Power on Her Own (36 page)

Tim and Marcus overslept, and she'd had to call three times before they'd appeared for their sausages and bacon – also organic, accordingly to a tetchy Paul. He'd taken a couple of phone calls while she was frying eggs, neither of which he assured her was for her. Whoever they were from, they hadn't improved his health or temper.

The boys had agreed with some reluctance to go to church, on the grounds that it wasn't Giles who would be taking the service. It was part of Marcus's contract with the Boys' Brigade that he should turn up regularly, and Kate told Tim not to be parochial, a word he enjoyed when he'd looked it up. Paul didn't back Kate, but there was a general assumption that he'd be going. Marcus and Kate took tracksuits to change into.

At this point Kate realised the flaw in her plans. Tim wasn't in the BB, was he, nor was he sufficiently keen on football to join in training as a treat of sorts. And she'd made it abundantly clear to Paul that she preferred his room to his company at training sessions. Hoist with her own petard. As soon as she was able she slipped upstairs to phone Graham's number – at work, this time. It rang and rang. Next she tried the extension on Colin's desk. It might have to be Graham's mobile, after all. But then it was answered, by Reg Tanner. She passed a message on as tersely as she could – they were all waiting downstairs.

‘Leave it to me, sweetheart. You can't maintain surveillance and the suspect needs to be tailed. Right? Right!'

They were just leaving when the Manse phone rang. Doug Fulton, asking for his son.

‘I'll be able to go to soccer practice, won't I? I mean, I haven't got to see them straightaway?'

A muffled murmur.

‘Yes. But I've got to train, haven't I? … We're supposed to be having dinner here, Dad. Steak and ice-cream.'

This time the murmur was less muffled.

‘A real pub? Steak there? OK.'

‘Well?' Kate prompted, when he seemed about to walk out of the door. ‘Well? Have you got a brother or a sister?'

He turned. ‘I think it's a girl. Or it might be a boy.'

‘Ever had your neck wrung, Marcus? What's its name?'

He pushed out his lower lip. ‘Ah. Emma.'

‘And is your mum all right?'

‘I suppose so. Look, aren't we going to be late?'

So all the way through the hymns and the readings and the sermon she was waiting for it: Paul's casual announcement that he was taking Tim to see his anonymous friend's train set. And she couldn't think of a single reason why he shouldn't. Not one. She knew if she said she wanted to go too he'd find an excuse – would insist that before lunch was the only option. Knew it. And played a really violent closing meditation.

Paul and Tim had already left by the time she had finished.

Considering the team had done so well the day before, she worked them very hard. She had words with Leo about taking corners without having practised.

‘But I did, Miss. Practice. At school. I do it all the time. We're top of the league.'

Kate pulled a face. ‘Sorry. I'll be telling Cantona off next when he drops by for the odd match. Well done. Right, everyone. No time for resting on our laurels. Let's try that all over again only faster!'

Kate never did know what order the thoughts came in. Paul and Tim. Her car: was it at the Manse or outside her house? Her house. And probably boxed in. It would take time to shuffle it out. The railway set. Reg Tanner. A lift to her house. Paul and Reg Tanner. And she was the adult in charge of all these kids with no one to deputise while she went off. Paul and Reg and Tim.

Working the kids hard wouldn't bring escape time any quicker. Go easy on them. Remember Marcus' asthma. Go easy.

For all that, she had the balls locked away and the kids ready for collection a good five minutes before time. Thank goodness for prompt parents. And damn the dilatory ones. Damn them all to hell. She paced, trying not to glare at the three lads remaining. Two, now. And then one. Marcus. At least she felt entitled to hurtle to the car as he did.

‘Doug: can you do me the most enormous favour? Give me a lift to my house?'

He nodded, opened the door. ‘Problems?' He pulled away, and drove commendably quickly. Only a few yards, when all was said and done. A few yards. Hardly time to congratulate him. And then the wretched man started to talk about her sponsoring the child at her dedication.

‘A sort of Baptist godparent,' he added. ‘You'd be a role model.'

They were opposite her house. He wanted an answer.

‘It's a great honour. But I'm not –'

‘Please – you've done so much –'

‘It's not that. We'll talk about it later – right? What I want you to do now is see me out of this space. Or I shall shunt that cretin into the middle of next week.' And she was out of the car, trailing tights and suit and handbag, all of which she dumped on her passenger seat.

Even with Doug it took six or seven slow backwards and forwards moves. And then she was on her way.

No sign of Paul's car, of course. Nor of the surveillance team – would they be in the house at the back or in that tatty builder's van? Quite a lot of unmarked vans around, come to think of it. So she wasn't alone. And a marked car: Graham! What was he doing here?

Slinging her car on to the kerb, she ran across.

‘Talk about timing. I've decided it's time we went in, Kate. Despite Gordon's reservations. There was what surveillance threw up, then you and the train sets. Then – then Paul and Tim arrived five minutes ago.'

‘Only five minutes? Where have they been for the last hour?'

‘We'll find out.'

‘Who's here?'

‘Everyone. Plus Kings Heath in force.'

‘Tanner?'

‘Gone off sick. Got the bug at last, it seems.'

‘You believe him? Graham – he knows Paul!'

‘Does he, by Christ! OK.' Voices crackled over his radio. He nodded, just as if they could see him. ‘Right. You stay in the rear, Kate. Take over the kid as soon as we get him out. OK?'

He was already out of the car. And she didn't need to ask whether it was an order. It was. She'd missed the briefing, all the careful arrangements. This was the price she paid. Just so a few kids could score a few more goals.

