Ash and Bone

3

The office of the assistant commissioner in charge of the Specialist Crime Directorate was on the seventh floor: along with a number of other units, S07 came within his overall command. Just about the only things above him, ran the tale, were God and all his angels. Maddy hoped they were on her side.

She gave her name to the civilian clerk in the outer office and declined the invitation to take a seat. When the clerk gave her the once-over she pretended not to notice. Ten minutes she'd spent that morning, polishing the black boots she was wearing with her navy blue trouser suit, bought a year and more ago at M amp; S and already showing some signs of wear.

A buzzer sounded on the clerk's desk.

'You can go through.'

Maddy knocked, took a breath, and entered. Lean, bespectacled, nicely balding, Assistant Commissioner Harkin smiled from behind his desk. Tie knotted neatly and clipped, he was in shirtsleeves, cuffs turned back. Younger than quite a few of the officers below him, Mallory included, he was not so many years older than Maddy herself.

'Detective Sergeant. Maddy. You'd rather sit or stand?'

'Stand, sir, if that's all right.'

'Of course, whatever you're comfortable with. I'm sure this won't take long.'

The room was airless but not unpleasant, a faint background odour of antiseptic and flowers. Anonymous paintings on the walls. A water carafe and glasses on a narrow table to one side. It reminded Maddy of the lounge at Gatwick Airport, the one time she'd been bumped up to business class.

Harkin tapped papers on his desk. 'You've not been in the unit long.'

'No, sir.'

'Settling down?'

'Yes, sir. I think so.'

'Yesterday,' he said. 'First thing that has to be made clear, the manner in which you acquitted yourself, first rate. Absolutely first rate.' He beamed as though he had been praising himself. 'Everything I've heard, the Detective Superintendent's report – well, you heard him last night, of course, extolling your virtues at great length – it all points to a good job well done. Initiative. Steady head. Guts. Above all, guts. Going up against an armed man. Commendation material, I'd not be surprised.'

'Thank you, sir.'

'Do you no harm when it comes to promotion. None at all. You've taken the inspector's examination, I dare say?'

'Twice, sir.'

'Hmm. Well, qualities will out. Eventually. Your kind of quality. In the field.' He coughed into the back of his hand. 'There'll be an inquiry, of course. Fatal shooting. Officers from another force. Standard procedure.'

'Yes, sir, I understand.'

'And you've no concerns, I take it?'

'Concerns, sir?'

'Regarding the inquiry. Sequence of events and so on.'

'Sir?'

'No doubt in your mind as to how it all played out?'

Maddy could feel the sweat prickling beneath her arms. 'No, sir.'

Harkin nodded and glanced towards the window as if something outside had suddenly claimed his interest. 'Detective Superintendent Mallory's actions, appropriate, you'd say, to the situation?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Good. Excellent.'

Once she'd noticed a slight tic in the assistant commissioner's left eye, Maddy was finding it difficult not to stare; she looked at the floor instead.

'You, personally,' Harkin said. 'Incidents like these, violent death, sometimes takes a little while for them to settle in the mind.'

'Yes, sir, I'm sure.'

'If there's any help you feel that we can offer… a little personal time, maybe. A chat with someone versed in these things, someone professional…'

'A psychiatrist, sir?'

'That sort of thing.'

'I don't think there's any need. Really. I'm fine.'

'Yes, yes. I'm sure you are.' Harkin rearranged papers on his desk. 'If there's nothing else then…'

'DC Draper, sir, I was wondering if there was any news?'

'Ah.' Harkin removed his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb. 'A shame about DC Draper. Great shame.'

One of the first things Paul Draper had done, he and Maddy chatting together on their first day in the squad, was to show her a photograph of his wife and kid. Alice and Ben. On holiday somewhere in the north-west. Blackpool. Morecambe. A faint suggestion of sea on the horizon. Alice in a two-piece swimsuit, not a bikini exactly, her figure not yet back to what it once had been, Ben in a little all-in-one on her knee. Alice having to narrow her eyes slightly against the light, but smiling nonetheless, her skin pale, as if unused to the sun.

'You must come round,' he'd said. 'We'll get a takeaway, eat in. Alice'd be chuffed with the company.'

Maddy never had.

