‘How was I supposed to know?’ Sarky cow.
‘You weren’t. Which is why you should have kept your mouth shut and let me handle it,’ Janet spoke quietly. ‘That woman is a victim, it was our job to inform her of the death and of the immediate procedure. You wade in asking questions. We were not there to take a witness statement. We were not there to ask questions. We were there to deliver a death message. Got it?’
‘But she said it first-’ Rachel began.
‘Got it?’ Janet repeated, unsmiling but still keeping her voice quiet like some frigid headmistress.
‘I need a fag,’ Rachel said.
‘Well, I’m not standing out here, freezing to death.’ Janet opened the car door. ‘Those things will kill you.’
Save you the bother. Rachel lit up, took the first drag deep, held the smoke and waited to feel the drug work its magic. Nick didn’t like her smoking, they bickered about it, so when she was with him she had Nicorette – foul-tasting stuff, made her breath stink worse than cigarettes. She would give up probably, but not just yet. You needed to time it right, and at the start of a major new job was not the right time.
When Rachel climbed into the car Janet already had the radio on, some documentary about the law and assisted suicide. Rachel blanked it. Watched the streets, the gleam of ice on the roads and stone walls, the fog distorting shapes, shadows and distance, the ribbons of light marking the roads winding down the hills.
Janet dropped her outside the station, a curt, ‘Night,’ the only communication.
‘Night,’ Rachel said flatly, and as she pushed the car door shut muttered, ‘Sour-faced bitch.’
ADE WAS IN front of the telly, a pile of exercise books on the sofa beside him, red pen in hand.
‘’Lo,’ Janet called from the doorway.
‘Hi,’ he grunted, not even bothering to look her way.
In the kitchen she opened the fridge, wondering if they had left her any tea. It was hit and miss. Time was Ade would have a hot meal for her whenever she was late home, would even sit with her while she ate, swapping tales from their days at work. She on the job, nothing strictly confidential of course, but the vagaries of policing, the cock-ups and triumphs, irritants among the team, the gossip, always someone shagging someone else. And Ade’s stories of high school hell, the Machiavellian manoeuvring of the geography department, the dirty politics of management and the LEA and school governors. The trench warfare of the classroom. Thirty hormonal teenagers, most of them regarding geography as slightly less interesting than waiting for paint to dry. Flirting, fighting, giving cheek, the lads rife with BO and Lynx deodorant, the girls wearing enough product to blind a lab-full of rabbits.
