“That counts as major, I guess,” he conceded.
“It’s huge,” she said.
“But it’s on a Sunday.”
“Immaterial. You must bring in everyone for this.”
“I’d love to,” he said, “but don’t count on it. I’ll need to check the planner. When is it — March? Heavy month.”
“The planner? Since when have you planned anything?”
He ushered Georgina out of his office and into the CID room where the wet-wipe ink was barely dry on the new chart.
Her face was a study in disbelief. “What on earth...?”
He ran a finger down one of the columns. “March, we said. Generally the third Sunday, is it not?” He touched the little square too heavily and smudged the letters into a blood-red fingerprint. “Oh fiddlesticks, can’t read it now. Good thing we’re colour-coded. Wouldn’t you know it? Red is me. What was I down for on the third Sunday?”
“Whatever it was, it’s got to be cancelled.” Georgina moved closer and peered at what remained. “It looks like the letter H.”
“That’ll be the Saturday.”
“It overlaps two squares.”
“My clumsy lettering — or the whole weekend is spoken for.”
“Not anymore,” she said. “There are red H’s all over the thing. What do they stand for?”
“Headquarters,” he answered without pause or guilt.
Georgina’s cheeks turned the colour of the smudged square. She had always treated police headquarters as if it were the holy of holies, but lately, knowing that the position of Deputy Chief Constable was vacant and needed to be filled soon, she scarcely dared speak its name. “Is there something you haven’t told me?”
He nodded. “This puts me in a delicate position.”
“I can’t think why.”
“I’m not authorised to confide in anyone else.”
“Oh?”
“Nothing personal, ma’am. One of those need-to-know situations.” He let that sink in before adding cheerfully, “But don’t worry. I can tell headquarters this date is out, cancelled on your orders.”
“Don’t do that,” she said in alarm. “Headquarters has priority here. We can manage without you, even if I have to wear plain clothes myself.”
He picked up one of the pens. “I’ll write it in again, then.”
Simple as that. So simple that he felt a stab of conscience. Did he really want to excuse himself from duty on the day? He’d feel a right shit when everyone else gave up their Sunday. Why had he done this? Mainly out of mischief. His superior always sounded so superior that she brought out the rebel in him. Now he’d need to find a way of telling her.
But Georgina hadn’t finished. She was still studying the planner. Nothing was said for some time. She took a step back with arms folded before leaning forward and staring at an empty square. “I see that Sunday April nineteenth isn’t marked.”
He checked. “Correct.”
“So you’re available. That’s the date of the Other Half.”
Caught.
The Other Half had been thought up a few years ago by some people who applied too late for the Bath Half. They’d had the good idea of organising a little brother to the main race on a different Sunday over a more challenging route mainly along towpaths, footpaths and disused railway tunnels. The modest numbers of the first year had grown to over five thousand starters.
A major public event, undeniably.
“Give me your pen,” Georgina said. “I’ll put a large O, for Other.”
3
At a sensitive time in her youth, Maeve Kelly was told by her mother, “There are sporty girls and there are curvy girls, my darling, and you were born curvy. You’ll never be much of an athlete but in the game of life you’ll come out the winner.”
So what in the name of sanity was this curvy girl doing running along Great Pulteney Street in Bath kitted out in expensive sports gear?
Fate had fixed it. Fixed Maeve as well. Overnight she’d become a plaything of the gods, as deserving of our pity as any hapless heroine in a Thomas Hardy novel.
First, her favourite aunt had collapsed from a sudden cardiac arrest while on a Mediterranean cruise. The steward who had saved the old lady’s life using CPR had learned with a British Heart Foundation kit. A fully recovered Aunt Jayne was so grateful that she made a large donation to the BHF and sent each of her family and friends a present of a CPR kit and a bright red baseball cap with the BHF logo.
Maeve never wore hats of any sort and gave her baseball cap to Trevor, who worked with her as a teacher at Longford Road Primary School and wore a cap indoors and out because he hadn’t much hair. Trevor didn’t seem particularly grateful. He didn’t even try the thing on. Possibly he felt the colour didn’t suit him. Or perhaps he felt Maeve was mocking his baldness. Anyway, he arrived next day with a bag that he left on her desk. She guessed he felt a return gift would excuse his behaviour.
The bag contained a Toby jug. She stared at it in disbelief. What would a fun-loving modern woman, 32, want with a sodding beer mug in the form a seated old man wearing a three-cornered hat? It was more of an insult than a peace offering. The thing was obviously second-hand and Maeve suspected Trevor was glad to offload it. She knew some people collected Toby jugs in the characters of well-known figures, but this thing wasn’t recognisable as anyone famous. It was the plain old Toby.
When asked, Trevor said the jug had belonged to his grandfather and had become a bit of a joke in the family, an unwanted gift handed from one person to another, and he’d decided the joke had gone far enough and he was giving Toby to her and if she wanted she could donate it to the BHF.
Thanks a bunch, Maeve thought. You don’t have houseroom for the thing anymore and you can’t be bothered to take it to a charity shop yourself, so you dump it on me. Now I’m lumbered with the job of finding the nearest BHF shop and handing it over.
She wasn’t one to hang about and mope. Sooner begun, sooner done was her philosophy, so she checked the location of the shop and went there after school. On the way to Green Street on her bike, with the bag dangling from her handlebars, she braked sharply when a car came too close. The bag banged against the bike frame and split and the jug fell on the road and smashed. Toby was just a bad memory now, emphatically beyond repair.
Cursing the motorist and Trevor at the same time, she got off and started removing bits of china from the road. People helped her pick up the biggest pieces and put them in her backpack. And then her conscience got to work. She decided she’d better continue her trip and make a donation to the charity.
In the shop, she told the assistant what had happened and asked if she had any idea what a Toby jug was worth, common old Toby with a black three-cornered hat and gripping a small jug himself. The woman took her responsibility seriously. She found a website that was a valuation guide on her phone.
If the figure had been in bold colours, it could have been antique and Victorian Royal Doulton.
Gulp.
Much relieved, Maeve showed the woman a large shard that was definitely not in bold colours but more of a dull biscuit shade. Then, horror of horrors, the same article went on to say that biscuit-coloured jugs were mostly pre-Victorian and could be Staffordshire pottery of high value. There were other checks you could make.
Horrified, she took what was left of the jug from her backpack and spread the pieces on the counter.
“If the moulding is thin,” the woman read from her phone, “the piece is likely to be pre-Victorian.”
Thin it most certainly was. Hollow legs were another sign of age. Maeve picked up an unbroken fragment of leg that you could see through. The clincher was the maker’s name. She fitted two shards together and made the name R Wood. The website informed them that there had been three generations of eighteenth-century potters called Ralph Wood. The first was believed to have made the original Toby jug. If hers had been made by him it would have been worth a fortune. Even later Ralph Wood jugs had fetched four-figure sums in auctions.