stretched the muscles of his shoulders, and she decided to change the subject.
‘How’s Suzanne?’ Kathy wasn’t quite sure what the appropriate word was to describe Brock’s friend. Lover seemed intrusive, companion made her sound like an elderly helper. They were a couple, their relationship recently recovered from a shaky patch, and not helped, in Kathy’s opinion, by the fact that they lived fifty miles apart; Suzanne ran an antiques business in Battle, near the Channel coast. Kathy sometimes wondered if Brock, on the other hand, believed the distance was the reason their relationship had survived.
‘Very well. Very busy of course, with the shop and the grandchildren.’
‘She’s still looking after them?’
‘Oh yes. There’s Ginny in the shop, of course, and she does a bit of babysitting, but we don’t see enough of each other. Hopefully we’ll get together this weekend. The kids are great though, growing up fast.’
He gave a little smile to himself, scratching the side of his beard as he recalled some memory, and Kathy thought what an excellent grandfather he would have made.
‘Do you mind if I ask you something?’ she said.
He raised a quizzical eyebrow.
‘When we were stuck in that cottage with Spider Roach…’
Brock nodded, remembering the climax of their last big case.
‘… he said that he’d been responsible for your wife leaving you, to protect the baby she was carrying, because she was afraid of what he might do.’
‘Yes.’
‘And when we first worked together, you mentioned you had a son in Canada.’
‘Maybe.’
‘You haven’t kept in touch?’
He drew in a deep breath. ‘I’m still here, in the same place, doing the same job as when she left. If he wanted to find me it wouldn’t be difficult. I’ve left it to him.’