Power Games (24 page)

‘What's known of him, sir? Apart from his taste in art?' Mark asked.

Ford shook his head. ‘A highly respectable man. Always the Tory agent, never the candidate. A Mason. Governor of some boys' public school. And a trustee of a high-profile charity.'

‘Don't tell me,' Kate said, before she could stop herself. ‘The Anna Seward Foundation.'

Ford looked at her coldly: she should have known better than to steal his line. ‘Which owns the land on which all those premises were built,' he concluded for her. ‘So we now know there's something up. Precisely what we're working our arses off trying to find.'

‘Which is why we agreed on this meeting,' Neville added smoothly. ‘You see, my MIT has found other Anna Seward activities. We've got the death of a woman opposing the development of a site owned by – guess what – the Anna Seward Foundation.'

Kate slapped the side of her head. ‘I think another officer should be here too, sir.'

‘Who's that, K—?'

Silly man. Why hadn't he used her first name? Suppressing it was far more noticeable than using it.

‘Tim Brown, sir, back in Kings Heath. He's been making investigations concerning the old people whose cottage was knocked down.'

‘The budgie people? Go on.'

‘You'll never guess who owns the land next to their home, sir.'

‘Spit it out, Power: OK?'

Ford grunted. ‘Obvious I'd have thought. The Anna Seward Foundation.'

Graham leaned forward. ‘I'd like to contribute my mite here, if I may. At – at Kate's behest' – bless him for giving credit where it was due. Even if the effort had been palpable – ‘I've checked the identities of several women on the Police Committee. One of them, a Mrs Coutts, is quite interesting. Apart from being the mother of one of our officers, she is married to a very senior local politician. A very powerful man.'

Ford shifted in his seat. ‘Well?'

‘She's a very bright woman. Very bright indeed.'

‘No doubt a product,' Kate said, ‘of the Anna Seward Foundation.'

Graham's eyes opened wide. ‘Why on earth should you think that, Kate? No, she went to Cheltenham Ladies' College. Then to' – he checked his notes – ‘Girton. Where she got a First.' He said it so flatly no one would have guessed that he himself had once been a high-flyer too. With a Starred First. If not from Cambridge. ‘She did her doctorate at the Sorbonne, some aspect of education, as it happens, and then became, of all things, a teacher.'

Sue frowned. ‘An ordinary school teacher?'

‘If you call teaching at a succession of girls' public schools ordinary, yes. And ending up as Chief Mistress of—' He waited, as if to gather them into a chorus.

‘An Anna Seward Academy,' all but Ford chanted obediently.

‘But only one academy,' Kate put in.

‘That was then. Now she's' – Graham gestured quotation marks – ‘“retired”, and has taken on another role. She's—'

‘Don't tell us: she's big cheese of the whole fucking lot,' Mark said.

His face straight, Rod said, ‘Which is precisely why, Ford, we needed to get together. The only question in my mind is who goes to talk to Mrs Coutts. More precisely, who goes with Kate to talk to Mrs Coutts.'

Ford stared. And then a slow smile spread across his face and he rose to his feet, proffering a stately arm. ‘May I have the pleasure, Miss Power?'

‘The wife and I do a lot of ballroom dancing,' Ford volunteered, as he unlocked the door of his Rover. ‘Exhibition standard, actually.'

Kate got in, fastening her seat-belt. While they were heading for Lichfield, and the headquarters of the Anna Seward Foundation, the unlikely combination of Mark and Rod were setting off for the Tax Office. What Graham and Sue were doing, she'd no idea: but she'd been glad of their presence at that meeting. And of their support over the weekend. Two good, kind friends. Not a lot of bosses would have come round as Sue had done to sort things out. Not a lot of bosses would have leapt into action after a hasty phone call.

And not a lot of bosses would have wanted to fuck the arse off her.

‘Sequins and everything?' she asked.

‘My wife sews them all on herself,' he said. ‘It's tricky, fitting the competitions in with work. When there's a panic on, of course, I have to let her down. But it's a nice thing, to work in partnership with someone.'

‘Have you been married long?' she asked idly.

‘Eighteen months come next Wednesday,' he said. ‘My first – she died a while back. And I thought the world would end. Wanted it to, to be honest. Then I met Irene—' He gave it all three syllables. And stopped.

