Daniel had been away from Dimmock High for two years: most of its twelve-year-olds had no idea who he was. Chalmers introduced him without much explanation then left them to it. But he didn't go far. He checked out Daniel's progress five times in as many minutes; three in the next ten; and then, with no sign of problems, ventured as far as the staff room for a cup of tea.
When he got back this was what he saw: Daniel with his jacket off and his shirt-sleeves pushed up, expressive hands helping to tell the story, calculations and a diagram of the Solar System up on the board, and thirty-odd children vying to answer questions.
‘Oh yes,’ Des Chalmers murmured to himself, ‘you can still do it.’
Afterwards, back in his office, he asked Daniel how the lesson had gone.
The smile stole across his face again, touching his homely features with pixie-dust. ‘I've missed it so much. Even when I knew I couldn't do it, didn't even want to try, I always missed it. Teaching is like learning afresh every day. I love maths – but I only remember just how much when I try to pass it on to someone else.’
Chalmers thought for a few moments before he said anything more. But only a few. ‘Are you ready to come back?’
‘Yes,’ said Daniel immediately.
‘I told you your job would be here when you wanted it. I meant that. You know I can always use a decent maths teacher. Start on Monday if you want. Just a couple of classes a day, if you like, to see how you get on.’
‘I can do a full week. I don't need protecting any more.’
Chalmers chuckled at the glow in his face. ‘Of course you do, Daniel – you're a national treasure. Tell me: what does Mrs Farrell think about you coming back to work?’
The merest flicker of uncertainty crossed the pale eyes behind Daniel's thick glasses. ‘Ask me again on Monday. I haven't told her yet.’
‘She'll be thrilled,’ Chalmers predicted confidently. ‘Of course she will. Why wouldn't she be?’
‘Yes, of course she will,’ nodded Daniel. ‘But first she'll be surprised.’
‘She doesn't think you're ready?’
‘Oh yes – she thought so before I did. She'll be surprised I didn't consult her before coming to see you.’
It wasn't a criticism. It was a little glimpse for Chalmers, as through the window of a moving train, into the heart of other people's lives. Like the past, like a foreign country, Daniel Hood and Brodie Farrell did things differently. ‘She's been a good friend to you,’ commented the Principal. ‘She cares what happens to you.’
‘She
has
been a good friend,’ Daniel agreed warmly. ‘I don't think I'd have survived without her. But…’
Chalmers thought he understood. ‘It's time to stand on your own two feet?’
Daniel considered. ‘In a way. Hell's bells,’ he snorted in exasperation, ‘this is nothing to do with what I came here for. But you've been a good friend to me too, Des, and maybe I don't owe you an explanation but it's good to confide in someone. Things are a bit different between us now. Things I would have said to her, only a few months ago, now… It's different. Not in a bad way. Just…’
Chalmers had his head cocked like a curious parrot. ‘Daniel – are you trying to tell me you two are now an item?’
‘No,’ Daniel said quickly. ‘I mean, if it was up to me… But no. Only…’
‘You're in love,’ said Chalmers plainly. Nothing in his tone or his eyes suggested this was as absurd as all Daniel's
instincts told him it was. Of course, Des Chalmers was a head teacher – he was good at hiding what he thought.
Daniel gave a little lop-sided shrug. ‘I suppose so. Yes, I think that's what it is.’
The older man grinned broadly. ‘Well, you may have been off work but you've not been wasting your time. Can we expect to hear wedding bells?’
‘I shouldn't think so,’ said Daniel glumly. ‘What I want and what Brodie wants aren't the same thing. I want to marry her. She wants to know that I'm eating enough and not reading
The Astronomer
under the bedclothes when I'm supposed to be asleep.’
Chalmers laughed out loud. T always say, a man can never have too many mothers. Hang on in there, stud, you'll work it out.’
Never in his entire life before had Daniel been addressed as Stud. ‘Of course we will.’ And he knew that they would, just not necessarily how he hoped. ‘At least now I can support a family.’
‘Go tell her,’ advised Des Chalmers. ‘And if she allows you, I'll see you on Monday.’
