‘You’re a police officer, is that right?’ Tony asked, as he put on his donkey jacket.
‘Yes, I’m actually a detective inspector,’ Jane said, smiling.
‘Eddie told me you’re working on that “House of Horrors” case?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘It was about that junkie, wasn’t it, found in the old air-raid shelter? And she gave birth to a baby and put it between some bricks?’
‘Well, no... that’s not exactly what happened...’ Jane began, but Tony was already walking out.
‘Shocking... shocking. My wife couldn’t even read it,’ he muttered, closing the door behind him.
Jane washed up their mugs, then gathered up all the invoices and put them into a cardboard folder. She then went upstairs to finish getting ready and placed all the new information from DC Taylor in her briefcase.
Before leaving she called her sister, Pam, asking if she could have an appointment for her hair to be highlighted early that evening. Pam was in the middle of serving breakfast to her kids and told Jane she would have to be there by five. She was closing the salon early as there was a parents’ evening at the school and her youngest had been in some trouble at a school football match.
‘I was at Mum and Dad’s this weekend... they’re a bit annoyed that they haven’t heard from you or seen you properly in ages, and you haven’t had them over to your house,’ she said.
‘I’m having a lot of decorating done,’ Jane replied.
‘It’s all right for some, isn’t it?’ Pam continued, ignoring Jane’s explanation. ‘You should make more of an effort to go and see them. I do, even though going for Sunday lunch is sometimes a bit of a chore.’
Jane sighed. ‘Yes, Pam, I’ll try and see them as soon as I can, but I’ve got a lot of work on at the moment.’
‘Haven’t we all?’ Pam retorted.
To Jane’s relief, Pam ended the call as she was in a hurry for the school run. The doorbell rang and, once again, Jane was disappointed that it wasn’t Eddie, just his team arriving to begin work. She gestured to the kitchen, inviting them to help themselves to tea and coffee and making another mental note to herself that she needed to stock up on milk and tea bags.
It was a quarter to nine when Jane arrived at the station. She went straight to her office to start typing up the information gleaned from DC Taylor’s documents.
The CID room was filling up as, according to the board, there had been numerous magistrate’s court appearances after the multiple arrests the previous day. Sergeant Hunt was busy allocating the vehicles for transporting the suspects to court. As soon as he saw Jane enter the room, he gestured to the board.
‘A good day, lads. We’ve recovered a shedload of stolen property and we still have more search warrants to execute on other premises to see what we can uncover from previous burglaries in other areas. In the meantime, DCI Carter’s got the teams keeping the properties under surveillance in case any family members start trying to move stolen stuff out.’
Almost as an afterthought, Hunt asked Jane if she still needed Tim, as there was a lot of paperwork they had to wade through. Jane quickly agreed that she could do the necessary herself and returned to her office. She cleared her desk with the intention of seeing what else she could discover about the countess and her daughter.
After half an hour of frustrating telephone calls, as she was passed from one department to another at Somerset House, she was informed that, due to the Blitz between 1940 and 1941 many documents had been destroyed. But at least she managed to discover one fact: Aida, Countess Petrukhin, had died in 1938. She was unable to discover any further information about Muriel, however.
She told the duty sergeant that she would be unavailable for a couple of hours as she needed to go to her bank and run some personal errands. She withdrew £500 from her branch of the National Westminster Bank at the end of Harley Street and was planning to return to the station, but on impulse went to the wallpaper department at John Lewis to choose wallpaper for her sitting room and her bedroom. She then drove back home with some samples to give Eddie the money, hoping that he would also be able to order the wallpaper she had chosen as he had told her he could get it at a trade price.
She arrived to find the team were making impressive progress. Eddie had brought several large tins of white gloss paint and she found him in the kitchen stacking them neatly in the corner. He was wearing jeans and his leather coat rather than his work clothes, and if he felt any awkwardness, he didn’t show it. Instead, he smiled brightly, saying that he had just collected his paint order.
‘Have you made a decision on whether you want a corner bath?’ he asked, passing her a leaflet. ‘I think it would be wise to stay with white. I know all these coloured bathroom suites are fashionable at the moment but you’re much safer to stick with white, especially if you ever you want to resell the property in the future.’
‘I hadn’t really thought of that,’ Jane said, opening her briefcase. ‘I’ll go along with whatever you suggest.’ She took out the envelope of cash and handed it to him. ‘I took out £500. Your dad suggested I should get you enough for next week as well, as he reckoned you wouldn’t be finished by then.’
Eddie wrote Jane a receipt as she produced the wallpaper samples.
‘They’re perfectly all right,’ he said, tossing them aside, ‘but maybe you should go to Colefax & Fowler... they’re more expensive but they have a wider range selection, and I think they’re better quality.’
‘You don’t like any of the ones I picked?’ Jane asked.
Eddie shrugged. ‘You’ve got quite a big area to cover, especially in the hallway. Come with me and I’ll hold up a couple of your choices... you’ll see what I mean.’
As Eddie held up the samples Jane could tell instantly that she had made the wrong choice.
‘I’ll go and have another look this afternoon. Do you think I should go to the same place for my bedroom as well?’
‘I would. They’ve got a nice Regency stripe. Are you free for dinner this evening?’ he asked, almost in the same breath. ‘My mum’s cooking a chicken.’
‘Tonight?’ Jane asked.
‘Yeah.’
Jane hesitated. ‘Er, yes... that would be really nice. I need to see my sister at five, though. What time were you thinking?’
‘Around seven thirty to eight. I can pick you up.’
As Jane drove back to the station, she asked herself why she had agreed to Eddie’s invitation. She would be at Pam’s salon until at least six, or longer if Pam continued to harangue her with moans about her not going to see her parents.
No one in the squad room seemed to pay any attention to her reappearance as the focus was still on the trips back and forth to the magistrates’ courts. DCI Carter caught her as he was leaving his office.
‘I heard you didn’t think the investigation into the Lanark inquiry had been satisfactory,’ he said with a frown.
‘I don’t know what you heard, sir, but after the weekend’s negative news coverage, I just suggested it would be good for us to get some form of positive closure.’
‘Really? And in order to get closure, Detective Inspector Tennison, you are planning a trip to Australia? What the fuck kind of budget do you think we have? I doubt very much that the super will give clearance... not to mention the fact that I need every officer available to work on other cases.’ He turned to walk away, then looked back. ‘You’re looking very smart.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ The way he looked her up and down from head to toe made her feel very uncomfortable, especially when he gave her a flirtatious wink.
‘I wouldn’t mind a long weekend in Australia. It’s summertime there, isn’t it?’
Jane didn’t answer.