Need You Dead

79 Thursday 28 April

Grace stared at the yellow Post-it note stuck, prominently, on his desk. It was written in his secretary’s handwriting.

Any request to see a Professional Standards officer was a concern. It might mean a complaint had been made by a member of the public, or by another officer; there were intractable procedures the PS department followed, in some cases requiring an officer’s suspension during the enquiry and, fortunately rarely, in some cases his or her dismissal.

That feeling of being back at school and summoned to the headmaster’s study, the one he had every time he visited the Chief Constable or one of the ACCs, was with him now. If it was about Corin Belling’s death, why was it so urgent?

If Professional Standards just wanted some information from him, on some minor matter, it would have been someone more junior contacting him, not Superintendent Paula Darke. He picked up the phone, wanting to get it over with as quickly as possible. But to his frustration he heard her clear, authoritative voice with its faint North London inflexion, requesting the caller to leave a message.

Shit.

That summons on the little yellow sticky square of paper had totally thrown his concentration. He looked at the separate piles on his desk, and knew, after a whole morning out of the office, there would be a good fifty or more new emails in his inbox awaiting him. He sat and started going through them, quickly, to see if any might hold a clue as to what Darke was going to speak to him about. But moments later his phone rang and he heard the Superintendent’s voice.

‘Roy, thanks for calling me. I know you’ve been at your former wife’s funeral this morning, but I’ve got a delicate matter to discuss with you — do you have a moment this afternoon?’

He checked the time on his computer. It was half past two. ‘I’ve got a meeting at 3 p.m., but I could come straight over now, Paula,’ he said.

‘I think we might need a bit longer than that.’ Her tone was neutral, amicable but giving nothing away. ‘What about after that?’

Whatever this was, he wanted to find out quickly and not sit in suspense. And he didn’t like that it was not going to be a quick meeting — that sounded ominous. ‘It’s OK, I can put the meeting back and come over now, if you are free?’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

For all its power and authority, Professional Standards was, like so much of Sussex Police, squeezed into far too small a space for the number of people in the department. Paula Darke’s office was tiny; her tidy desk against the wall, with a view through a large window of a steep grass bank. The only personal object on the desk was a picture of a grinning hunk of a man with a shaven head. Her husband, recently qualified as a detective after years in the Met as a PC. Most of one wall was taken up with a large-scale map of Sussex, sectored up into divisions.

As she swivelled round in her chair to face him, Grace was sitting so close their knees almost touched. The Superintendent had deservedly risen through the ranks, with a reputation for being hardworking, tough but fair. In her early forties, with a strong physique, she was an attractive woman, with classic features framed by short, brown, wavy hair, and dressed, unusually, in uniform — a white shirt with epaulettes bearing her silver crown, a black tie, trousers and shoes.

‘Thanks for coming to see me, Roy — I’ve just returned from a discipline hearing,’ she said and smiled. As always, she exuded energy, as if bursting to deal with a challenge. ‘Nice suit, by the way!’

‘Thank you, what’s the fascination with my suit? That’s the third compliment I’ve had today! It’s a few years old — I bought it in New Orleans.’

‘It’s very slimming on you,’ she said and added quickly, ‘Not that you are exactly overweight! Lucky you, New Orleans is on my bucket list.’ Then her expression became serious and her voice more sombre. ‘It’s a very delicate matter, I’m afraid, Roy.’

Grace felt his heart sinking. ‘What does it involve?’ His own voice sounded strange to him, several octaves higher than normal.

‘It’s about one of your team. DS Exton.’

‘DS Exton?’

Instantly the cloud over him lifted. He hoped the relief didn’t show in his face. Exton. He had a feeling he knew what she was going to say about him, but he was wrong.

‘I think you know, Roy, that at Professional Standards we’ve been running random checks on all force computers. And now, with phones becoming more like computers, we’ve started to include those — something not many officers know. I’ve been tipped off anonymously that DS Exton has recently been accessing escort service sites on his job phone.’ She looked at him quizzically for a reaction.

‘I’m astonished to hear this. He’s one of the most strait-laced officers I know.’

‘A dark horse, perhaps?’

‘A large number of sites, or just one in particular, Paula?’

‘Enough.’ She pushed a printout towards him. ‘It’s all there, the numbers marked.’

‘What a bloody idiot. Well, what I can say is I think he has a problem at the moment. I’d actually been planning to speak to him this afternoon.’

‘What kind of problem?’ In addition to her reputation for being tough, Roy had also seen her caring side before, and was aware he was looking at it now.

‘Well, he’s been coming to work looking very dishevelled — some days not having shaved or brushed his hair, and he seems withdrawn. He’s normally careful with his appearance — as I said, he’s very strait-laced and totally dependable. He’s got the nickname Agenda Man, because he’s so thorough when he gives any instructions to anyone. I’m worried he might be having some kind of a breakdown. Accessing these kinds of sites is totally out of character — and of course quite unacceptable on his police phone.’

‘Is he married?’

‘He was divorced some years ago — I understand reasonably amicably, from what he told me once, and has a daughter. I believe he’s been in a stable relationship with a lady from Australia for some years — a very nice woman called Dawn. He brought her along to an event last year — a Sussex Police Charitable Trust fundraiser. Would you like me to see what I can find out and report back to you?’

She hesitated. ‘I had been thinking about someone from this department talking to him.’

‘Would you let me speak to him first? He’s a good officer — I really believe that.’

She gave him a quizzical look.

‘Trust me, I believe in this man.’

‘OK, Roy,’ she said, hesitantly. ‘But we can’t let this go on.’

‘I’ll speak to him as soon as I can this afternoon.’

‘I’d be grateful. Any officer behaving erratically is a worry. Perhaps even more so in these days of heightened security.’

‘I agree.’

Walking away from her office, he was thinking hard, and extremely concerned. Was there something seriously wrong with his friend and colleague Jon Exton?