Tony Hill u Carol Jordan 08 - Cross and Burn

every day? You think he’s not torn apart with guilt? I’ve watched him suffer his own sense of failure. Believe me, Carol, you can’t load more blame on him than he does on himself. How long is this going to go on? His shame and your blame? Are you going to let this define the rest of your lives? Because from where I’m standing, frankly, it’s a colossal waste of two people’s lives.’ It was out before Paula knew she was going to say it. Challenging Carol wasn’t something she’d been able to do in the past; the obligations of rank had always been the final stumbling block.
    ‘It’s none of your business, Paula.’ Carol walked out of the room, through to the barn. The dog gave Paula a baleful look then went after Carol into the chill.
    Paula hung her head and sighed. ‘Blew that one,’ she said under her breath. She waited to see whether Carol was coming back, but she was out of luck. So she returned the way she’d come. Carol was standing by a window, staring out at the dark. Paula could see her face in the glass. Her expression was as hard as the reflective surface.
    ‘This is so unfair,’ Paula said. ‘Fielding’s got everything on her side. Me included. And he’s got nothing and nobody. He hasn’t even got a lawyer.’
    ‘I don’t do pity, remember?’
    Paula kicked out at a sawhorse in her frustration then shouted at Carol for the first time in her life. ‘It’s not about pity, for fuck’s sake. It’s about justice. The woman I used to know cared about justice.’ The slam of the door behind her as she left was the only satisfying moment of the whole encounter.

45

    T ony sat on the edge of the narrow ledge that passed for a bed in the Skenfrith Street custody suite, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped. He’d been in police cells before, but only in the course of business. Talking to the damaged, the deranged and the demonised had brought him to places like this, but always with the door open. He’d often tried to put himself in the shoes of the captive, imagining how it must feel when that door slammed shut and they were alone. But he’d always started from a place of empathy – what it would be like for them. As opposed to how he would feel himself.
    Mostly what he felt was uncomfortable. Being on his own in a small space didn’t bother him. For a man who had learned to live on a narrowboat, it was no big deal. The noises-off didn’t bother him either. Working in a secure mental hospital was an inoculation against unexpected and inexplicable human clamour. He wasn’t hungry or thirsty yet, so that wasn’t an issue. But there was no getting away from the discomfort. The bed was hard. There was a thin wafer of foam which he assumed was meant to be a pillow. It was lumpy and peculiarly distorted. Using it was like putting his head on a bag of liquorice allsorts. The physical discomfort made thinking much harder. And thinking was what he needed to do.
    When the custody sergeant had closed the door behind him, Tony had almost expected him to throw it open and shout, ‘Surprise!’ That was how hard it was for him to credit what had happened. All through that bizarre interview with Paula and Alex Fielding, part of him had refused to take it seriously. He couldn’t escape the notion that it was either a wind-up or a terrible mistake that he’d be able to put right in no time. Then it had dawned on him that Fielding was serious. Serious as only someone who didn’t know him could be. Serious as only a detective driven by ambition could be.
    Paula knew. Paula understood that whatever the physical evidence said, it was impossible to envisage him as a killer. But Paula wasn’t the one making the decisions in that interview room. Paula was on trial too, her loyalty to the new boss under fire. Would she follow blindly where the evidence appeared to lead? Or would her fidelity to the old regime undermine Fielding’s determination to get a quick and spectacular resolution to the case? On the walk down to the cells, she’d indicated she was on his side. But she had to be careful. For both their sakes, it was vital that she didn’t get moved off the investigation. And there was only so much good that she could do by stealth.
    Fielding scared him. That rush to judgement, that adamantine certainty that the evidence was king, that unwillingness to twist the Rubik’s cube and look at things from a different angle – they all unsettled him, because there was no room for