Power Games by Judith Cutler

drinking something decent at someone else’s expense, he ended up just wanting to please me. I guess when he ran out of hard info he just said stuff he thought I might want to hear. Do you want me to have another crack?’
    She pushed another tenner across the table. ‘Does the Pope wear a frock?’
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    Back at the office, Kate pounced on the phone, first ring.
    Patrick. ‘Heart failure. As far as I can see, it was her first attack. Nothing to show she was anything but an extremely healthy woman. So why the sudden death?’
    â€˜The heat of the tennis, the shock of the cold water?’ Kate asked. ‘When I’ve showered there the water was extremely cold. Breathtakingly cold. Mind you, it may warm up later in the day.’
    â€˜Even if it was still cold, why should it kill her? I know she was in her mid-fifties, but that doesn’t mean she was a weak old dear in her dotage. Her doctor’s notes make that clear: she went along for a sort of ten-thousand-mile service but there was never anything wrong. BP fine; smear fine; breast scan fine. She seems to have taken her HRT and got on with life. It’s just possible, I suppose, that the cold water killed her. Or it may be simple coincidence.’
    â€˜Do you think there may be something in all those swabs and blood samples you’ve taken?’ Kate asked.
    â€˜I hope so. I sincerely hope so. I hate having to ascribe the cause of death to an act of God.’
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    â€˜You look very grim, Kate,’ Graham Harvey said as she walked slowly along the corridor to the office. ‘Fancy a cup of tea and a shoulder to cry on?’
    The day she took Graham up on the second half of the offer he’d no doubt drop dead of a heart attack too – brought on in his case by an excess of guilt. Still, the tea sounded good enough. And she was so wound up she might even be better off with one of his herbal brews than with the caffeine-fix she craved.
    â€˜Thanks.’ She slung her bag on the floor, but was too restless to sit down. Instead she headed for the window. His geranium cuttings would give her something to do – she could prod the soil to see if they were too dry, as usual, and tease round to check the new shoots. Anything to keep her hands occupied.
    â€˜There you are: peach and passion-fruit,’ he said, putting the mug on the windowsill.
    â€˜Thanks.’ She jiggled the tea bag until she deemed – as usual too early – that the brew was strong enough. ‘I’ve been talking to Patrick Duncan.’
    â€˜You didn’t go to the p.m.?’
    â€˜Didn’t want anyone to think I was muscling in.’ Turning so she could rest against the windowsill, she explained what had happened the night before.
    â€˜You don’t want to put up the backs of the local people,’ he said sharply.
    So much for the shoulder to cry on.
    â€˜Of course I don’t. But Crowther’s been so slow moving – he—’
    â€˜Kate: get it into your head that however good a cop you are, you can’t pick up everyone’s case-load. OK? You’ve got enough on your plate with those fires, I’d have thought, on top of all the other stuff in your in-tray. And we’re all going to have to pick up more admin with Neville going.’
    â€˜You especially,’ she observed.
    He grinned ruefully. ‘But I wasn’t talking about me. Any officer can do only so much work. OK, you might not like the pace Crowther’s working at, but you can’t read inside his head. He might be making an enormous amount of progress, but just doesn’t see why he should have to explain himself to a junior officer from another OCU. I wouldn’t, if I were in his shoes. And I can’t help noticing there’s often something of an edge between you and officers from other squads – you and Lizzie over in Fraud never hit it off, did you? And she’s a very good woman. Very