Janet gave it a little while and then went in to talk to Gill. ‘You got a moment?’
‘Depends.’
‘About Rachel?’
‘Did you know she was moonlighting?’
‘No, she’d hardly tell me,’ Janet said.
‘Did she talk to you about this rape case?’ Gill said.
‘Yes. I told her there’s nothing in it.’
‘And she ignored you?’ said Gill.
‘So it seems. Look, she was using her initiative. OK, she was wide of the mark – but you can’t blame her for the suicide.’
‘I don’t, I wouldn’t. You know how I work.’ Gill raised her arms. ‘But I can’t have anyone breaking ranks. This is my call, Janet.’
‘I know that.’
‘What’s she doing now?’
‘Writing up her report for the IPCC,’ said Janet.
‘So, what changed your tune?’
‘Last night – she’s trying hard not to let it show, but it’s bound to hit her hard. She’s going to have to live with that. And if she has the potential you’ve talked about – and we saw some of that with the shopping,’ Janet pointed out, ‘then I think she deserves a bit more of a chance. We’re not exactly overflowing with brilliant young female detectives,’ she added.
‘Present company excepted.’
‘I said young.’
Gill sighed and shook her head. There wasn’t anything else Janet could think of to say, so she went back to her desk.
There was a message on her phone, from her mum: Thanks for presents going for lunch later u all well? xxx
Janet’s mum had ended up with smash-and-grab presents: bunch of flowers and an M&S voucher. Not good enough really, but it was that or nothing. Her mother had always been there for her, never making a song-and-dance out of it, but happy to babysit, to take the kids on the occasions when Ade and Janet’s work schedules clashed. To offer unlimited support after Joshua died.
She had been poleaxed at Janet’s sharp swerve in direction at A-levels. Before then Janet had been following firmly in her footsteps, heading for a lifelong career in teaching. Either English or History. Janet had secretly fancied primary, but her mum said there was too little recognition in the field, ‘Just look at how few men there are – that says it all.’ A feminist streak her mum had, underneath it all.
So when Janet suddenly switched to wanting a career in the police, donning a uniform and working with the riff-raff and the chancers, her mother was at a loss. ‘But why?’ she kept saying. ‘Please, just tell me why?’
Janet couldn’t admit that it was Veronica’s murder that had prompted her interest, or that one of the things that helped her recover from the breakdown was a determination to try to put things right now she knew about it – that would have been too weird. So she talked of the plus side: the decent pay and stability, the pension, the fact that it would be interesting and varied.
‘And dangerous,’ her mum said. ‘Look at Yvonne Fletcher.’
Policewoman shot in front of the Libyan embassy in London. ‘One person,’ said Janet.
‘What if that’s you?’
‘They’ll teach us to look after ourselves.’ Janet liked that idea: of having the guts and the technique to overpower some thug, of being able to break up a fight, make an arrest.
‘Perhaps it’s just a phase,’ she overheard her father say after one such discussion. ‘She’ll come round.’
‘I hope so,’ said her mother, ‘see sense.’
But she never did.
Rachel looked to Janet, guarded, expecting the worst. Janet flicked her eyes to the corridor, picked up her handbag. Rachel followed her.
They passed Kevin at his desk, sprawled in his chair, hands clasped at the back of his head. ‘Who’s been a naughty girl, then?’ he gloated.
Janet turned as Rachel opened her mouth to protest and flashed her a warning glance. Don’t! ‘He likes the attention,’ Janet said as they went through the door into the corridor. ‘Don’t encourage him.’
In the Ladies, Rachel leaned against the sink. ‘Well?’
Janet said, ‘I put in a word. She’s hacked off. It’s the thought of you going behind her back. She understands about the rest, about Rosie. Look, you don’t have to see them today, you know, if you’re not in a fit state.’
‘I’m OK. The IPCC, what could they do me for? I didn’t break any procedure.’
Putting a brave face on. ‘Didn’t exactly follow it either,’ Janet said. ‘Gill’s her own woman, but she expects things to be done properly.’
‘So she can sack me anyway?’
‘She can do what she likes – shunt you sideways, team you with Kevin for the rest of your natural life.’
‘Cow!’
‘What’s the worst that you can tell the IPCC?’ Janet said.
Rachel pulled a face. ‘I wasn’t wearing my body armour, no personal safety equipment. Barged in, wouldn’t take no for an answer. Maybe I was a bit full-on. She was psychotic, seeing things. But I’d no idea she was going to jump.’ Rachel looked down at the floor, her shoulders slumped.
‘It’s a big shock, something like that. If you bottle it-’
‘I’m fine. I didn’t know what was going on in her head.’
Nor me with yours. ‘No, and you tried to get her help, from what you said last night. Just be straight with them,’ Janet said. ‘They’ll be fine. They know what it’s like, how it feels to be caught up in this sort of thing.’
‘And Godzilla?’
‘Grovel.’
30
GILL HAD WATCHED Janet’s interview with Sean Broughton the previous evening and shared the sense that the lad had given them everything he had to give. The gathering anticipation of earlier days was likely to sour into anticlimax at this juncture, so she needed to pull the team together again and agree a new strategy to motivate them to go forward with renewed energy.
She made a quick head count, all present except for Andy, now coming through the door with coffee in hand. He passed Gill her cup.
‘Sean’s story,’ Gill began, ‘version three, director’s cut. Have we got anything?’
‘Motive,’ Lee said.
‘Yes, jealousy. The mystery shagger and the possible Dear John call.’
‘Opportunity.’
‘Kevin!’ Gill congratulated him. ‘And that’s our lot. Nothing to put a knife in his sweaty little paws or blood on his trainers.’
Kevin’s scanning of CCTV from the cameras on Oldham Road for a sighting of Sean, potentially in the act of disposing of bloodstained clothes or a weapon, had proved fruitless.
‘We charge him with theft and possession of controlled drugs, release him on police bail?’ She saw nods of agreement. ‘Which leaves us where?’
‘Looking for lover boy?’ Pete suggested.
Gill held out her hand, encouraging him to continue.
‘Savvy enough to wear a condom, but until we get the next DNA profile back we don’t know if he’s got any previous.’ The second tranche of DNA profiling – the material recovered from the duvet and bed sheet, skin cells and pubic hair – was still being processed.
‘There is an outside chance it’s random,’ Janet put in. ‘The door wouldn’t lock properly, so anyone could have gained entry.’
Several people groaned. Not being able to link the killer and his victim was the biggest factor in unsolved murders.
‘Let’s keep that for afters,’ Gill said, ‘because it is only an outside chance. To a stranger, the door would have looked locked, no reason to think he could get in. Relatively little disturbance at the scene too, which suggests the struggle was limited. So we widen our frame of reference: Lisa’s pals, her druggie mates, friends of Sean’s…’