He pushed open the door to his office and reached his left foot out to manoeuvre his doorstopper into place. His foot met thin air. Looking down, there was no sign of the fat pig that he used to hold the door open. He hung his jacket on the coat stand and crouched down to look for it under the desk.
He heard a brief knock on the door and muttered, ‘Come in.’
The door opened, and he heard a voice he recognised well, trying to control a degree of mirth.
‘You okay down there?’
‘I’m fine – but somebody’s nicked my bloody pig.’
Tom stood up, brushing the knees of his suit trousers to get rid of the dust from an un-vacuumed floor. ‘Honestly, you’d have thought at police headquarters you’d be reasonably confident of finding upright, law-abiding citizens, wouldn’t you? I thought he might have been kicked under here, or something, but he’s nowhere to be seen.’
‘I think if anybody kicked your pig, you’d find them limping around with a broken toe. And nobody steals from a detective chief inspector unless they’re very stupid – although on that basis I suppose we have a few candidates to consider. I’ll ask around for you.’
Tom pulled out his chair and sat down, indicating that Becky should do the same. ‘How’ve you been, Becky? Anything exciting happened while I’ve been away?’
‘Run of the mill stuff, on the whole,’ Becky replied, as she grabbed a chair. ‘Except for a particularly violent rape, which we thought was stranger rape but wasn’t.’
‘Who was it, then?’
‘Her bastard boyfriend. He’d worn a mask and everything and was waiting for her on her way back from work. He beat her to a pulp, raped her viciously and then left her.’
‘What gave him away?’
‘She did. To start with, when she came round in hospital she said she had no idea who it was, but we could see she was hiding something. Turns out she was terrified that if she named her boyfriend, he would kill her. Finally she caved and told us, but said she wasn’t pressing charges because there was no evidence other than her word.’
Becky leaned back and folded her arms.
‘But we got him. He’d been smart enough to wear a condom, but then stupidly chucked the used one in a bin, fifty metres down the road. Said his girlfriend had it coming to her because of the way she was flirting with other guys in the pub where she works.’
Becky’s lip curled in disgust, and Tom had a quick mental image of the icy determination with which she would have interrogated this guy. For all her personal vulnerability, his inspector had an uncanny ability to get the truth out of people.
‘Anyway, how was the holiday?’ Becky asked.
‘Good, thanks. Leo and I had a few days in Florence, then we went to my cottage in Cheshire. I had a pile of my brother’s papers to sort out, and Leo had to study for an exam, so it was one of those easy weeks that seem to disappear and be gone in no time.’
On the whole, Tom tried to keep his personal life private and had only recently started to occasionally mention Leo to his colleagues. He had been vaguely amused to find that one or two of them hadn’t realised that Leo was short for Leonora, and he’d seen the odd startled expression until Becky put them all straight.
Only a handful of people knew about the Cheshire home that Tom had bought when he left the Met. He rarely mentioned his brother Jack, either, although he knew Becky was aware of the tragic accident that had cut short his life a few years ago, just as she knew Jack had left Tom a fortune from the sale of his internet security business. She never raised the subject, though, unless Tom did.
Tom’s phone interrupted any further discussion about holidays.
‘Tom Douglas,’ he answered. He listened as his boss, Detective Superintendent Philippa Stanley, gave him the kind of news that he hated more than any other. His cheery mood disappeared in a flash.
He hung up the phone. ‘Grab your coat, Becky. We’ve got a body, and I’m sorry to say it’s a young girl, barely in her teens by all accounts.’
2
For once, Tom had relinquished control and agreed that Becky could drive them to the scene, but he regretted that decision a few minutes into the journey. Becky’s one-handed steering and apparent lack of regard for other motorists had been a bone of contention between them since they first met, and nothing had changed. He had tried to get her on to an advanced driving course, but she couldn’t see the need. As she said, she had never had an accident, and Tom could only assume it was because everybody saw her coming and simply got out of her way.
Now, as they screeched to a halt on a long straight road behind several other police vehicles, he was glad to get out of the car.