‘Don’t say anything,’ hisses Harriet, like an angry swan. ‘Don’t fucking say anything until we’re in my fucking office.’ Manon is right behind her as she pelts up the staircase. Those, she thinks, are some mightily clenched buttocks.
Once in her office, Harriet turns, breathless. ‘Fuckety, fuckety fucking fuck,’ she says. ‘Right, I’ve thought of a name for this case. We’re calling it Operation Career Fucking Suicide.’
‘Let’s just calm down,’ says Manon. ‘So he was at the theatre with the Home Secretary. All that means is that his alibi probably stacks up.’
‘Ye think?’ says Harriet.
‘It probably is quite tight, to be fair,’ says Davy.
Manon and Harriet look at each other, Harriet turning up her palms.
‘Right,’ she says, ‘so if we thought the press were all over it before, we should see what happens when they get hold of this. Not just the Royal Family, but “did the Home Secretary interfere with the investigation in any way?” Well, that’ll be the Guardian. Before I know it, I’ll be in front of some sodding select committee at the House of Commons having my career buried under a steaming pile of procedure. I predict a call from Galloway to the Commissioner in—’ she looks at her watch – ‘oooh, the next couple of hours?’
This was the nightmare of being the SIO: pressure from every quarter, having to make decisions about which lines to investigate in what order of priority, trying to work out which information is important and which can be discarded, and all those decisions being scrutinised from above and often from outside.
‘Let’s not get bamboozled by Ian Hind,’ says Manon. ‘We still need to confirm their movements.’
This appears to have a calming effect on Harriet, who takes a deep breath and allows her shoulders to drop.
‘Yes, right. You’re right. Let’s put a call in to Galloway’s security detail. I want you two to drive out and scope this country pile, Deeping. See if that key’s been disturbed. And I want CCTV from the Post Office on the first of December – see who was looking over Edith’s shoulder when she picked up all that cash. Get Kim to check whether the landlord was paid his rent. I’m assuming he was interviewed during house to house. This is looking more like aggravated burglary by the minute.’
Manon and Davy make for the door.
‘And from now on,’ Harriet calls after them, ‘we treat Sir Bufton Tufton downstairs with the utterly slavish deference he so richly deserves.’
On one of the rare occasions Harriet had come to Cromwell’s and got drunk, she’d told Manon she had two consolations in life: swearing and Elsie.
Elsie was ninety-three with Parkinson’s. She lived in a care home, which had been raided by Harriet during an investigation into abuse of the elderly. Elsie had been in better shape then, standing with the help of a frame in the pink, over-heated hallway. She’d regarded Harriet with beady, critical eyes – they all saw it. It was as if the team stood still, as Harriet and the old girl locked on to each other. Some enchanted evening.
Elsie shuffled into the room to be interviewed, her shins thick, the colour of pine in tan tights, chenille slippers on her rigid, calcified feet. Harriet asked Elsie if she had been mistreated by any of the staff at the home. ‘Don’t be silly,’ Elsie barked, and Harriet had been momentarily chastened. The balance of power was all with Elsie, who snapped and criticised (‘Ever done this before, dearie?’), but Harriet persisted. Nightgowns removed how? What if the soup was unfinished? And if you wet the bed?
Gradually it emerged that Elsie believed her forgetfulness merited the odd slap. Her shaking hands drove them mad, you see. She couldn’t dress any more – well, that’s bound to get their backs up. Who’d want to dress a scrawny old bird like me?
Harriet said to leave it there just for now, and she fled the room. When Manon next saw her, she was leaning against a panda car, smoking a cigarette, looking furious and tearful at the same time. This is what Manon likes most about Harriet – no, not likes, understands: she isn’t on an even keel. She feels the work in every fibre and it hurts her.
‘I’m going to shut that fucking place down,’ she said, the cigarette tight between her fingers. ‘And that manager’s going to prison.’
Harriet got Elsie out of there by nightfall, much as she protested. The care home was taken over by new owners and the manager received a year’s sentence for wilful neglect, which was suspended ‘for previous good character’, so she walked free, confirming all Harriet’s suspicions that the courts are ‘a fucking joke’.