‘Anybody home?’
The door to the store room at the other end was open, its strip lighting on. A small tinkling noise came from there, then stopped. He walked over and stuck his head round the jamb and found himself looking at the balding head of the laboratory technician, who was standing motionless in front of a steel locker, one hand on its chromed door handle.
He found he couldn’t recall the man’s name. ‘Hi, Dr Rennie about?’
The technician turned around slowly and laboriously cleared his throat. ‘She’s gone to lunch.’
It was the man he had seen by the Tobacco Factory, he was sure of it, no matter what Dr Rennie thought. ‘Where?’
‘Common room.’ There was a definite wheeze to the lab rat’s chest and the pallor of his neon-grilled skin made McLusky want to shudder. He decided to ask elsewhere for directions.
Once he had been shown to the senior common room it took him only seconds to spot Louise Rennie. A man sitting opposite her talked animatedly while Rennie nodded at her lunch. She looked up long before he had got near her table. A few words spoken to the man opposite her made him get up and leave.
‘Don’t tell me, inspector, another forensic report? I may have to start charging.’ Rennie’s food looked as yet untouched.
‘Would you mind if I joined you for lunch, doctor? If I can get some food here, that is.’
‘Yes, go ahead. Just go and choose something. Don’t look so worried, you could pass for a lecturer, no problem. And you still have to pay for it.’
McLusky didn’t know why the thought of being mistaken for a lecturer should give him such pleasure since he didn’t mind being a detective. Until it came to canteen food. He asked for the trout and while piling salad into a bowl noted the complete absence of unidentifiable brown stuff shrivelling under hot lamps.
When he sat down at her table Rennie’s food still looked untouched. ‘You shouldn’t have waited, it must be getting cold.’
‘I found I’m not really hungry. Bon appetit, inspector.’ Rennie smiled, leaning back. Her grey silk top shimmered like water across her chest as she did so, tugging at McLusky’s eyes. ‘Is this a social call then?’
He waggled one hand. ‘Expect further attempts to impose on your time and good nature.’
‘You think me good-natured? Interesting. Does it have anything to do with what’s in your carrier?’
‘It has.’ He put his fork down.
‘No, no, you eat. You look like they’ve been starving you.’ She pushed her tray aside and pulled the bag towards her. ‘A tub. It’s heavy. What’s in it?’
‘Mud.’
‘You know how to treat a girl. How does this fit in with the bombings, inspector?’
‘You can call me Liam, doctor.’
‘You can call me Louise, Inspector Liam.’
‘It’s a different … case. I was wondering if it was possible to tell where it came from.’
‘Liam. Mm.’ She moved her lips as if savouring the taste of the name. ‘I do already have a job, did I not mention that?’
‘I know, that’s quite okay, you don’t have to do it, I just thought it was worth asking. I was hoping there might be a really easy test for that kind of thing.’
‘Did you now. Only if you’re looking for something specific or if you know what’s what. It’s a job for the forensic lab, surely.’
He reached over and put the tub back in the bag, shoving it aside. ‘Too busy. It’s low priority stuff. Not really important.’
‘Important enough for you to come up here, though. Oh, I get it.’
‘Good.’
‘You didn’t really need to bring an excuse along, you know.’
‘Good. So how are you?’
‘Fine, I’m good, I’m having a good day.’ She checked her watch. ‘I’m teaching a bunch of first years next, keen but dim. I enjoy it. And you?’
‘I’m enjoying this.’
‘Yeah, the food’s all right here.’
‘No, I mean this.’ He waved his hand between Rennie and himself.
‘You’re easily pleased.’
‘I don’t think so. I’ve been thinking about you. It was a shame our evening the other day got interrupted.’
‘Truncated would be a better word. Severely pruned. You arrived late and left early.’ Rennie reached an arm across and retrieved the mud-filled tub. She peeked under the lid and poked a well-manicured finger in. ‘Sticky stuff. I’ll spend five minutes on it and it’ll cost you dinner whether I find anything or not. Deal?’
McLusky smiled at his food. ‘Deal.’
Chapter Eleven
‘Result, Moneypenny.’ Sorbie flung his imaginary hat towards the invisible hatstand in the CID room, then tried to plant a kiss on DC French’s cheek.
French pushed him away good-naturedly. She didn’t really mind Jack’s attentions, not that he actually meant them. No one else seemed to even notice that she was a woman, certainly not while the glamorous Fairfield was about. ‘You’ve been celebrating, I can smell it. You made another arrest then?’
‘Traffic scooped him up for us, but he’s ours. We can link the little scrote to at least eleven burglaries through his lavish and evil-smelling DNA donations in his victims’ underwear drawers, the stupid wanker. That’s the second outstanding warrant sorted and all from the council car park. We must do this more often. McLusky might be less than useless at catching the bench bomber but he does wonders for my clear-up rate.’
‘I’m glad to have been of some small service to you, DS Sorbie.’ McLusky walked past him on his way to the tea kettle.
‘Ah, ehm, sorry, sir, didn’t see you there.’ Sorbie sat down heavily at his desk and busied himself with logging on.
McLusky took his time making himself a mug of instant coffee, leaving Sorbie to squirm in the ensuing silence. Secretly he had to agree with the sergeant’s assessment. In terms of his own investigation the car park CCTV had been of no help at all. Yet the prodigious number of man-hours spent marrying faces to number plates from the endless footage had resulted in no fewer than three arrests of known criminals. The hapless suspects hadn’t counted on police officers looking at the footage, which only ever attracted police attention if an incident occurred. Once they had been recognized and their number plates read it had only been a matter of time until they were picked up. Two had been outstanding warrants in Fairfield and Sorbie’s open files. A third was a missed court appearance who had been scooped up because an officer spotted a 2002 number plate on a 2003 car. That man too was now in custody.
McLusky thought he could hear the CID room breathe out collectively behind him as he left carrying his mug of coffee. He hadn’t really meant to pour cold water on Sorbie’s celebration; there was never quite enough to celebrate for police officers as it was, and the sergeant had made good use of the footage and followed up well. Only there was something about DS Sorbie that made McLusky suspect that he probably deserved the odd bucket of cold water occasionally. He would mention Sorbie’s good work in his report while not forgetting to point out that only the footage watched by police officers had yielded fortuitous results. Those worked on by civilian operators had drawn a blank since they were unfamiliar with the faces of the suspects.
Perhaps he should have mentioned to Sorbie though that he thought smelling of quite so much booze after lunch was never a good idea in a nick where the superintendent had a habit of prowling about.
Two hours later Sorbie viewed his dispiriting surroundings through the metallic pulse of a dehydration headache; Nelson Close was an unheroic huddle of three dozen prefabs, a third of them with their flimsy backs to a ghostly road that once serviced a now derelict industrial estate. The council ought to have bulldozed them years ago only some of these poor deluded people refused to be rehoused into nice new high-rise flats with a view. They liked their ‘bit of garden’ and didn’t want to move. The council had lost their court case against them and now they had to wait for the tenants to die off before they could develop the site along with the rest of the area.