Playing James (14 page)

My first foray into detecting seems to end here. Depressingly enough, there is nothing more I can do about it. I draft an e-mail to Joe saying that I'll be in later to discuss the situation. James Sabine returns after a while.

'Have you spoken to IT?'

'They're going to look into it.'

He goes back to vetting his mound of papers. There must be something interesting there because he almost immediately picks up the phone, has a brief conversation while jotting down some notes, and then gets up. I look at him expectantly.

'Are we off?' I say hopefully.

'Well, I am.'

What does that mean? Is he going to the loo or something? I hover uncertainly until he looks back over his shoulder and says, 'Come on then, if you're coming.'

I chase after him. There is a chorus of 'Bye Dick!' and 'Catch you later, Dick!'. I fervently hope he didn't hear them.

Detective Sergeant Sabine accelerates our usual car up the ramp and out of the underground car park.

'Where are we going?' I ask.

'Uniform has been questioning some of the staff down at the hospital. For the drug theft. They didn't like the look of one of the nurses. I'm going to check him out.' 'Him?'

James Sabine glances over at me. 'He's a male nurse.'

'Oh.'

An awkward silence descends on us. Our past relationship is positively festooned with love hearts compared to the aftermath of our argument. I bite my lip and look out of the window. I suppose I really ought to apologise for the sake of the diary, but I can't quite bring myself to yet.

Finally, I grudgingly say through gritted teeth, 'Look, I'm sorry if I appeared a little overwrought this morning. It hasn't exactly been an easy week.' Well, it was
almost
an apology.

He replies, equally grudgingly, 'That's OK. I'm sorry for calling you a mosquito. I mean, it's true, but I still shouldn't have said so.' That was even less of an apology than mine. We both look as un-sorry as two people could ever appear and travel in silence to our destination.

My mind is on the impending questioning of a suspect as I catch up with James Sabine as he walks towards the suspect's house.

'Do you want me to say anything?' I ask.

'No. Say nothing.'

'You don't want me to help at all?' I suggest, anxious to be involved.

'Help?'

'Well, you might want me to be the bad cop or something?'

He stops and faces me.'Bad cop?' he says wearily.

'Or good cop? I don't mind. Or—'

'Miss Colshannon. I appreciate your offer of help, but can I point out the fatal flaw here?' I arrange my face into a questioning look. 'You are not a
police officer
. You see? Good cop,' he continues slowly pointing to himself as though explaining it all to a five-year-old and then, pointing to me, 'No cop.' He repeats the action again. 'Bad cop, no cop. Do you get it? You're watching too much TV.'

I resign myself to a non-speaking part and follow him as we climb a wrought iron staircase and ring the bell of flat three. No answer. We ring again. James Sabine turns to me.

'Remember, don't say anything.' I shake my head vehemently as though the thought wouldn't have even crossed my mind. The door opens a crack. Detective Sabine holds up his ID and says, 'Are you Kenneth Tanner?'

The shadowy figure nods his assertion to this question.

'I'm Detective Sergeant Sabine. I would like to ask you a few questions regarding a theft at the hospital where I believe you work?' The door opens slightly more at this point to reveal a man in his mid-twenties. He's wearing tracksuit bottoms and a sweatshirt and is looking decidedly the worse for wear.

'Yeah? What do you want to know?'

'May we come in?'

The man makes to open the door wider to allow us access, but instead slams it in our faces as we try to move inside. James Sabine, who obviously has more developed reactions than I, rams his shoulder against the door, but it's too late, the lock has already slipped into place. He takes a step backwards and kicks the door, just above the handle, with his right leg. It swings wide open and crashes against the back wall.

'Stay here,' he says to me as he runs inside.

Needless to say, I don't stay anywhere and peer in after him. I watch as he darts across the hallway and bobs his head around the door directly opposite. He then flings himself across the room and I catch up just in time to see him wrestling Kenneth Tanner away from an open window with a wrought iron fire escape outside it. Within about thirty seconds, James Sabine has got both the suspect's hands behind his back and is kneeling on them while feeling for his handcuffs. He produces them with a flourish like a magician and clicks them into place. I hear him reading Kenneth his rights.

