Free Cold Pursuit by Judith Cutler Page A

bloke complain yesterday that some streetlights I pressed to haveinstalled in a village that’s been in darkness till now are messing up his stargazing! Karate lessons for all girls? Curfew for all men? Come on, guv, you’re the one in charge of policy decisions!’ She got the laugh she’d set up.
    Jill was doing quite well this morning, Fran thought, but that didn’t mean she could let her off the hook. Any more than TVInvicta were letting Fran off the hook. There was another Post-it waiting on her desk when she arrived shortly after seven-thirty. Mark had grumbled at the earliness of the hour, but since he had to spend the day at the Home Office and needed an early train she had felt able to ignore his protests, especially as she’d dropped him off at the station and promised to collect him that evening.
    She made a point of merely falling into step with Jill as she terminated the briefing. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t available yesterday when you needed me,’ she began, turning towards her office, not Jill’s, ‘but I had a meeting down in Folkestone that took for ever.’ She closed the door behind them before she continued, ‘That’s the problem when the boss isn’t on the premises.’
    ‘Tell me about it. It seems I no sooner leave for a school visit than there’s another crisis in the Incident Room.’
    ‘You’re doing all those yourself? My goodness, Jill, that’s spreading yourself a bit thin! I thought we’d agreed to bring Crime Prevention in on those, by the way.’
    ‘This wasn’t to warn about gropers and flashers! This was to talk about happy-slapping!’ Jill flared. ‘Part of the ongoing investigation into the sort of incident that left you looking like this!’
    ‘Tea or coffee? Do sit down. And try one of those biscuits – they’re home made,’ she said proudly. ‘This weekend I tried my hand at baking for the first time for years.’ She had – when it became quite clear that the perfect house wasn’t going to drop immediately on to their laps. But for the time being she didn’t need Mark to ask her to keep their decision under wraps. ‘I was inspired by Tom Arkwright’s auntie who, I have to admit, does a far better job than I.’
    Jill looked, but didn’t quite dare say, ‘Lucky you to have time even to try.’ She took a biscuit anyway.
    ‘This case getting on top of you? No, no – let me finish, please. How many cases would you say we’ve got here?’
    ‘Two, possibly three.’ She sounded as if she were on solid ground at last. ‘The happy-slapping is a dangerous fad. We’ll identify the perpetrators and charge them, but then what? Criminalise them by asking for a custodial sentence? Tag them? What about a few hours’ community service?’ she demanded ironically. ‘And the problem is, they’re decent kids at heart. Just kids.’
    Fran pricked her ears, but said nothing, nodding sagely as if there were indeed nothing to be said. ‘What about the sex crimes?’
    ‘We’ve got a highly mobile perpetrator of minorones. Masturbation Man keeps popping up all over the place. But he’s never behaved in a truly physically threatening way like he did last night – which is why I wondered if it was really him, or some other bastard jumping on the bandwagon.’
    ‘Nothing on CCTV?’
    ‘It’s as if he knows the locations of all the cameras and waits till he’s out of range. We’ve been able to identify the young women who became his victims, but never him.’
    ‘OK, let’s storm our poor old brains. He fitted the cameras? Or operates them? Or he’s a transvestite?’ At last her teetering walk from the kettle to her desk with two mugs of coffee made Jill laugh. She even made a note on a scrap of paper she stuck into her pocket. ‘You know what I’d want to do in your case?’
    ‘Concentrate on the sex crimes, just in case they escalate. Get all the local heads in at once and talk mobile phones and happy-slapping. Leave investigating your assault to Canterbury.