25
THE CATHEDRAL WAS GETTING READY TO CLOSE FOR THE night. An elderly verger held up both hands at me, fingers splayed, and smiled before nodding towards the door. I had ten minutes.
Tulloch was staring ahead as I approached, her eyes on the central stained-glass window above the altar. She must have heard me getting closer but she was as still as the stone images around us. I almost turned to go, then changed my mind and spoke quietly to her. ‘Ma’am,’ I said.
She started, as if I’d woken her from a nap. ‘What are you doing here?’ she said.
Good question. ‘Sorry,’ I began. ‘I saw you coming in and …’ I stopped. I really wasn’t sure why I’d followed her.
‘And you wondered why I was in here instead of pounding the streets?’ she said, turning away from me again. ‘It would make quite a headline, wouldn’t it? MURDER TEAM CHIEF PRAYS FOR GUIDANCE WHILE KILLER ATTACKS AGAIN.’
I couldn’t reply to that. In terms of what I’d been thinking, she was pretty close.
‘You missed Evensong,’ she said, after a second.
‘I’m not much of a churchgoer,’ I replied.
‘I never used to be,’ she said, her eyes still fixed ahead. ‘But now I think I’d give anything to know that someone up there’s in charge. That there’s a plan.’
I’d never thought of it that way. Nor was I about to start.
Tulloch half rose and moved along a chair, giving me little choice but to sit down beside her. I sat. And waited.
‘I know it was you in the ladies’ room the other day,’ she said softly.
‘Sorry,’ I said again. ‘I didn’t mean to pry.’
No reply. I tapped my foot against the crimson hassock in front of me, making it swing on its hook. ‘I just assumed you’d eaten something that didn’t quite …’ I stopped. I’d assumed nothing of the kind and this wasn’t a woman you could bullshit.
‘That would be just about everything I put in my mouth, Lacey,’ she said. ‘I can’t eat.’
I sneaked a sideways glance. I’d never be allowed through the door at Weightwatchers but I was chunky compared to Tulloch.
‘I had an eating disorder when I was a teenager,’ she went on. ‘I thought I was over it. Apparently I’m not. If I eat, I throw up. I’m surviving on skimmed milk, orange juice and vitamins right now.’
I gave the hassock another kick. I was beginning to wish I’d never gone into the CCTV room. Tulloch looked down at the swinging hassock, then back up again to the window.
‘You want to know what I’m doing here?’ she asked. ‘I’m composing my request-for-redeployment letter.’
Requesting redeployment meant resigning from the inquiry. It would be the end of her career as a detective.
‘It’s going quite well,’ she went on, in a conversational tone, as though the two of us were discussing television we’d watched the previous night. ‘It’s modest but dignified. Apologetic, of course. No way around that, really.’
There was nothing I could say.
‘All my friends,’ Tulloch carried on, ‘which isn’t a huge number, but all of them begged me not to take this promotion.’
I should have gone straight home. This was way beyond me. And I was getting a nervous twitch in my leg. The hassock was going to go flying, any second now.
‘They said I wasn’t ready. That I needed more time.’ She glanced my way. ‘But how often do opportunities like this come along, Lacey?’ she said. ‘I could have waited five years for another chance.’ She turned back to the altar again and gave a little sigh. ‘And London was so far away.’
Her head gave a little sideways dart, towards me and then back again. ‘What do you know about Scotland?’ she asked.
‘Nothing,’ I said truthfully. ‘Well, practically nothing. Just that it was a big case.’
For a moment Tulloch was silent. Then she said, ‘It was a bad case. Unimaginable. Some scars run so deep.’
When I looked at her again, her eyes were closed. She was tugging at the sleeves of her coat, pulling them further down over her hands. Then she seemed to sense me looking at her, because she opened her eyes and faced me.
‘I thought, what’s the worst that can happen in south London?’ she went on. ‘The odd knife attack? A domestic taken a bit far? I could have dealt with that. I just wasn’t prepared for this.’
‘This hasn’t happened yet,’ I said, more firmly than I felt. ‘There is no this. We have one murder, that’s all.’
This time she didn’t look away. Unusually, on a woman of her colour, she had a light scattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Behind her, I could see the verger making his way down the side aisle, past the massive pale stone arches that lined the nave. Tulloch didn’t take her eyes off me.