The team were moving in. She brought up the rear, taut with anxiety, despondent, angry. She was halfway up the immaculate path when the little door that no doubt concealed the dustbin in these refined parts was flung open from the inside. The bastards must have fixed an escape route. Yelling for back-up, she hurtled towards it. And to Tim and Paul who were coming out. And then there was a shout, and Tim and Paul turned – in slow motion, they all, Kate included, turned towards a big Mercedes van. It was coming up the drive, straight towards them, bull-bars at body height. Coming towards her and Tim. Aiming at them.

Robin throwing her clear. The bust going wrong. She remembered seeing the driver's face as he drove at them, sheer horror at what he couldn't stop doing because his van was out of control. But this driver, he was in control. He was smiling. Nice, friendly smile. Reg Tanner's smile. And he was going to kill all three of them. No. Just her and Tim.

No time to do more than try to shield Tim. Although it was all in slow motion. No time. And then a huge blow in her back, and she was lying on top of Tim, and there was a scream she would never forget.

The Autumn sun was unexpectedly warm, reflected from the red-and-blue brickwork and the murky waters of the canals.

‘Cuts, we call them in this neck of the woods,' Graham said, keeping his pace slow to match Kate's. ‘You've no idea how much pleasure it gives me to see this part of Brum being done up. I'm never sure about Symphony Hall and I really dislike the Indoor Arena, but look at this.' He gestured at the newly restored bridges, at the old school, now a pub where they were to eat, at the round-house that had once held not engines but horses.

‘I'd no idea Birmingham had parts like this,' she said, suddenly shy. ‘I mean, things were changing when I was up working undercover, and I like the pedestrianisation and everything. But this is magic.' She risked a smile.

‘And flat. Are you sure that leg of yours is OK?'

‘Getting better every day. All that physio. I shed the stick tomorrow – and maybe the eye-patch and the parrot! – and the strapping at the weekend. Good as new by next week.'

‘I doubt that. You'll always have a weakness there – it's the second time you've injured it in six months.'

‘Lots of quads exercises – I shall have thighs like Gazza's.'

‘We can look forward to miniskirts this winter, then, can we?' He looked away. ‘How's Tim?'

‘Hard to say with such an equable child. Maz, now – she's still deeply shocked. It's a good job I could move out. She doesn't know whether to be grateful to me for saving Tim or hate and resent me for what happened to Paul.'

‘What happened to Paul was a good deal better for the family than massive media exposure and a muck-raking trial. It was better for Paul himself than years in a high security gaol being kept away from the other inmates for fear of reprisals. And then being shunted from pillar to post afterwards by Joe Moral Public.'

‘I don't think she really believes he did anything wrong.'

‘But then, she hasn't seen all the stuff we got off his computer, has she? Or all the little delights of that house. I kid you not, I was so sick I wondered if I'd picked up that bloody bug. And yet the people in the Porn Squad deal with even worse stuff without turning a hair.'

‘Apparently. How much has Reg said?' she asked abruptly.

‘Not much, yet. A canny bloke, Reg. I had him down as Mr Nice Guy, you know. The model officer, full of old-fashioned virtues. Who comes home from Australia a couple of weeks early and buggers a kid with a toy engine and throws him in the path of a lorry so he can't talk. It was a funny thing for you to talk about in the ambulance, Kate, someone else's wedding photos. I thought you must have banged your head or something. But we got him.'

‘You would have done anyway. Pretty conclusive evidence, driving a bloody great van at an innocent kid. And a colleague.' She stopped, staring at the water. ‘Graham – why did Paul do it?' She heard the sounds of the impact again. Smelt the blood, the urine, the faeces. It had been a nasty, messy death all right. And she didn't think she regretted a minute of his agony.

‘Throw himself at you both? Who can tell? To save Tim, certainly. That stuff he'd written about him – you'll see it when you're back on duty – certainly convinced me that he loved him. And you. I think if a man like that could love a woman he loved you.' His voice was tight.

‘Love? I wouldn't want the love of a man like that.' She lowered her voice – there were others on the towpath, after all. ‘Buggering little boys! Prepared to deliver up his own flesh and blood for others to bugger! Spare me the tears, Graham. The man was a shit. OK, it was great of him to paint my window, but think what he was really doing when he was there. Eyeing up new victims.' She stopped short.

‘But the pressure was being put on him by others, Kate. Bring in more boys. And he wouldn't foul the Boys' Brigade nest, so he was after kids from that school. In the end, someone put sufficient pressure on him to introduce Tim, at very least. The room with the train set was the start of their system. Co-operate, and you'll see the next room. Whether he'd have let Tim progress I don't know. But he was under enormous pressure. From Superintendent Gordon. The man who sent me on my courses, Kate, to get me out of the way when I was needed here.'

‘I thought you were being set up for promotion.'

‘I thought I was.'

So that was why he was so angry when she'd taken work away from his squad – he was afraid it would damage his reputation and mess up his prospects.

‘Do you suppose he got at Cope somehow – to make him rewrite his report for the Devon and Cornwall people? I looked a right idiot, I can tell you. If the woman down there hadn't yelled at me for wasting her time, I might never have known.'

‘Got yelled at some more, did you?'

So they both remembered his outburst.

She grinned forgiveness at him. ‘It seems to be my lot in life. What seems odd is Cope doing what he's told. The man's a bully but he's straight. Isn't he?'

‘If I didn't think so he wouldn't be in my squad. He's an old-fashioned policeman, isn't he? Believes in the hierarchy. Which got him where he is. But no further. He's not like you whizz-kids. Maybe Gordon promised him something: who knows? Promotion at this stage would improve his pension. It'll come out eventually. He may even tell you, if you choose your moment to ask him. He likes you. Likes your guts.'

‘Got strange ways of showing it.'

‘He did all that was proper over those maggots of yours.'