He might as well have said,
And my heart stood still
. The grim contours softened. Could she ever say the same about her and Rod? The best she could say was,
My vagina salivated
. And she'd no idea whether he'd be round tonight. He better hadn't be, come to think of it, till she'd laid in supplies. Or would they steer a romantic trolley round Sainsbury's, as Robin and she had once done?

Her mobile cheeped.

‘Kate? It's Stephen. Kate. Get round here. Quick.'

‘I'm working, Stephen. I'll—'

‘Get round here quick. I've called the fire brigade but it may be too late.'

Ford looked at her. ‘We'll use a rapid response vehicle. Out of the car.' Seat-belt free, he opened the door.

Closing the phone, she shook her head.

‘Come on, woman!'

She took a deep breath. ‘What can I do if I go? I don't want to watch my house burn.' She swallowed back tears. ‘I want to go and get the bugger that's responsible for all this.'

He turned full towards her. ‘You mean it, don't you?' Eyes narrowing, he appraised her. At last he nodded. ‘Jesus, but you'd better not have had that phone call. Officially. I never heard it, of course. I certainly didn't hear that remark about getting the bugger responsible. Or you'd be off the case. Let's just assume, young lady, that you've got a chip fire or something. We're pursuing our enquiries into two deaths. Not your house fire.'

She nodded. ‘No, Gaffer.'

‘You understand?'

‘Yes, Gaffer.' Like a schoolgirl to the head.

‘OK.' He smiled. ‘So let's go get her.'

 

It was early enough for the traffic through Spaghetti Junction to be light. Ford obeyed the Highway Code in every detail, but still conveyed urgency.

‘Tyburn Road already,' Ford said briefly. ‘That name – still strikes a chill, doesn't it? I wish I knew about capital punishment,' he added. ‘Some scrotes don't deserve to live, do they? And then you get the people who want them locked up and the key thrown away. That might be worse. I've seen “natural lifers”: nothing to live for. And while you can say …' He continued the debate until well down the A38.

Talking to keep the victim's mind off things. That was what he was doing. She'd done it herself often enough.

‘How do you want to play this interview, Gaffer?' she asked, in a gap in his monologue.

‘Soft cop, hard cop? I used to be the tough one, Kate. A natural, you might say. But I'm out of practice, remember. Spend too much time chasing budgets. I should have got one of my lads to come with you, shouldn't I?'

She couldn't deny it. Questioning suspects was so much a matter of practice. That's why it worked well, doing a two-hander with a good colleague.

‘Mark's very good,' she said briefly.

‘With that shirt?'

‘You should see the other shirts. He dazzles the info. out of the suspects,' she said, trying to laugh. ‘Hey, it's nice out here, isn't it? Real countryside.'

‘And a real villain at the heart of it.'

 

The trustees of the Anna Seward Foundation certainly didn't stint themselves. The general office, in a lovely building bent asymmetrical by age, hummed with mod.cons. Ford looked sternly out of place in a reception area replete with palms, discreet lighting and up-market magazines. Kate felt equally inappropriate, in what she now felt a totally regrettable dress. She shifted in the low chair: to sit elegantly in anything like that, you had to cross your legs. Now the bruises were coming out, crossing was the last thing her legs wanted. She picked at the edge of a dressing on her left hand.

Dick Ford caught her eye. She stopped.

‘Mrs Coutts will see you now, Superintendent,' the receptionist cooed. But not especially warmly.

The office said simple power. The lines of the desk, the angles of the chairs said power. The empty grate, now filled with an arrangement of silk flowers, echoed it. No fuss. No ostentation. The sort of desks and chairs Kate had seen in country houses, five quid a head for the tour. Regency or Georgian, weren't they? Maybe Mark would have known. As for Mrs Coutts, she was standing beside her desk, extending a courteous hand to Ford.

If asked, Kate might have predicted a grey-haired woman, stout to matronly, in a dress cleverly cut to conceal a spread waist. What she saw was a woman almost as compactly built as herself. Her hair – like Rosemary's, Kate reminded herself – had been coloured, but Mrs Coutts' showed far less grey. Her complexion must have been admirable without make-up: it was flawless with. A fuchsia-pink plain top was covered by the sort of suit Kate wore to court: simple and elegant. But better cut than anything Kate could afford. Like the shoes. She'd seen shoes like that in Selfridges, and rejected them, even in the sale, as too expensive.