‘The police in the original investigation were crucified,’ she said. ‘At the time, and ever since. Charles Warren resigned over his failure to find Jack. Well, I’m going to get in first. I can’t have five women’s deaths on my conscience, Lacey, I just can’t.’
One had to see her point. The few hours when I’d thought I could have kept Geraldine Jones alive had been pretty uncomfortable ones. I also knew that if there were more killings, and no one was caught, Tulloch would take the blame.
‘Can I ask you something?’ I said, thinking that if a senior officer could be this confiding with me, I could probably get away with an opinion or two of my own.
She gave a little shrug with her chin. I took it as a yes.
‘How many mistakes have you made so far?’ I asked.
A crease line appeared between perfectly shaped eyebrows. ‘I’m not sure …’
‘If you had to start the whole investigation again, what would you do differently?’
She was shaking her head. She wasn’t having it.
‘If someone more experienced had been in charge, who didn’t have any of your personal issues,’ I went on, ‘what would they have done that you didn’t?’
She sighed and turned back to the front. I looked the same way, at the double row of statues above the altar, and at the three arched stained-glass windows above them.
‘You’ve done OK,’ I said. ‘Nobody’s so much as hinting otherwise. And we don’t know anything else is going to happen. I’d give it another twenty-four hours if I were you.’
Tulloch leaned forward until her elbows were on her knees and her chin in her hands. ‘Why do you think I’ve been telling you all this?’ she said.
Bloody good question. ‘I’m handy,’ I offered.
‘I’ve been making it inevitable,’ she replied. ‘The simple act of telling you about my resignation has made it a fait accompli. I can’t lead a murder team if even one of them knows I feel like this.’
‘Well, it’s lucky I’m not on the team then, isn’t it?’ I sat back in my chair, knowing I sounded a tiny bit smug. ‘You’ve been very clear on that.’
She made a sound that could have been a soft laugh. It could also have been a small sob. ‘You remind me of someone,’ she said.
‘Is that good or bad?’
Close by, the verger was hovering. He caught my eye and stepped closer. He raised his left wrist and pointed at his watch.
‘So sorry,’ he said. ‘Time’s up.’
Dana stood. I did the same and we walked to the rear of the cathedral, our footsteps unnaturally loud in the now empty building.
‘Mainly good,’ she said. ‘She was a good friend of mine. But she was a meddler. Couldn’t seem to grasp that when you stick your head above the parapet, someone will take a shot at it. I rather suspect you have the same problem.’
She was right, I had to get over this parapet business.
‘By the way,’ said Tulloch, as we stepped out into the night, ‘what have you done to Mark?’
I couldn’t look at her. ‘Do you mean DI Joesbury?’ I asked after a second.
She gave a soft laugh. ‘Yes, that’s the one. Did you two have words?’
‘Well, I … I’m not sure the two of us really hit it off,’ I managed. ‘Sorry.’
She didn’t reply, but when I glanced across again she was smiling.
‘Have you known him long?’ I asked, a second before I realized I didn’t want to know anything about Tulloch’s relationship with Joesbury.
‘We went through training together,’ she said. ‘I wanted to change the world, Mark wanted all the free time off the service gave him to play rugby.’ She smiled again. ‘After a year or so they clamped down on that and he didn’t have a plan B.’
We stopped to wait for the lights at the pedestrian crossing. I wasn’t about to feel sorry for Joesbury. I figured he’d found his niche as an undercover thug.
‘We were very close for a long time,’ Dana was saying. ‘I’m even godmother to his son. Then I had a long-term relationship breakup just as he was going through his divorce. We helped each other through it.’
The lights changed and we crossed.
‘I’ve barely seen him the last two years,’ she went on. ‘He’s been off the radar with this drug gang and I was up in Scotland. I suppose I’m just making up for lost time. He’s practically the closest I have to family now.’
We’d reached the station.
‘This business about him hanging around the investigation because he’s bored,’ I said. ‘That’s not actually true, is it?’
Tulloch gave me the small, slightly smug smile of a woman who knows she’s loved. ‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘He’s watching my back.’
She wished me goodnight and a safe journey as she went inside. As I climbed into my car I was thinking that, whilst Tulloch might not have much in the way of family and friends, she was a whole lot better off than me.