Chapter 34
CHARLIE
No matter how many times she ordered herself to direct her gaze elsewhere, Charlie’s eyes kept coming back to Superintendent Fran Whittingham’s framed wedding photo. She couldn’t stop reading and rereading the stupid caption:
Hands down the most magical day of my life. Fran looked like a princess from a dream. —Lloyd Whittingham.
Charlie remained convinced that it couldn’t be real, yet here it still was.
This morning the super’s resemblance to a princess from a dream was at an all-time low. Persuading her to agree to see the six of them together had taken all of Sam Kombothekra’s charm, and she looked ready to pulverise the first person who opened their mouth.
‘Well?’ She scowled around the room.
‘I’ll start,’ Charlie said. Dooper hadn’t looked at her since she’d entered the room, and, to ram the point home, there had been generous amounts of eye contact doled out to all the men – even Proust, whom she was rumoured to hate most of all.
Whittingham wanted Charlie to know she’d been selected for special persecution.
It was hardly surprising. Just as Charlie would never forget what she’d said that day, neither would the super. One didn’t often speak, or get spoken to, quite so viciously.
In spite of the discouraging signals, Charlie was determined to do her best to atone. ‘I was unforgivably rude to you the other day, Superintendent. I’m sorry. I’ve felt awful about it ever since, and I’ve been trying to apologise, but—’
‘It doesn’t take six people to apologise for one person’s rudeness,’ Whittingham said, staring at Sam. ‘What do the rest of you want? I’m busy.’
‘We’ll be as quick as we can,’ Simon told her. Charlie felt awful for hoping that the stunt he was about to pull might put her transgression into perspective for the super. There was throwaway viciousness, and then there was what Simon was about to attempt.
‘Our team has the option of closing two cases today if we want to,’ he said. ‘Not only Marianne Upton’s murder but also the attempt on her life in 2012. We know who’s responsible for both.’
‘What do you mean you “have the option”?’ the super snapped. ‘If you can close both cases, excellent. Do it.’
‘There’s another option, though,’ said Simon.
Charlie couldn’t help being impressed by his performance. Nothing about his tone or demeanour was giving any hints that this was the start of anything but a routine conversation. He sounded every inch the uninspired plod who needed reminding of the basics of his job.
‘Instead of closing them, we might choose to let them sit on the record as unsolved,’ Simon told Dooper.
Charlie took a quick survey of the others’ expressions: all flat and emotionless apart from the Snowman, who was beaming. Charlie did a double-take; yes, he definitely was. He’d never looked jollier. To be fair, he had never looked jolly at all until now.
Fran Whittingham’s gerbil-like cheeks hadn’t moved for a while.
How long since someone had spoken? Charlie wasn’t sure, and hoped someone in the room was in the process of deciding that the onus was on them to talk next.
An awful, worse-than-you-could-imagine outcome still felt very possible. Likely, even.
‘Why would you leave cases unsolved when you can solve them?’ Dooper snapped at Simon. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Because any good work we do is going to reflect well on you, as our line manager,’ Simon said. ‘Which is why, if only we could think well of you, we’d want others to do the same.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Whittingham sounded exactly halfway between angry and puzzled. She couldn’t work it out, Charlie suspected: was this two people with very little in common talking at cross purposes? Or was it something much more alarming?
‘But there’s only one way I’m going to be able to think well of you, and the rest of the team feels the same,’ Simon went on. ‘I’m sure you can guess what that one way is. And the—’
‘DC Waterhouse, if this is your idea of a joke—’
‘Deadly serious,’ Simon bulldozed Dooper’s interruption out of the way.
‘Let our team stay together and you’ll get two cases, nicely closed.
Two killers – one successful, one failed – behind bars.
We’re also asking for one more thing in return for the two solves.
Let Charlie come back to CID and work with us.
We’ll be a team of six instead of five from now on. Effectively we have been for years.’
‘Are you trying to blackmail me, DC Waterhouse?’ The super stood up behind her desk and folded her hands together, as if for an official portrait.
Charlie imagined the scene captured in a framed photograph with a caption:
Hands down the most terrifying moment of my life. Dooper looked like a vengeful rodent who was about to end my career. – Sergeant Charlotte Zailer.
‘I mean … if you want your glass to be half empty, it can be,’ said Simon. ‘What I’m trying to do is offer you, and all of us, a brilliant opportunity. If we do it my way, we all get to win.’
Whittingham turned to Sam. ‘DS Kombothekra, am I correct in thinking that you want to be part of this career suicide mission?’
Shit. Also: no surprise. Anyone who was shocked by the words ‘career suicide mission’ had to be a naive idiot, right?
Of course that was where this was always heading.
What had Charlie expected? Not everyone wanted to run to Simon, hug him to within an inch of his life, tell him he was the best thing ever to grace the earth.
‘I want to be part of whatever this is, yes,’ Sam replied with a smile. ‘I don’t see it as career suicide. Simon’s right: there’s an opportunity here for excellent outcomes across the board.’
‘I assure you that’s not the case,’ Whittingham told him.
‘Ma’am, if I may?’ Sam cleared his throat.
‘I know that as a team we can be … inconvenient to have as people to manage in your downline, I can completely see that. And … well, of course, I’m sorry if we’ve been a challenge for you in that way.
But please don’t miss the most important part of the overall picture: there’s been case after case that no team but ours could or would have closed.
I believe you know that’s true. No team but ours would have caught Billy Dead Mates, the Culver Valley’s only serial killer.
And countless murder victims would have been denied the justice they deserved: Jane Brinkwood.
Helen Yardley. Judith Duffy. The Gilpatrick family. Damon Blundy—’
‘Stop reciting their names!’ Dooper snapped.
‘Of course,’ said Sam. ‘My only point is: we’re exceptionally good at what we do. And none of us would be anywhere near as effective if we weren’t all doing this work together.’
‘Enough.’ Fran Whittingham sat down at her desk again.
Was that a smile? Charlie was impressed.
She’d taken a nasty blow, but she was rallying.
‘I’m sure nothing I’m about to say will come as a surprise to you, but you’re all off the case.
Both cases. You’re to take no further action on anything relating to Marianne Upton.
Is that clear? Now, all of you get out of my office without uttering one more word.
Return to your desks and await further communications. ’
‘Acting against us now is going to make life much easier for every would-be murderer, all over the region you’re supposed to care about keeping safe,’ Simon told Dooper. ‘You know that as well as I do. Your decision, though.’
Charlie thought about the silly self-help catchphrases her sister Liv was always inflicting on her, picked up from a range of internet-based gurus with bouffant hair.
Normally Charlie waved them away with a snort and a raised eyebrow, but one came back to her now: It was always meant to happen this way.
Everything unfolds exactly as it’s supposed to – and that’s as true of the painful things as it is of the ones we welcome and celebrate.
Total bollocks, probably, but perhaps helpful when it came to feeling better about the end of a career you’d loved.
It took an uncomfortably long time for the six of them to exit the super’s office.
Charlie was last but one in line, with Proust behind her.
She wanted to turn round on her way out, look at the ‘princess from a dream’ photograph one last time to check she hadn’t imagined it.
None of this seemed particularly real at the moment, not even Fran Whittingham being the person whose office this was; Superintendent Barrow had been its occupant for so long.
‘Don’t weaken, Sergeant,’ Proust muttered from behind.
Charlie stepped out into the corridor and exhaled with relief. Simon squeezed her arm. ‘Don’t worry, Char,’ he said. ‘We’re winning this one.’