‘I must say, Superintendent,' she was saying, ‘we seem to have been seeing rather a lot of your colleagues recently. These outbreaks of arson – terrible, aren't they? All those jobs gone overnight. And, I understand, a death.'

‘Indeed. A very sad business. I hope my team haven't hindered you in your work.'

Hard cop indeed! That man was eating out of her well-manicured hand!

‘Such a lot of responsibility, educating the young. And of course,' he added, ‘we have this life-long learning business, now. I was saying to my sergeant here, I've taken up ballroom dancing myself.'

Kate nodded on cue, realising slowly which role she'd been cast in. The silent, anonymous one, so far. How long did Ford want her to sustain it? Certainly his – the charming, slightly bumbling middle-aged gent – wasn't entirely convincing Mrs Coutts. How long should Kate wait before jumping in as nasty cop? He'd give her the opening, sure, but it would have been better to rehearse the moves first. Except he'd been too busy chuntering away to keep her mind off her house – and her fire. Oh, yes. She could do nasty cop. But she must take extra care over what she said. That neat, friendly woman was bright enough to be taping everything, wasn't she? And she could certainly employ lawyers ready to pounce on every weak word.

‘Ballroom dancing,' Mrs Coutts repeated, as if to prompt him.

‘Indeed. Excellent exercise, of course, as well as being very pleasurable.' He paused.

The pause grew into a tense silence. Kate's eyes never left Mrs Coutts' face. Yes, however bland her smile, Coutts must know which way the questioning was going. And she was planning to outwit them, wasn't she? By simply remaining silent.

Whose nerve would snap first? Ford – he'd be unflappable, surely. And Kate herself had only to think of two dead women to be able to button her lip.

Coutts. Yes, she was going to break. She looked at her watch as if to hint at more urgent things on her schedule than standing in silent conflict with two police officers. And then – yes, they'd got her – she said, with a silly giggle she'd regret till the end of her life, ‘Surely you're not here to discuss exercise, Superintendent.'

Kate's turn. ‘I assure you we are, Mrs Coutts. Precisely that.'

‘But,' Kate continued, ‘before we do that, Mrs Coutts, I'd like to talk about your health. You look a very fit woman. All that exercise we're going to talk about, no doubt. But I sense you don't always feel as well as you look. Now,' she paused to look around, ‘I can't help noticing that there are no fresh flowers in this room. I simply cannot believe that your secretary couldn't produce some as easily as she types your mail. And that fireplace simply cries out for live gladioli, not silk ones. I'd say you suffer from hay-fever, Mrs Coutts. But I'm sure you keep it well under control. What do you use, Mrs Coutts?'

‘It's none of your business, but I use a nasal spray.'

‘And? If your allergies are so bad you can't even keep cut flowers in a room, I'd bet in the summer you need more than a nasal spray. You'd need antihistamines. What sort do you use, Mrs Coutts?'

‘This is a gross impertinence.'

‘You do use antihistamine tablets? Yes or no, Mrs Coutts?' Ford shot in.

She glanced at him. ‘I wouldn't know the name.'

Kate continued: ‘I'm sure your pharmacist will be happy to tell us, to spare you the trouble. Are there any other ailments you might suffer from, from time to time, shall we say? After all, we women have all sorts of problems, don't we? PMS; cystitis; thrush: that sort of thing. If it weren't for the presence of Superintendent Ford, I'm sure we could have a nice womanly chat. Your homely remedies. My homely remedies. That sort of thing. But since we wouldn't want to talk about them in front of Superintendent Ford, maybe we should return to the subject of exercise.'

Ford said politely, ‘I'm so impressed with the way these young women keep fit, aren't you, Mrs Coutts? Now, Sergeant Power here—'

Yes! A tiny gasp, a slight dilation of the eyes: Kate shouldn't be here, she should be back in Kings Heath watching her home in flames, that was what those minute signs said.

‘– she's got, I'm told, an injured knee. And the police physio takes it so seriously he's got her exercising regularly. So I'm told. But it has to be light exercise, none of your jogging on mean streets. No, she exercises on a proper surface. A tennis surface.'