Now she sat awkwardly on the edge of a chair. Alice slumped back on the two-seater settee opposite, the child fretting at her breast. Cups of tea on the table, half-cold. Biscuits, some broken fragments of rusk. There'd been photographers outside, a few; one reporter, insistent, from the local whatever-it-was, Journal or Gazette.

'Alice…'

At the sound of Maddy's voice, tears appeared again on Alice Draper's face. How could she not cry? Maddy thought. Twenty-three and a wee boy of no more than six or seven months and then this…

Maddy forced herself to her feet. Through the partly drawn curtains she could see the flats opposite, identical to the one in which she was standing; balcony upon balcony busy with tubs of flowers, rusting bicycles, washing twisting in the late-afternoon breeze. The dark already falling into place.

'It's not bad,' Draper had said. 'Not bad at all. Ex-council, couldn't afford it else. But okay. You wait till you see.'

He looked a little like that guitarist, Maddy had thought, the one who used to play with Morrissey.

Alice had said very little. Before being finally pronounced dead, her young husband had said nothing at all. Flowers from the Metropolitan Police Commissioner lay by the sink, waiting to be put in water. I'll do it before I go, Maddy thought. Wash these cups, make a fresh pot of tea. See if I can't persuade Alice to eat something, a sandwich at least.

While she was waiting for the kettle to boil, Alice switched on the television news.

'Alice,' Maddy said, 'are you sure this is a good idea?'

Colours unnaturally bright, Paul Draper's face flickered for a moment on the screen, then disappeared.

'Alice…'

Seated behind a bank of microphones, the Assistant Commissioner looked sombre yet purposeful.

'From all the information available to me, I have no doubt that the operation was carefully and professionally planned and executed with a high level of competence that does credit to all the officers involved. With regard to the tragic death of a young detective constable…'

Regardless of Alice's wishes, Maddy leaned forward and switched off the set.

Ben was wriggling in his mother's lap, whimpering against her chest.

'Alice, Alice. I think you might be holding him too tight. Do you want me to take him for a minute? Here. That's it. Just while you drink your tea.'

The baby's pale eyes looked at her in wonder when she lifted him towards her and Maddy felt something kick, hard, against the hollow of her insides. When Alice picked up the cup it slipped between her fingers, spilling tea across the table and the floor.

'Never mind,' Maddy said. 'I'll clean it up.'

Alice looked back at her blankly. 'Paul,' she said. 'Paul, Paul.'

'Poor cow.' Vanessa Taylor broke off a piece of chapatti and used it to wipe up what remained of the chicken massala. 'What kind of life's she got now?'

A good year they'd been doing this, Maddy and Vanessa, meeting up every week or so, when shifts allowed, a drink or two first and then a curry. A good goss and a natter. Bit of a bitching session, sometimes. Rules and regs. Pay. All that dyke or station-bike innuendo that was supposed to have been knocked on the head once and for all.

At twenty-nine, Vanessa was not only younger than Maddy but shorter and broader too, a figure on her and she didn't care who knew it. Before joining the force, she tried secretarial, then nursing, but not for long. Glorified bloody chambermaids, that's all you were. More blood and piss than the pubs in Kentish Town, which was where she was currently stationed. Three years as a uniformed constable and she still wasn't certain she'd stick with it.

Maddy had met her on a training course soon after moving down to London: 'Integrating Police Work with the Ethnic Community'. Vanessa sizing up the Asian community worker who was leading the afternoon session. 'Wouldn't mind integrating with that,' she'd winked. 'Given half the chance.' It turned out Vanessa lived no more than a few streets away from Maddy herself, Upper Holloway.

This evening, eyeing up one of the waiters whenever he passed their table, Vanessa reminded Maddy of that first occasion and asked her had she ever, you know, been with anyone Indian, Pakistani?

Maddy said she didn't think she had.

'I had this lad once…' Vanessa said, lowering her voice as she leaned forward. 'Student nurse at the hospital. Great big eyes.'

'Just the eyes?'

'Stop.' Laughing. 'Lovely-looking he was, beautiful skin.'

'You'll be telling me next you had him in the storeroom cupboard amongst the bandages and bedpans.'

