Janet went back to her screen, checking through her emails, clearing her actions completed, getting up to speed on work in progress.
‘So – you been here long?’ Rachel Bailey asked.
Janet was reminded of playground interrogations – what’s your name, where d’you live? All front and nerves shredding underneath.
‘Thirteen years, twenty-five on the job.’
Rachel froze, looked at her. ‘Straight up?’
Why would I lie? ‘Yeah.’
‘Never gone for promotion?’ Rachel said.
‘Yeah.’ Shaking her head slightly, tragic or what? Janet wasn’t bothered. She knew she was good at her job. She’d done a shedload of courses and got all the accreditations to prove it. She’d not the slightest interest in climbing the greasy pole. For what? Ulcers and politics and even more pressure? Promotion was a route away from the coalface, from the hands-on, face-to-face, stink-in-your-nose reality of catching killers. Gill Murray never got to so much as interview a suspect or a witness any more. She went to the scene and the post-mortem and she coordinated each investigation, managing her team, thinking about loopholes and implications, complications. Assessing evidence as they delivered it to her: was it robust enough for the CPS? Would it stand up in Crown Court? At appeal, in Europe? None of that pushed any buttons for Janet. She wanted to be eyeball-to-eyeball with the people who had done it, the people who had seen what was done. Making them sing.
‘Not long till retirement,’ Rachel observed, pegging Janet for Mrs Average, time-server. The girl clicked her mouse, began to peer at her monitor. ‘Kids?’ Rachel asked.
‘Two,’ Janet said, a little echo of sadness inside. Happy for the newcomer to pigeonhole her: working mum, not fully committed either way, never gone for promotion, not had the drive, the vision, the brains. Mediocre. Just hanging on for her pension. Shoot me now.
The girl gave her a pitying look, then, losing interest, swivelled in her chair, scoping the room again. No one else in yet. Quarter to eight. The kid sighed, pulled her hair – glossy brown and waved (an effect that would take Janet’s eldest, Elise, all morning to achieve) – up into a ponytail, let it drop.
‘What about you?’ Janet kept it civil.
‘God no. Not the maternal type.’
She sounded almost like a teenager, that practised disdain, but she must be in her late twenties, Janet guessed. ‘Where were you before?’ Teeth not quite gritted.
‘Sex Crimes, with Sutton,’ Rachel said.