Detective Superintendent Jack Deacon, alone in the quiet of his office at the top of the police station in Battle Alley, had women on his mind. Two of them, and he didn't know what either of them wanted. This made him very uneasy. He was not now, at the age of forty-eight, and never had been a ladies’ man. They really were from Venus, so far as he could work out. There was no metaphor involved.
He'd been married to one once, but all the experience had taught him was how deep was the well of his incomprehension. Every time he thought he'd learnt something, finally got something right, fresh enigmas rushed to fill the vacuum. She left him, ostensibly, because of the strain his work put on the marriage. When he'd got over the shock, and found out how the washing-machine worked, and tracked down suppliers of non-trendy, non-healthy, nonPC food and drink, in the privacy of his own skull he was glad she'd gone. He faced puzzles all day, every day: he didn't need them waiting at home as well. At least there were answers to the ones at work, and he was paid to look for them.
So for fifteen years now he'd lived alone, and for much of that time his closest companion had been the world's most evil
cat, a devil-eyed, cauliflower-eared torn who never answered to the name of Dempsey. But for something over a year there'd been a woman as well, and he didn't understand her any better than the first but he did like having her around. And for a lot of that time the feeling seemed – inexplicably – to be mutual.
Then once again fate had wee'd in his slippers. Things had come between them that could not be resolved and could not be ignored, and they'd gone their separate ways. This time Deacon had nothing but regrets, and knew he always would. Because he couldn't see them getting together again, even though he had and would have no one else and, so far as he knew, at least in the conventional sense, neither had Brodie. Toying with the memo on the pad on his desk, he still doubted that a reconciliation was her reason for asking to see him.
He didn't know why Alix Hyde wanted to see him either, but he knew it was business and therefore firmer ground for him. She was Detective Inspector Hyde, of the Serious Organised Crime Agency, and whatever it was she wanted to talk about it wouldn't be her feelings, his feelings, or how doing the right things for the wrong reasons is worse than doing the wrong things for the right reasons. In short, Alix Hyde might be a woman by accident of birth but she was a police officer by definition and that made her someone he could work with.
When the front desk phoned to say she'd arrived he went downstairs to meet her. He didn't have massive expectations. TV drama was, in his experience, unrealistic about how much glamour can be fielded with the time and energy left to a police officer of either sex at the end of the working day. In
practice, male detectives tend to look as if they've slept in their clothes – often because they have – and their female colleagues as if their priorities are comfortable shoes and washable trousers.
For all Deacon knew, Detective Inspector Hyde's shoes were supremely comfortable and her trousers could be boiled if the need arose. It didn't matter: no one would be looking at her feet.
She came forward like a man, handshake first. ‘Alix Hyde. Good to meet you, Detective Superintendent Deacon.’ There was something mannish about her voice too, pitched half an octave below where you expected. It was probably no more than a reflection of her body type, as tall as Brodie and more sturdily built – but it was unusual, unsettling even, and…what was that word?…Deacon knew it as well as he knew his own name…hell, lots of people thought it
was
his name… Ah yes. Sexy.
He took her hand and by now was unsurprised by the strength of her grip. It went with the height, the voice and the short, ruthlessly styled hair, somewhere between brown and blonde and flecked with grey. She might have been forty, and she didn't dye the grey hairs because she didn't care who knew. Deacon found that reassuring in a woman. It spoke of the triumph of confidence over anxiety, of someone not so much growing older as growing up.
He realised he was still holding her hand and dropped it abruptly. God knows what kind of a rube she took him for. He'd heard of a thing called a practised smile and tried for that; but he hadn't had enough practice so it came over as a leer. ‘Anything for SOCA, Inspector.’
All the way up the stairs, and there were four flights, he was fighting the urge to make the obvious comment. She must have heard it so often. She must be ready to deck anyone who thought it was original and clever and too good to keep to himself. And he almost made it. But the silence stretched, and you have to say something, and Deacon was never any good at small talk. As he opened his door for her he did the crocodile smile again and said, ‘And are you, Inspector? Serious and organised?’
Somehow she refrained from kicking his shin. But he heard the disappointed sigh. ‘Not particularly,’ she said. ‘And hardly at all.’
