“Thank you.”
Jake took her hand in both of his. “Why don’t you come with me?” The wine and brandy may have gone to his head, but she knew he was serious, not just fooling around.
“I don’t want to get hurt again,” Tennison said quietly.
“Again? That doesn’t make sense.”
She swallowed. “Jake, there wasn’t anyone else before… you know.” Ten years on, the memory hadn’t faded, though she had exorcised the pain, or so she thought. “Just it was going too fast. It was such a big decision.”
“Then why didn’t you talk it through with me?”
“Because if I had, you would have made the decision for me.”
He raised an eyebrow, watching her intently. “Would that have been so bad?”
“There’s no point in discussing it now,” Tennison said, withdrawing her hand. She turned away.
“There might not be for you, but there is for me. I wanted to marry you. I wanted to have kids with you, you know that.” His voice rock steady now, befuddlement swept away. “Don’t you think I deserved more than a kiss-off phone call… ‘I’m sorry, Jake, it’s not going to work.’ ” He gave a slow, sad shake of the head. “You never gave it a chance.”
Tennison spun around. She said in a tone of sharp accusation, “I didn’t know you wouldn’t come back.”
“What did you expect me to do? Come running after you?” He spread his hands helplessly. “You said it was over, then you hung up on me. Now you’re doing the same thing. What are you so afraid of?”
“This is a bit ridiculous.” Tennison clenched her fists impotently. If only she’d acted sensibly, like the mature woman she was, and stayed well away. If only she didn’t still fancy him like crazy. “It was all a long time ago, and it isn’t the same now.” If only! “I shouldn’t have started seeing you again…”
“So why did you come tonight?” Jake asked softly.
“Maybe I just couldn’t stay away from you,” she said, avoiding his eyes.
“Just stay tonight,” Jake said, softer still. “Then I’ll go on my tour, you go…” He gestured.
“Vice. I’m heading a Vice Squad.” Tennison was looking anywhere but at Jake, yet she was keenly aware of his approach. Her stomach muscles were knotted with tension. His fingers gently touched her shoulder, turned her toward him. Slowly he put his arms around her and drew her close. His warmth, his nearness, the musky odor of his after-shave mingled with tobacco smoke, took her breath away. She made no attempt to resist.
“I mustn’t,” she said, her gray-green eyes looking up directly into his. He touched her cheek. “I mustn’t.”
2
Already, before 9:30 A.M., Commander Chiswick had twice tried to get through to Superintendent Halliday, and no joy. This had better be third time lucky. Tall but rather stooped, with receding gray hair, Chiswick stood at the window of his ninth floor office at New Scotland Yard, phone in hand, gazing out across Victoria Embankment toward the Thames, barely a ripple on its sluggish, iron-gray surface. A mass of low dark cloud threatened the rain that the morning’s forecast had said was imminent.
He straightened up and his eyes flicked into hard focus as Halliday, finally, came on the line.
“It’s public.” Chiswick’s tone was clipped. “John Kennington’s formal resignation accepted due to ill health. That’s it. No option, so I’ve heard-case dismissed.” He listened, breathing heavily with irritation. “I’ve only just been told. I’ll see you there, why not? We’ll have to go, otherwise it’ll look suspicious…”
He glanced sharply over his shoulder as his personal assistant tapped at the door and came in, a sheaf of opened mail in her hand.
“Good,” Chiswick said impatiently into the phone. “I’d better be on my way over to you now. Your new DCI should be there any minute.”
He banged the receiver down and headed for the door. His assistant held up the mail, but he walked on, ignoring her. His gruff voice floated back as he went out.
“Call my wife. I have a dinner tonight. Ask her to send over my dinner suit.”
His assistant opened her mouth to remind him of something, but too late, he was gone.
When he’d worked with the Murder Squad at Southampton Row station, Bill Otley was known to everyone as “Skipper.” The name traveled with him when he transferred to Vice at the Soho Division on Broadwick Street. One of the longest-serving officers on the Metropolitan Force, yet still a lowly sergeant, his personal problems, his bolshie attitude, but even more his solitary drinking had held him back. His wife Ellen had died of cancer of the stomach eight years earlier. They’d always wanted children, never been able to have them. His marriage had been very happy, and since her death it seemed as though all warmth and light and joy had been wrung out of Skipper Bill Otley. He lived alone in a small terraced house in the East End, shunning emotional entanglements. The job, and nothing but the job, held him together, gave some meaning to what was otherwise a pointless existence. Without it he wouldn’t have thought twice about sticking his head in the gas oven.
Now and then the notion still occasionally beckoned, like a smiling seductress, usually when the moon was full or Chelsea had lost at home.
Leaning back in his swivel chair, a styrofoam cup of coffee with two sugars on the desk by his elbow, Otley jerked his leg, giving the metal wastebasket a kick that clanged like a gong. Everybody looked around. The full complement of Vice Squad officers was here, ten of them male, and five women. The WPCs acted as administrative support staff, as was usual in the chauvinist dinosaur of an institution that was the British police force.
“We supposed to sit here all morning?” Otley demanded with a sneer. The team was gathered to be formally introduced to their new DCI, Jane Tennison. Five minutes to ten and no Tennison. Otley was pissed-off, so of course he had to let everyone know it.
Inspector Larry Hall walked by, cuffed Otley on the back of the head. Hall had a round, smooth-skinned face and large soft brown eyes, and to offset this babyish appearance he went in for sharp suits and snazzy ties, a different tie every day it seemed. He was also prematurely balding, so what hair he had was cropped close to the scalp to minimize the contrast.
He addressed the room. “Right, everybody, I suggest we give it another five”-ignoring Otley’s scowl-“and get on with the day’s schedule. We need an I.D. on the body found in the burned-out flat last night.”
“Voluptuous Vera rents it.” Otley gave Hall a snide grin. “But it wasn’t her. It was a kid aged between seventeen and twenty.”
“Working overtime, are we?” Hall ribbed him. But it wasn’t overtime to Otley, as everybody knew. He was on the case day and night; probably dreamt about the job too.
“I wouldn’t say she’s overeager to get started,” Otley came back, always having the last word. Turning the knife in Tennison gave him special satisfaction. He’d never liked the ball-breaking bitch when they’d worked together on the Marlow murder case at Southampton Row, and nothing had changed, he was bloody certain of that.
He finished his coffee at a gulp, and instead of hanging around waiting like the other prats, scooted off to the morgue, a couple of blocks and ten minutes’ brisk walk away, north of Oxford Street.
Mike Chow was in the sluice room, removing his mask and gloves. He dropped the soot-blackened gloves in the incinerator and was filling the bowl with hot water when Otley put his head around the door.
“What you got on the barbecued lad?”
“I’ll have to do more tests, but he had a nasty crack over his skull.” The pathologist looked over the top of his rimless spectacles. “Legs and one arm third-degree burns, heat lacerations, rest of the body done to a crisp.”