6

‘ARE YOU VEGGIE, LACTOSE INTOLERANT, ALLERGIC TO sesame seeds …?’ Joesbury was asking me, practically the first words to come out of his mouth since we’d left the station. We were in a small Chinese restaurant, not far from where I live, that I didn’t think I’d ever noticed before. The owner, a slim Chinese man in his fifties called Trev, had greeted Joesbury like an old friend.

‘If it stays still long enough I’ll eat it,’ I replied.

Joesbury’s eyes opened a little wider. He and Trev shared a look, had a short, muttered conversation and then the Chinese man disappeared. Joesbury took the seat opposite mine and I waited with something like interest. He was going to have to talk to me now.

He picked up a fork and ran the prongs down a paper napkin, before leaning back to admire the four perfectly straight lines he’d made. He glanced up, caught my eye and looked down again. The fork made its way down the napkin once more. It was becoming blindingly obvious that DI Joesbury and I weren’t of the same mind on the talking issue.

‘If you’re not part of the MIT, what do you do?’ I asked. ‘Traffic?’

If you want to insult a fellow cop, you ask him if he works on traffic. Quite why I was insulting a senior officer I’d only just met was, of course, a good question.

‘I work for SO10,’ he replied.

I thought about it for a second. SO stood for Special Operations. The divisions were numbered according to the particular function they served. SO1 protected public figures, SO14, the royal family. ‘SO10 do undercover work, don’t they?’ I asked.

He inclined his head. ‘Covert operations is the term they prefer these days,’ he said.

‘Then you’re based at Scotland Yard?’ I asked, slightly encouraged at getting a whole sentence out of him.

Another brief nod. ‘Technically,’ he said.

Now what did that mean? Either you’re based somewhere or you’re not.

‘So how come you ended up at the scene tonight?’

He sighed, as though wondering why I was bothering him with this tiresome conversation business. ‘I’m convalescing,’ he said. ‘Dislocated my shoulder and nearly lost an eye in a fight. Officially, I’m on light duties only until November, but as both you and DI Tulloch have been at pains to point out, I’m bored.’

Trev arrived back with drinks. He put a bottle of South American beer down in front of each of us. I hadn’t been asked what I wanted.

‘The look on your face says you’re not a beer drinker,’ said Joesbury, reaching across and pouring the contents of my bottle into a glass. ‘And the look on mine should tell you, I know that – you’re far too skinny to be a beer drinker – but it’s good for shock.’

I picked up my glass. I’m not a beer drinker, but alcohol of any description was starting to feel like a very good idea. Joesbury watched me drink nearly a third of its contents before coming up for air.

‘What brought you into the police?’ he asked me.

‘An early fascination with serial killers,’ I replied. It was the truth, although I didn’t usually advertise the fact in quite so blunt a fashion. I’d been intrigued by violent crime and its perpetrators for as long as I could remember and it was this that had led me, through a long and circuitous path, into the police service.

Joesbury raised one eyebrow at me.

‘Sadistic, psychopathic predators specifically,’ I went on. ‘You know, the type who kill to satisfy some deviant sexual longing. Sutcliffe, West, Brady. When I was a kid I couldn’t get enough of them.’

The eyebrow stayed up as I realized my glass was now more than half empty and that I really needed to slow down a bit.

‘You know, if you’re bored, you should think about golf,’ I said. ‘A lot of middle-aged men find it fills the hours quite nicely.’

Joesbury’s lips tightened, but he wasn’t about to dignify such a cheap jibe with a response. And I really had to get a grip. Winding up a senior officer, however unpleasant, just wasn’t me. I was low-profile girl.

‘Sir, I apologize,’ I said. ‘I’ve had one hell of an evening and—’ Movement at my side. The food had arrived.

‘Don’t call him Sir,’ said Trev, putting a plate of noodles with prawns and vegetables in front of me and something with beef and black beans in Joesbury’s place. ‘Young female officers calling him Sir turns him on something rotten.’

‘I’ll remember that,’ I muttered, thinking it probably shouldn’t be too hard. Joesbury was definitely not my type. I didn’t actually have a type. But if I had, he wouldn’t be it.

‘Now this is for Dana,’ Trev went on, putting a covered plastic dish on the table. ‘Give her my love, tell her to come and see me soon, and if she ever gets tired—’

‘Trev,’ drawled Joesbury. ‘How many times …?’

‘A man can dream,’ said Trev, as he made his way back to the kitchen. When I looked up, Joesbury was intent on his food.

‘How did he know I’m police?’ I asked, picking up my fork and pushing a prawn around in a circle.

‘You’re wearing an orange Andy Pandy suit with PROPERTY OF THE METROPOLITAN POLICE on the collar,’ said Joesbury, without looking up.

‘I could be a villain,’ I said, putting the prawn in my mouth. It sat there, large and uncomfortably dry, on my tongue.

‘Yeah,’ said Joesbury, putting his fork down and lifting his eyes. ‘The thought had crossed my mind.’