'Better than that. Upstairs, on one of the empty beds. Ward was temporarily closed down because of the cuts.' Her face was flushed but it was probably due to the curry.

'What happened?' Maddy said.

'What d'you mean what happened?' Vanessa laughed again, louder than before. 'Too long ago to remember? Draw you a diagram if you like.'

'Not that, you idiot. I mean what happened to the bloke?'

'Oh, him. I dunno. Next week he'd moved on to Obstetrics. Good, though. Top Ten, I'd say.' She grinned. 'How about you? Top ten shags of all time.'

Maddy looked warily round, prepared to be embarrassed. 'Don't joke. I'd be scraping the barrel to come up with five or six.'

'You're kidding.'

'You should try getting married before you're twenty-one. Trims your sails a bit, I'm telling you.'

Vanessa crossed her knife and fork across her plate. 'You never were? Married that young?'

'Wasn't I?'

'How come you never said?'

'I don't know. Don't much like talking about it, I suppose.'

'Well, who was he? At least tell us that. What was his name?'

'Terry, his name was Terry. Okay? Satisfied? He was this bloke, older, a bit older, and I was just a kid, still living at home, and I thought he was God's gift. Now let's just leave it, right?'

'Right.' Vanessa shrugged and ordered two more bottles of Kingfisher. No point in pushing it further, she could see that. Not unless she fancied trolling along to the karaoke session in the pub later on her own.

'I keep thinking,' Maddy said a few minutes later, 'that poor little lad, Paul Draper's boy, growing up without a dad.'

'She'll find someone else, won't she? If she's any gumption. Kid'll not remember.'

Maddy shook her head. 'You really think it's that simple?'

'Yes. If you want it to be.'

'Sometimes I wonder,' Maddy said, 'if you know you're even born.'

'Fuck off,' Vanessa said, laughing. 'And pass us over that aubergine thingy if you're done with it.'

Shortly after midnight, the two women emerged from the raucous glitter of a late-night extension and set off, arm in arm, along the Holloway Road. Vanessa had talked Maddy into a duet version of 'Dancing Queen' which had been fine until Maddy had lost it two-thirds of the way through and faltered to a halt.

'What got into you?' Vanessa asked. 'We were going great.'

'I don't know. Suddenly realised what I was doing, I suppose. Up there in front of everyone. Looking a right prat.'

'Come on,' Vanessa said, 'I'll walk you to the end of your street.'

'You're sure? No need.'

'No, do me good. Walk off some of that beer. Nothing worse'n waking up of a morning, feeling bloated.' She laughed. 'Less it's not waking up at all.'

'Not funny, Nessa.'

'Sorry.' Vanessa gave her arm a squeeze. 'Really got to you, hasn't it? What happened.'

'Last night,' Maddy said, 'when I got home, getting ready for bed, I saw these specks of mascara here, alongside my eye. Except it wasn't mascara, it was blood.'

Vanessa didn't say anything else until they reached the corner of Maddy's road. 'Take care,' she said, giving Maddy's arm a squeeze. 'Get some sleep, eh? Try not to think about it too much. And give me a call tomorrow.'

'Okay,' Maddy said, 'if I can. You take care too.'

Maddy watched for a moment as Vanessa quickened her pace, and then turned towards home. The click of her low heels on the pavement as she walked. Here and there, lights faint behind drawn curtains or lowered blinds. Of course, what had happened had got her rattled. Grant, Draper. It stood to reason. Only now that wasn't all. Her key stiffened for a moment in the lock, then turned. She knew she should never have said anything to Vanessa about being married, about Terry, fetching all that up from where it lay buried, started herself thinking about him after all this time. Terry. All abs and promises. She allowed herself a rueful smile. North Wales, the last she'd heard from him. Married again and good luck to the pair of them.

Maddy poured the last of the orange juice into a glass and carried it into the living room. No way that would have been him, skulking mid-week round a North London boozer, staring at her from the back of the crowd. His face stopping her in her tracks, mid-chorus. Everyone clapping, laughing. 'Dancing Queen'. Just someone who looked a bit like him, that was all.

The curtains were drawn fast across the French windows to the garden, shutting out the night. The glass was cold in her hand. She sat there until her legs began to numb, willing her eyes to close, her mind to still.