‘Me neither,’ admitted Deacon, though she might have guessed from the state of his in-tray. Not because it was over-flowing: it wasn't. The papers in it were surprisingly tidy, either sorted into files or held together with bulldog clips. What was significant about Deacon's in-tray was not its contents but that it balanced precariously on top of four or five others in a stack half a metre high, like ancient cities built each on the ruins of the last. Tel Deacon. Detective Sergeant Voss, who kept the habitation level in order, declined responsibility for excavating the foundations, some of which had been here longer than he had. He said it was a Health & Safety issue and would require pit-props.
Deacon moved another pile of papers onto the floor to enable his visitor to sit. Though it wasn't a huge office it would have been big enough for anyone else. But Jack Deacon took up a lot of space, physically – he was both tall and heavy – and also psychologically. When he walked into a room he filled it. He had the same kind of presence as a bull or a bear
– indeed, colleagues referred to him, with varying degrees of affection, as The Grizzly. Even when he wasn't doing anything, he wore the potential for explosive action like a cloak. Riotous assemblies quietened down when he walked past. Having fists the size of butchers’ hams didn't hurt.
‘Sorry,’ he said belatedly. ‘Around here, that's what passes for wit.’
She grinned at that. ‘Here, and every other police station I've been in this last twelve months.’
To be fair, she wasn't a beauty, probably wasn't even as a girl. Perhaps she was handsome; perhaps it would be more accurate to say that she was attractive, because attractiveness goes beyond appearance and speaks also of the personality, the intellect, even the soul. Deacon couldn't put his finger on what it was but – like the joke – he knew he wasn't the first man to spot it.
He gave himself a mental shake. This wasn't why either of them was here. ‘So how can I help, Inspector Hyde?’
‘This is a courtesy call,’ she said, ‘in a way. I'm after one of your local villains and it seemed only polite to let you know. And also…’ And there she stopped.
Deacon frowned. ‘What?’
The strong lines of Alix Hyde's face twisted momentarily in a gargoyle grimace. ‘It might be awkward. You know the man.’
‘I should hope I do,’ grunted Deacon. ‘I should hope I know every villain within a thirty mile radius who's big enough for SOCA to have got wind of.’
‘Yes, of course.’ But there was something she wasn't saying, something she felt the need to be tactful about. ‘I mean personally. Don't read any more into this, and don't think I'm
reading any more into it, but you personally know him personally. I wanted to be sure that wasn't going to be a problem.’
Now Deacon knew what she was pussy-footing around. ‘You're talking about Terry Walsh.’
She nodded. ‘I'm told – and I may have been told wrong -you were friends once.’
For a moment Deacon didn't react, left her guessing. Then he sniffed disparagingly. ‘You weren't told wrong. You may have been misled. I knew him when we were boys. His family lived in the next street to us. We went to the same school, played for the same football team – it was that sort of friendship. Long but not particularly close. I moved down here – what? – ten years ago now. A few years later Terry bought a site up on the Firestone Cliffs and built that damn mansion of his. I think he was as surprised to see me as I was to see him.’
‘He's done well for himself,’ said Inspector Hyde guardedly.
Deacon gave a sharkish grin, at once more honest and more attractive than his Cary Grant impression. ‘No, Inspector,
Vve
done well for myself. Terry has made more money, but he hasn't done it legally. There's a difference.’
She nodded appreciatively. ‘Indeed there is. About eight years, with good behaviour. I take it, then, you've no problem with me going after him?’
‘Of course I haven't,’ he assured her. ‘We could have been a lot better friends and I'd still help you bust him if the evidence was there.’
Alix Hyde raised an eyebrow. ‘You're saying it isn't?’
‘I'm saying Terry Walsh is a clever man, and a careful man.
I know he didn't make that kind of money by diligent endeavour. A lot of police officers have reached the same conclusion over the years, but none of us has been able to bring him down. I'm not saying you won't, and I'm certainly not saying you shouldn't try, but don't think it'll be easy. Terry came from nowhere with nothing. Even then he could outsmart just about anyone else. Imagine how much better he is after thirty years’ practice. Good luck to you, Inspector -you'll need it.’
She rocked a broad, perfectly manicured hand. ‘Well – I have some ideas about that. This isn't just housekeeping. I didn't get a memo from Head Office telling me it was time someone had another go at Terry Walsh. I wouldn't be here if I didn't think I had a good chance of getting him. I think this time he's going down. But I would appreciate your support.’