Richard gave a shrug of resignation. Shap was keeping mum – so be it.
The Lemon wanted his piece of the action. Some things never change, thought Janine as she stood in his office, concentrating on an ancient picture of the Queen from the 1950s that had pride of place on his wall.
‘You trying for some sort of record?’ Hackett said. ‘One suspect dead, another AWOL and the grieving father in the frame for the shooting because your team’s leaking like a sieve.’
‘I’m dealing with it, sir.’
‘How exactly? If the Press get hold of this…’
‘They won’t. I had no alternative; I had no grounds to hold those men any longer.’ She defended her decision.
‘And the leak? Discipline – if you lose that… Come down and come down hard.’
‘The team know how things stand. I’ll be dealing with the culprit this afternoon.’
‘Who is it?’
‘I’ve got a pretty clear idea but until I’ve spoken to the officer directly…’ She’d do this by the book.
‘Demotion? Suspension?’
‘I’ll make that decision when I have all the facts.’ And it’d be a damn shame. Butchers was a reliable copper. Had been up till now. Then what? Meltdown. Such a waste.
‘If they think you’re a soft touch…’
Janine recalled the reactions in the incident room. ‘Hardly.’
‘Not the most auspicious return to duty.’ Hackett observed. ‘Maybe I should have let Mayne lead. Give you time to… readjust.’
Janine was determined not to rise to the bait; nothing he liked more than a sniping match; when things got tough he invariably took to undermining those junior to him. The old school approach.
‘If we’re finished here, sir, I’ve got a lot to do,’ she said brightly. He nodded reluctantly and she escaped.
One of the clients had a paper. POLICE IDENTIFY ROSA was splashed across the front, Murder Victim Polish. Marta’s heart thumped when she saw it and she stifled the urge to exclaim. She longed to read more, hoping that the man would leave it in the lounge when he went in with Zofia. Rosa used to pore over the free newspaper that got delivered. She’d pick out words that she didn’t know and look them up in her little dictionary. Lots weren’t in it and she’d have to figure them out from the context.
But the man tucked it into his coat and Marta didn’t get a chance. She would have to try and catch the news on the television. The men liked to have it on while they waited.
Now the police knew it was Rosa would they come here? She would talk to the others, they would have to be very careful, more so than usual.
Marta thought about the baby. Rosa had chattered about names late one night when she got in. ‘It’s due in August,’ she had said. ‘If it’s a girl I will call her after you.’
Marta had wrinkled her nose, waved away the idea. ‘I never liked my name.’ She had leaned forward, sliding a cigarette from the packet. Begun to speak carefully, ‘And Rosa, you know…’
Rosa had flung her arm up in protest, no longer prepared to listen to reason. ‘Don’t! This is my baby, it’s my life so just… spierdalaj,’ she swore, ‘fuck off and let me be.’
Now Marta went upstairs and sat on Rosa’s bed and gazed out at the roofs through the grey net curtains. Rosa wasn’t coming back. Rosa was gone. With her posture like a ballet dancer, that straight back and long neck, her luxurious dark hair.
Marta exhaled sharply. She got down on her knees and felt under the bed where she knew Rosa kept her bag. There were clothes and a couple of family photographs: people in their Sunday best. One was a church occasion, one of the brothers getting confirmed, Rosa had said. Marta peered at the Milicz clan. The father dead now. Here he looked like any family man. Rosa and her brothers wore bright smiles for the camera, their mother looked brittle, careworn. Also in the bag, there was a cloth wallet and inside it was the money that Rosa had been saving. Marta counted it. Just over £400. Most of her tips had been sent back home. Marta put the cash in her own bag; no point in letting anyone else get their hands on it. It brought her £400 closer to a better life.
The doorbell rang and she smoothed her hair and adjusted her skirt as she went back downstairs to work.
Chapter Eleven
Every case generated a phenomenal amount of paperwork. As officer in charge, Janine not only had to keep tabs on all the different elements of the investigation and see their reports but also keep a meticulous log of her own and ensure that there were no omissions which could later jeopardise the chance of a result. She was multi-tasking, sifting through her in-tray and trying for some sort of prioritisation and also reading her emails when she was interrupted by Shap. ‘Boss, you got a minute, it’s about Ian…’
Still smarting from her encounter with Hackett, Janine felt her temper rise. ‘He should be here – not you,’ she said crisply, ‘tell him to see me himself.’
‘But, boss, it’s just… he’s straight as a die, everyone…’
‘Shap, I’m not interested in excuses.’
‘I just think, given the situation…’
‘The situation,’ she said hotly, ‘is that he’s a police officer-’
Shap interrupted. ‘And his brother died in a hit and run and they never got anyone for it.’
‘What?’ Janine stared at him. ‘Oh, God.’ She shook her head and groaned. ‘Where is he?’
‘Outside, we’re off to the Topcat now,’ Shap said.
‘He knows you’re here?’
Shap gave a shake of his head.
‘He should have told me,’ Janine said. ‘Why the hell didn’t he tell me? None of this might have happened.’
Shap kept quiet.
‘OK,’ she told him by way of dismissal. ‘Shap.’
He’d reached the door.
‘You knew all along?’
Shap nodded.
‘And did you talk to Ian about it, about maybe stepping down from the case?’
Shap fingered his neck, a sign of discomfort. ‘I tried, he wasn’t having it.’
‘How hard did you try?’
‘I mentioned it.’ There was a defensive edge in his reply.
Janine could imagine. A word or two would probably be as far as a heart to heart went with these blokes. Was the younger generation any different? As Shap left, she thought of her son Michael; he wasn’t at ease talking about anything that touched on emotional issues. He’d blush and mumble and generally squirm to be let off the hook. Some commentators now claimed the male brain was wired differently and others took that to mean there was no point in trying to change things. Janine didn’t agree; she understood some of the consequences of emotional illiteracy. The men she most often hunted down could no more express their feelings than they could read and write. Illiterate on all counts.
Janine observed the post-mortem on Jeremy Gleason. Susan told her that the state of Gleason’s head injury indicated a frontal shot from a relatively close distance. The angle of the entry wound suggested that the gun had been fired from above. The bullet had passed through Gleason’s head and had been recovered from the floor of the tunnel. It would be sent to specialist services for identification.
‘It fits with the location,’ Janine said. ‘The steps. If someone had fired at him from there.’ She looked at his hands, the nails bitten down to the quick. Stupid not bad, his mother had said before she knew he was dead. Janine had got the same impression: Gleason had none of the guile or belligerence of Lee Stone.
How had Gleason reacted after the road accident? He had a child himself; had that prompted him to argue with Stone about whether they deny the crime? Or had he gone along with the plan willingly? Perhaps he’d lost his nerve later, after the men had been questioned? If the guilt about Ann-Marie’s death had begun to prey on him, coupled with a fear that the police were onto them, he may have been thinking about confessing. Had Stone cottoned on and decided to save his own skin by silencing Gleason permanently? Or had an argument led to Stone pulling a gun on his friend? At the point where they had been seen leaving the flat – just before the police lost sight of them – there was no sign of coercion or aggression and certainly no weapons drawn.