“Thanks,” he pulled her in for a farewell kiss and watched her run out of the front door.
Looking back at the screen, he pinched the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger as he watched the end of the interview.
“Naturally, the police have deferred to our team of experts to assist them in the excavation of the site where the body of Amy Llewellyn was found.”
Nicely done, he acknowledged. Professor Freeman had managed to make his team of experienced detectives sound like a bunch of amateurs whilst simultaneously claiming oversight of the excavation, thereby solidifying her own sterling reputation.
He had learned a few interesting titbits about the good professor this morning, he thought, and the most important was the fact that she was an operator.
“Our hearts go out to her family. Of course, it is significant that she was found inside this ancient wall, which has been the stuff of myth and legend for thousands of years. Who knows what other secrets may be revealed, in time?”
Ryan could feel his temper rising, inch by inch. He had made it very clear that any media communication would be handled by his department. As the Senior Investigating Officer, it was for him to decide what information should be divulged to the general public and he was never in favour of the kind of sensationalist commentary that Professor Freeman seemed happy to dole out to the press.
He felt his mobile phone vibrating inside his trouser pocket and placed odds on it being either Phillips or Gregson. He glanced at the screen.
Phillips.
He slipped the phone back inside his pocket. Frank would be calling to break the good news to him – ha ha – but since he already knew about the Professor’s busy-work that morning, that chat could wait until he was back in the office.
He turned to face another day.
Ryan’s stride through the corridors of CID Headquarters slowed only briefly to pour some indifferent coffee into a mug emblazoned with a picture of himself and Phillips, superimposed onto the bodies of Batman and Robin.
It had been a novelty Christmas present.
He carried it with him along the long, familiar corridors with their industrial-beige walls, cheap linoleum floors and faint scent of bleach, into the open-plan Incident Room that housed his team. They had done their best to cheer up the ugly décor of the conference space; there were dying ferns on the windowsills and framed photographs of family on a few of the desks. In a surprising move, he had softened the starkness of his own desk by the addition of a small, silver-framed portrait of Anna and him, taken on a trip to his parents’ home on the south coast. It had been a perfect day, balmy sunlight shimmering over the harbour in St Ives and his mother – ever the paparazzo – had caught their laughter as they stood looking out to sea. The memory of it softened the day job and he found himself glancing at the little frame whenever the relentlessness of murder, or rape, or some other violence threatened to engulf him.
As he muscled through the double swing doors he assessed the people already sitting at their desks, which were scattered in a rough semicircle facing the large board at the front.
MacKenzie was absent, which was no surprise. She would be up at Sycamore Gap, giving the Professor a few choice words regarding her little performance on the breakfast news, then supervising further excavation with hawk-eyed concentration. He had favoured the Professor with a few expletives of his own, over the telephone on his way into the office. He wasn’t entirely convinced that his authority was accepted, which was a mild irritation. It wasn’t that he needed the ego boost; he needed to be sure that each and every member of his team read from the same page. Judging from the news report, Freeman must have contacted the reporters as soon as the police staff had packed up yesterday and that kind of underhand manoeuvre didn’t sit well with him. It added to the burden of their investigation, knowing that he would need to keep her on a short leash.
Phillips was tapping away on his desk computer with two forefingers. Slow, but methodical, that was Frank. Sensing that he was under observation, he looked up, ventured a cheerful ‘Morning!’ and raised his own coffee cup in salute. Frank’s choice of tie – a garishly bright blue speckled with large red ladybirds – led Ryan safely to presume that he had managed to patch things up with MacKenzie since the previous day’s mishap.
“Take it you caught the news?” Phillips bellowed across the room, uncaring of conversations carrying on around him.
Ryan grunted and took a swallow of his coffee.
“Pain in the arse,” Phillips added, for good measure.
“That’s putting it lightly. I doubt the victim’s family will take kindly to their daughter’s remains being used as a promotional tool for National Heritage.”