'You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence …'

Blimey. It's not even lunch time.

'Holly! Congratulations!' says Callum. 'Your first arrest!'

'Yeah! Well done!' shouts another officer from his desk, and several others smile over at me.

I smile modestly back.

'Was it a difficult arrest?' asks Callum jokingly.

'Terribly.'

James Sabine is standing behind me. Callum gestures towards him with his head. 'Was Dick here much help?'

'Useless. Sat in the car.' Callum and I grin at each other. Detective Sergeant Sabine raises his eyes to heaven and walks off, leaving us to it. I move towards my desk and come back to earth with a bump when I realise that the story of my first arrest is probably being leaked as we speak.

James Sabine makes a start on the baffling amount of paperwork that results from making an arrest (if it had been me, I think I would probably have let the suspect go) while I work on today's diary instalment on my laptop. Now and again I look up and stare pensively ahead of me. Callum wanders over and throws a wad of paper on to James' desk.

'I was just down with forensics. Roger asked me to give you this.'

'What is it?' I enquire.

'The report from the Forquar-White burglary.' Detective Sergeant Sabine is already leafing through it.

'Have they got the DNA results from the hair?' I ask excitedly.

Detective Sergeant Sabine barely looks up but Callum replies, 'It'll be weeks before that comes back from the labs, Holly. It won't be of high priority—'

I interrupt him. 'Why?'

'Well, murder cases, rapes, that sort of thing, take higher priority than a burglary.'

'They can't identify that peculiar substance,' James Sabine murmurs to himself, his eyes still firmly glued to the report.

'Yeah,' says Callum.'Roger mentioned it to me. He says he has no idea what it is.'

'Are they going to try and find out?' I ask, aghast.

James Sabine's head snaps up. 'They just haven't got the resources at the moment, Miss Colshannon. Lack of funding. There's something else you can write about.'

The rest of the afternoon is taken up with interviewing Kenneth Tanner, which I'm not allowed to sit on. I fervently hope we won't be scooped again but realise with a sinking heart, as I watch James Sabine tapping the details into the computer, that it is unlikely it will stop here. At the end of the afternoon I pack up my stuff, say my goodbyes for the day and go over to the paper. Joe is waiting for me.

'Well?' he demands.

'Well what?'

'Did you find anything out about the Journal?'

'We found out that someone might have been reading Detective Sergeant Sabine's computer files, which basically means it could be practically anyone in the building with the possible exception of the canteen ladies. And maybe not even then. The IT department are trying to trace the culprit but not with a great deal of enthusiasm. How about you, did you find anything?'

'I called a few contacts, a couple of ex-employees of the
Journal
, to see if they could discover anything but all they said was that it was an inside source.'

I sit down in the chair in front of Joe's desk. The man himself paces in front of me.

'Spike Troman is their crime correspondent, isn't he?' I ask. From what I've seen so far, Spike is a small weasel of a man whose name, unfortunately for him, does not belie his nature. There is nothing sharp about him.

'There's no way Spike could be doing this by himself. He would definitely need spoon-feeding.'

'How long do you think he's had a contact at the station?' I ask.

'Well, they can't have just found him or her solely to ruin the diary. I mean, the diary was arranged so quickly that there simply wasn't time.'

'But it was so blatant. Revealing the forensics stuff, I mean. They must know there's going to be an inquiry.'

'Deliberate sabotage. The diary would have made them worried. I was hoping it would be such a success that people would permanently switch from the Journal to us. They probably thought it was worth taking a risk to try and show us up.'

'What can we do?'

'Can you keep the details off the computer so they can't be leaked?'

'Detective Sergeant Sabine would never agree to that.'

'Well, not very much then. Maybe with the IT department looking into it the informant might get freaked. Don't trust anyone there, Holly.'

'No. I won't.'

'Don't send your copy by e-mail; you'll have to come over to the paper every night and download it yourself. And Holly, can you try and do something different from the Journal?'

'Like what?'

