Page 62 of Dead Fall

‘Right outside,’ he said, frowning, like it was a stupid question. ‘Warrant card on the dash.’

Totally against the rules, of course.

She rolled her eyes. ‘Coffee?’

‘Do you have any herbal tea?’ he asked, patting his paunch. ‘I’m still fighting the flab.’

Streaky’s smart new dark-blue suit was a major improvement on his vintage brown number even if the overall look was somewhat marred by the scrap of toilet tissue he’d stuck to a razor cut on his upper lip.

When she came back into the living room with his tea, they sat either side of the coffee table. One arm stretched along the back of her sofa, he cast an admiring look around. ‘You got the piano nobile. Nice.’

‘I .?.?. I don’t speak Italian.’

‘The literal translation is “noble floor”. It’s what architects called the first floor of these big townhouses,’ he told her, before sipping his tea. ‘The basement was the engine room, manned by the poor old servants, the ground floor was for daily life, but this floor was for entertaining the most important guests. It always had the highest ceiling, the biggest windows, and the grandest fittings’ – nodding to the imposing marble fireplace.

‘How do you know all this?’ – trying to keep the disbelief out of her voice.

‘Oh, that was my misspent youth in Hong Kong. I was posted there when I was in the forces. It was considered a cushy posting, but you had to have an outside interest or you’d go nuts. So while courting my wife I also studied for a history of art degree at evening classes.’

Blimey O’Reilly, as her father had been fond of saying.

‘Army?’ she asked, her gaze drawn to the framed photo of Pops on the mantelpiece, off duty and in his gardening gear, a lifetime ago.

Following her gaze, Streaky stood to look more closely at the picture. ‘That’s an entrenching tool he’s got there!’ he said, sending her a delighted look. ‘Were you an army brat?’

She nodded, amused by his evident delight. ‘Six schools in the space of five years before getting sent to boarding school at twelve.’

‘Same as me,’ he said with a grin.

Worried that he might ask about Pops – too personal – she changed the subject. ‘So, we’ve proved that Ethan lied to us about his whereabouts the day of Bronte’s death.’

Streaky nodded. ‘Which is a start, but clearly he could’ve given her the sodding book any time that evening, hours before she died. We need something to put him at the flat later that night. And we still have no clue what he might have fed her to trigger the anaphylaxis.’

‘Her mother was all over what she ate, so you’d think she would know if she’d had a reaction before,’ said Flyte, frowning.

‘Does she strike you as a control freak?’ mused Streaky.

‘Maybe. Or maybe just overprotective? She had already lost one child remember.’ Picturing Poppy, Flyte could absolutely understand how the loss might make her a neurotic mother next time round. If there was ever to be a next time. Which, now she was sliding towards forty, looked less likely with every passing year.

She gathered their cups up. ‘I like the new suit, by the way,’ she said. ‘Very smart.’

‘If I commented on your appearance HR would have me up on a charge,’ he said, pulling what she now recognised as his wind-up grin.

‘Hardly,’ she said, thinking of the hundreds of sexual assaults by male cops on their female colleagues – and even against victims of crime – that were starting to emerge: crimes that had largely gone unpunished. But debating the patriarchal structures of the Met with Streaky would be a hiding to nothing, as her pops would have said.

‘How did you know it was a new suit, anyway?’ asked Streaky.

She pointed to his left cuff which bore the remains of the stitch where the label had been attached.

‘Busted,’ he sighed. ‘The wife insisted on a trip to M & S last night’ – looking mournful.

‘Job interview? Not that it’s any of my business.’

He hesitated. ‘Strictly entre nous and not for the ears of the team, I’m being measured up to head the new Major Crimes team that Borough is putting together.’

Flyte dropped her gaze. She had no wish to revisit her role in the meltdown of the old Major Crimes unit. Despite spending her entire career in the police service – straight out of university – her profound disillusionment with the Met had made her departure inevitable. But she still missed being a detective every day.

The opening bars of ‘London Calling’ by The Clash sounded on Streaky’s phone.

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