‘He thinks very highly of you. I understand you got a commendation.’
Nick Rampello had done his homework. The chief constable’s commendation had followed several months of painstaking work tracking down a man indecently exposing himself to schoolchildren. Kelly had taken scores of witness statements, working closely with the Intelligence unit to eliminate known sex offenders and other undesirables on the police radar. Eventually, Kelly had successfully bid to use decoys – a team of undercover surveillance officers deployed to high-risk areas to pose as potential victims – and caught the offender red-handed. She was flattered that Diggers had remembered, and touched that he had smoothed the waters with Nick by singing her praises. The feeling was short-lived.
‘The DCI wants you working with someone else at all times.’ Nothing about his delivery suggested that Nick knew the reason behind Diggers’ condition of Kelly’s secondment, but she wasn’t naive enough to think the two men hadn’t discussed it. She felt her cheeks grow hot and hoped it wasn’t obvious to Nick, and to Lucinda, who was listening with interest. ‘So you can work with me.’
‘With you?’ Kelly had assumed she’d be paired with a DC. Was it Diggers who had decided the DI would need to keep an eye on her, or Nick himself? Was she really that much of a liability?
‘You might as well learn from the best.’ Nick winked at her.
‘Cocky bastard,’ Lucinda said. Nick shrugged in an I can’t help it if I’m brilliant way, and Kelly couldn’t help but smile. Lucinda was right, he was cocky, but at least he could laugh at himself.
‘Have you sponsored me, Luce?’ Nick said, and Kelly realised – not without some relief – that their conversation was over.
‘I gave it to you weeks ago!’
‘That was for the Great North Run. This is for the Great South Run.’ He looked at Lucinda, whose arms were crossed tightly across her chest. ‘Think of the children, Lucinda. Those little orphaned children …’
‘Oh fine! Put me down for a fiver.’
‘Per mile?’ Nick grinned. Lucinda gave him a stern look. ‘Cheers. Right, I need an update. On the face of it there’s nothing to link Tania Beckett and Cathy Tanning apart from the adverts, but I want to know if we’re missing something.’
‘Put the kettle on and break open that secret stash of Hobnobs, and I’ll fill you in at briefing.’
‘What secret stash?’ Nick began, but Lucinda gave him a withering stare.
‘I’m an analyst, Inspector,’ she raised an eyebrow as she stressed his rank, ‘you can’t hide anything from me.’ She returned to her desk, and Kelly risked a smile.
‘If you point me in the direction of the kitchen, I’ll make the tea.’
Nick Rampello looked at her appraisingly. ‘You’ll go far. Out in the lobby, second door on the right.’
By the end of Kelly’s first day she was intimately acquainted with the kettle. Between rounds of tea-and-coffee-making she had read through the case papers and at 5 p.m. she headed to the incident room with Nick and Lucinda, and a smattering of people to whom she had been introduced and whose names she had instantly forgotten. Several free chairs littered the briefing room, but most people were standing, their restlessness a not-particularly subtle message that they had more important things to be getting on with. Nick Rampello was having none of it.