Burying the Past by Judith Cutler Page A

she’d never have interrupted the old chief’s meetings like that. Her arrival was greeted with a mixture of exasperation and relief, depending on whether you were Wren or a normal human being. How many hours had they been talking? He wouldn’t have minded if they’d been using English, but it was all management-speak – worse, it was Whitehall-speak, polysyllabic pap, although the Police Standards people were all serving officers like himself. None of them seemed upset by Simon’s death, for all they’d once been colleagues. Did that say more about them or about him?
    He was hungry and thirsty – Wren’s first economy had been to axe mid-meeting refreshments, though surely their old instant coffee and bottom of the range custard creams hadn’t been an extravagance. He was also so stiff about the jaw and shoulders that he’d have a migraine, if he wasn’t careful. Or a heart attack. That was what Fran was afraid of. For him, not for her, though he’d read somewhere that women of her age with stressful lives like hers were candidates too.
    By now Sally was tiptoeing across to him. ‘Could you spare a moment outside, Mr Turner?’
    He caught Wren’s eye, as if asking for permission, but since he was already on his feet it was clear he was leaving anyway. Shutting the door quietly behind him, in the freedom of the corridor, he couldn’t help releasing a theatrical sigh.
    Sally’s smile suggested that what she had to say wouldn’t be good news. Panic-stricken thoughts about no-show removal vans and motorway crashes replaced the tedium of the previous three hours.
    â€˜Everything’s fine. Fran’s fine. But Fran wanted you to phone her before you did anything else. Anything at all. I’ve waited all this time, but you’d better do it now. Now, Mark, before I say the next thing.’ She returned to her office, ostentatiously closing the door.
    She’d have made a good oracle, with her strange gnomic utterances, wouldn’t she?
    Blast and bugger it! He couldn’t reach Fran. Bloody Kentish mobile coverage. And by now the cottage landline would have been cut off.
    He shrugged his way into Sally’s office. ‘What was the next thing? I can’t get hold of Fran,’ he added, like a kid whose dog had eaten his homework.
    â€˜I think there may have been a connection between what she wanted to say and what I have to tell you. No, there’s nothing the matter with Fran. Nothing, I promise you,’ she repeated, as if she saw the fear he knew must still lurk in his eyes. ‘But there’s a young man waiting in reception claiming to be your son. He says he won’t leave until he’s spoken to you. But I think,’ she said, getting to her feet and pushing him gently backwards until he had no option but to sit on one of the visitors’ chairs, ‘that I’ll get you a cup of tea before you go and see him. And there are some of those custard creams somewhere.’
    Dave. What the hell was Dave doing here? No reason why he shouldn’t be in the UK, of course, and no reason why he shouldn’t want to see his father. But why today, dear God – why today? Because of Sammie, of course. Hell, when had his thought processes got so slow?
    There was a light touch on his shoulder. His tea, with a couple of biscuits in the saucer, hovered a few inches away.
    â€˜Thanks, Sally. Just what the doctor ordered. Tell me,’ he asked, realizing belatedly that all these proposed changes would affect precisely the sort of people like her whom the Home Secretary dismissed as non-front line, and thus expendable, ‘have you heard anything about your own future? Now the chief’s gone?’
    â€˜The chief is dead, long live the chief,’ Sally responded with a rueful grin. ‘I work for the organization, remember, not a particular person. I go where I’m put. These days a woman of my age