'We haven't printed anything the
Journal
hasn't already known about so far. They're making us look like idiots. We're supposed to be the ones on the inside and yet they're still getting all the stories. You're going to have to try and get some interesting stuff out of this detective, things that the
Journal
couldn't possibly get hold of. Does he eat doughnuts? Are there any inside feuds in the office? Spice it up a bit! Give our readers something that the
Journal
can't. Details.'

'Details,' I repeat. I nod and walk distractedly out of his office and down towards Tristan. My hands close into tight little fists with fury at the
Journal
and the mole. They are ruining my one big chance. Who on earth is doing this? The only thing to gain would be money and even then the risks outweigh it. Unless … Unless an officer who doesn't like reporters very much is trying to get his newest sidekick thrown out? But would he really sabotage his own cases to do so?

L
izzie arrives for our Monday evening together in a state of very high excitement. Before I can even start on my weekend's events, she says; 'I had the best day ever on Saturday. Guess what I did?'

'What?'

'I tried on wedding dresses!'

My God! Things have moved on quickly. I sit down suddenly in shock as she bustles through to the kitchen asking, 'What have we got for munchies?'

'When? When did he ask you?' I shout after her. She pops her head back around the door.

'Who?'

'Alastair.'

She comes out of the kitchen and plonks herself on the sofa. 'He hasn't asked me, silly. It's just that I was passing this wedding shop at lunchtime and so I thought I would pop in for a little look. It was gorgeous, Holly.' She stares dreamily off into space while I blink a few times and try to clear my fuzzy and confused brain.

As she starts with a description of one of the dresses she tried on, I am forced to interrupt her, 'What happened? I mean, a couple of days ago you were wondering whether Alastair was trying to finish with you, and now you're getting married?'

'Well, I've been thinking about it a lot these last few days and something you said the other night came back to me.' I really wish people wouldn't do this. I hate anyone quoting myself back to me probably because I change my mind so much. I ought to make all my friends sign an agreement stating that while I mean everything I say at the time, all quotes expire after a ten-minute period.

'What did I say?'

'You said I ought not to sit back and let this happen to me!'

'I said that?'

'Yep!'

'Well, I think I probably meant you shouldn't mope about,' I say cautiously.

'You also said I should be proactive!'

'Did I?' I say slowly, playing for time. I frown to myself. I'm not completely sure I know what the word means.

'Yes, you did! So I'm being proactive!'

'How so?'

'Alastair and I are going to get married!'

'Does the groom know?'

Lizzie looks impatient and swivels herself around so she is fully facing me.

'What you said makes a lot of sense, Holly. I love Alastair, I truly do, and there is no way I am giving him up without a fight!'

'OK,' I say slowly, 'I understand that bit and that's good. But where does the white dress come in?'

'I'm going to make him marry me, Holly!' she says triumphantly. 'That's the conclusion I have arrived at! Admittedly I may have got ahead of myself a bit with the wedding dresses, but I just couldn't resist it! Besides, it was good for me. Somehow it got me in the mood!' 'Did you pick out a bridesmaid dress for me?' 'Ha, ha. There is just no way I am going to let someone like Alastair escape. Good men are hard to come by.' Fair point, I suppose.

'Well, how are you going to make him
marry
you? I hate to be the one to break it to you, but he does have to propose first. You can't go ahead and plan a wedding and then take him to it like a surprise birthday party.'

A delicious image of two hundred wedding guests, all in hats, plus the vicar standing at the altar, shouting 'SURPRISE!' at a bemused Alastair flashes before me for a second. Actually, it would be quite fun, wouldn't it? 'I have a cunning plan and I'm going to need your help.' I relent a little and relax my taut face. I have to say I am a bit curious anyway.

'Oh, all right. What is it?'

'LOCAL HOSPITAL IN DRUGS BUST' screams the Journal's headline the next morning. I grind my teeth and walk back to the car where James Sabine is waiting for me. I clamber in and snap on my seatbelt.

'It's happened again,' I say indignantly and shove the newspaper over to him.

'Do they mention the suspect by name? We'll sue if they do …'