‘I want to help. Where are you at with everything?’
‘Well, as I think I told you, my GP sent me to an ENT consultant – she was a pretty cold fish. When I told her I smoked a pipe she said it was quite possibly laryngeal or oesophageal cancer, straight out, just like that. But she also said it might just be laryngitis.’ He lowered his head, to avoid meeting Grace’s eyes. ‘I’m worried sick.’
Grace nodded sympathetically. ‘But it could be one of a number of other things, couldn’t it, Norman? Cancer is only one possible diagnosis. Have you tried Fisherman’s Friends?’
Potting smiled bleakly, then shrugged. ‘Yeah, I’ve tried them, they don’t work. Used to, but not any more. It may seem strange to say this, but ever since Bella died, I’ve been feeling under a cloud, chief. As if it was my fault she died, and that if I’d been there, it wouldn’t have happened.’
Grace looked at him face to face, with a sympathetic frown. ‘Norman, Bella was on her way to work when she heroically went into a burning building to try to save lives. And in a couple of months we’ll be recognizing that gallantry when we go to the Palace to receive her medal. How can you possibly blame yourself for not being there when she died?’
Potting shrugged and said lamely, ‘I know, chief. It’s daft, but I do.’
‘So now you think you’re being punished by being given a cancer diagnosis? Really? Do you have some kind of death wish to join Bella, where you’ll both be happy together in an eternal afterlife?’
Potting shook his head. ‘I’m not religious, chief. She’s gone – the only woman I truly loved – and I know I have to move on. I don’t buy all that crap that we’ll be together in some kind of eternity.’
‘So how can you believe you’re being given terminal cancer as some kind of retribution, Norman?’
Potting shrugged. ‘I know, it’s stupid. But that’s what I keep thinking.’
‘Want to know what I think?’
‘Please.’
‘It’s something my mother used to say: Don’t paint the Devil on the wall.’
Potting grinned. ‘I like that,’ he said. ‘I like that a lot. Maybe it is just laryngitis – I have had that before, although this somehow feels different. She sent me to the laryngologist, who asked me all sorts of things. How long has it been going on? Have I noticed blood in my phlegm? Does it feel like something is stuck? Do I smoke? Do I drink?’
‘Well, she’s got you there!’ Grace said humorously.
‘Fair enough, right. Then she massaged my neck to check my glands, which was all fine, but then she shoved a snake-like object down my nose and said she could see a polyp. They need to remove it.’
‘So?’
‘So, it could be anything,’ Norman said solemnly.
‘Well, whatever it is we’ll tackle it; you are not alone.’
Potting coughed again, then squeezed his throat between his finger and thumb. ‘Bloody frog. They are down all our throats since Brexit, aren’t they?’ He gave him a wry smile.
Roy Grace looked him straight in the eye for some moments, then shook his head and said, trying not to sound too stern, ‘Norman, we’ve known each other a number of years, right?’
Potting nodded. ‘We have indeed, chief.’
‘You’re a highly valued detective and I’m very fond of you, and I do enjoy your humour, but we’re in a very different world to when we first worked together, and sometimes you run your humour pretty close to the line. I’d hate to see your brilliant career ended because of something you said without thinking. I’m a good one to talk – I still occasionally say the wrong thing, but we’ve all got to be aware and think about other people’s sensitivities. So here’s my suggestion – before you open your mouth to say something witty, count to three, OK?’
‘Good advice, chief. I’m suitably chastened.’
‘I’m not criticizing you, Norman. I’m giving you a survival lesson.’
Potting nodded, looking downcast. ‘I appreciate it, chief. I was always rubbish at maths, but I can just about manage to count to three.’
‘I was pretty crap at maths, too.’
Potting shook his head. ‘You and I – we’d never have made it into the force today, would we?’
Grace smiled.
22
Friday, 27 September
Bail security had been set at £50,000, which Archie Goff did not have. So he was resigned to staying in prison until his trial. There were two big changes since he had last been inside, neither of which he was happy about. The first was the non-smoking rule; the other was that meals were no longer served in the canteen but had to be eaten in the cells. He’d been told it was to stop the violence that frequently erupted in the canteen. All very well, but he missed sitting at a table with his mates. His double-bunk cell hardly cut the mustard for a great dining experience.
After his arrest, he found himself back again in his second home, the remand wing of Lewes Prison. Although, with the amount of his life he’d spent in here, it was pretty much his primary home, with his time away from it more of a holiday.
To his amazement, Isabella had accepted his story that he’d been fitted up by the police, and came to visit him regularly. He still hadn’t yet figured out how he was going to explain things to her when it came to his trial, but hey, that was some months away yet. Bless her, she’d done her best to raise the money for his bail, but all she had been able to come up with was just under ten thousand quid.
His brief had told him that although he’d been nicked red-handed in Hope Manor, he hadn’t actually taken anything from the premises, since he’d only got as far as the swimming pool. Therefore he would only be charged with burglary with intent to steal. If he was lucky, he’d get away with a couple of years, unless he came up in front of a particularly mean judge. The potential downside was that, so far throughout his life, he’d not yet come up in front of a judge who wasn’t mean – in his humble opinion.
At 5 p.m. on this Friday afternoon he left his cell and walked along the corridor to the meal trolley, collected his pre-ordered dinner of tuna bake and spotted dick with custard, and carried the cartons back to his cell. The telly was on, cricket, which had never interested him – he had no idea how the scoring worked – but his cellmate, three decades his junior, who reminded him uncannily of a former home secretary, Sajid Javid, was addicted to the game. Archie enjoyed ribbing him by calling him Home Secretary.
And right now, Mr Home Secretary was perched on the bottom bunk, forking vegetarian pasta into his mouth, watching a bowler hurl the ball at a helmeted batsman, who blocked it. Archie hadn’t yet asked him what he was in for, knowing it could be a sensitive subject for many prisoners.
He sat down on the toilet, a few feet from Sajid – the only other place to sit in the tiny cell. Placing his dessert on the floor, he removed the foil from his warm tuna bake, on his lap. His body hunched over his food, he dug his plastic fork in, blew on it to make sure it didn’t scald his tongue, then ate a mouthful. It was OK, it tasted like it might, once upon a time in its distant past, actually have been from a fish swimming free in the sea – albeit one filled with plastic waste – and the pasta might have come from something that had been grown in a field, rather than cultured in a lab.
Averting his eyes from the screen during an ad break, Sajid asked, ‘How you doing, man?’
‘Living the dream,’ Archie replied.
Sajid smiled.
‘Eating my meal on a toilet – what’s not to like, eh, Home Secretary?’
Sajid smiled again. ‘This is my first time – you told me last night you’re not new to all this, right?’