weary.
âKate! Thanks for getting back to me,â she said.
âSorry? I didnât know youâd been trying to get hold of me,â I replied, shuffling the papers on my desk in case Iâd missed a message.
âI spoke to your machine an hour or so ago. When I heard what had happened to Richard,â Della said. âI just wanted you to know that I donât believe a word of it.â
I felt a lump in my throat, so I swallowed hard and concentrated very hard on the jar of pencils by my phone. âMe neither,â I said. âDel, I know itâs not your manor, but I need all the help I can get on this one.â
âGoes without saying, Kate. Look, itâs not going to be easy for me to get access to the case information or any forensic evidence, but Iâll do what I can,â she promised.
âI appreciate that. But donât put your own head in the noose in the process,â I added. No matter how much they spend on advertising to tell us different, anyone who has any contact with real live police officers know that The Job is still a white, patriarchal, rigidly
hierarchical organization. That makes life especially hard for women who refuse to be shunted into the ghetto of community liaison and get stuck in at the sharp end of crime fighting.
âDonât worry about me. Iâll find out whoâs on the team and see who I know. Meanwhile, is there anything specific I can help you with?â
âI need a general backgrounder on crack. How much there is of it around, where itâs turning up, who they think is pushing the stuff, how itâs being distributed. Anything there is, including gossip. Off the record, of course. Any chance?â I asked.
âGive me a few hours. Can you meet me around seven?â
I pulled a face. âOnly if you can get to the airport,â I said. âI have a plane to meet.â
âNo problem.â
âOh yes it is. Richardâs sonâs going to be on it. And the one thing he mustnât find out is that his dadâs in the nick on drugs charges.â
âAh,â Della said. It was a short, clipped exclamation.
âI take it that response means you donât want to share the childminding?â
âCorrect. Count me out. Look, Iâll dig up all I can and meet you at Domestic Arrivals in Terminal I, at the coffee counter, just as you come in. Around quarter to seven, OK?â
I didnât want to wait that long, but Della wasnât the sort to hang around either. If quarter to seven was when she wanted to meet, then quarter to seven was the soonest she could see me with the information I needed. âIâll see you then. Oh, one other thing. I donât think itâs got anything to do with the drugs, but there was a Polaroid picture of a young kid in handcuffs, you know, bondagestyle, in the car. Probably just dropped by one of the villains. But maybe you could ask around and see if thereâs anybody that Vice have in the frame for pedophilia whoâs also got form for drugs.â
âCan do.â
âAnd Della?â
âMmm?â
âThanks.â
âYou know what they say. A friend in need â¦â
âIs a pain in the ass,â I finished. âSee you.â I put the phone down. At last I felt things were starting to move.
The conversation with Della had reminded me of the part of the problem Iâd deliberately been ignoring. Davy. Not that he was in himself a problem. Itâs just that I wasnât very good at keeping eight-year-old boys happy when I was eight myself, and I havenât improved with age. According to Richard, Davy was the only good thing to come out of his three-year marriage, and his ex-wife Angie seemed more determined with each passing year to reduce his contact with the only child he was likely to have if he stayed with me. So it was imperative that Davy didnât go back from his half-term holiday with