‘What about your assistant chief cons?’ Monika wondered.

  Louisa laughed. ‘Assistant chief cons?’ she repeated. ‘What assistant chief cons?’

  ‘I don’t know, but surely you must have …’

  ‘We got rid of them during the last reorganization. It’s all in the interest of “economy and efficiency”. This is the new, streamlined police force. Chief supers are now the third tier of management, and whenever the first two tiers can’t fulfil the function they’re overpaid for, we’re expected to step in.’

  Paniatowski chuckled.

  ‘What’s funny?’ Louisa asked.

  ‘The fact that you grumble about having the job foisted on you, when secretly, you’re as chuffed as little apples.’

  ‘Yes, I am pleased – in a way,’ said Louisa, sounding a little shamefaced at being found out. ‘I’ll enjoy the work, and it will be good training for the role I eventually hope to fill – but what I don’t appreciate is people like the chief con avoiding doing the job they’re paid to do.’

  Monika tried to avoid smiling again, but a smile inevitably crept to the corners of her mouth.

  ‘Has something else amused you, Mum?’ Louisa asked, and there was no annoyance in her voice, only curiosity.

  ‘Sort of,’ Monika admitted. ‘I was just contrasting the way of the two of us approach the job.’

  ‘And how do we differ?’ Louisa asked, treating it as a game, while suspecting it might be more than that.

  ‘Well, I can’t know for sure, because I’ve not been there since your rise to eminence, but I see you as being a bit like an admiral, preparing for battle,’

  ‘Go on,’ Louisa said, and now she was grinning,

  ‘You stand on the deck of the flagship, and you take in the whole scene – the deployment of your own forces, and the enemy’s forces, the weather, strategies the enemy has used in the past, the effectiveness of our big guns as compared to their big guns – and until you’ve got a complete picture, you won’t even think of making a move.’

  ‘And how were you different, Mother dear?’

  ‘I was a little less cautious,’ Monika said.

  Louisa’s grin widened. ‘You can say that again! If I’m an admiral, then you were a bloody buccaneer. You’d be as likely to board a ship from a swinging rope as walk up the gangplank. And a lot of the time you wouldn’t know what you were doing there, only that something on this particular ship didn’t feel quite right.’

  ‘That’s true enough,’ Monika admitted.

  ‘It’s ironic really, when you consider that the reason I was so keen to join the force was because I wanted to be just like you. It didn’t take me long to realize I wasn’t. I was competent at questioning witnesses and interrogating suspects, but I had no real flair for it, and I didn’t enjoy it at all. And you’re right – I couldn’t wait to get out of the longboat and on to the quarterdeck. But neither is better than the other. Sometimes your kind of bobby will find the treasure, and sometimes my kind will – so there’s room for both kinds of policing,’

  Maybe there was, Monika thought, but there were a lot less buccaneers around now than there were when she joined the force.

  Louisa glanced down at her watch again.

  ‘There’s something else I wanted to talk about,’ she said. ‘Actually, I should have raised it earlier.’

  Her tone was casual, the words innocent, yet Monika felt a shiver run down her spine.

  ‘Go on,’ she said.

  ‘Do you remember the annex we built on the garden side of the house?’

  ‘Of course I remember it,’ Monika said. ‘I’m not quite senile yet, you know.’

  ‘It’s rather nice, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s very nice.’

  ‘Didn’t you wonder why we had it built?’

  Yes, I did, as a matter of fact, Monika said silently. I was rather hoping that you’d had it built to accommodate the nanny you’d need when you had children. I’m still hoping that, even as your biological clock makes it less and less probable.

  ‘Did you wonder?’ Louisa persisted.

  ‘Not really,’ Monika lied. ‘I just assumed you needed more living space.’

  ‘We had it built then because we thought we might need it in the future, and now Derek thinks the time is right.’

  ‘So you are planning to have babies,’ Monika gushed. ‘I didn’t say anything before, because I didn’t want to pressure you, but I can’t tell you how happy you’ve made me – even if you have left it a bit late.’

  Louisa looked shocked, then confused, then embarrassed,

  ‘We … we had it built for you, Mum,’ Louisa said awkwardly. ‘Derek’s asked me to ask you to move in with us.’

  A studied response – a tactful one – was called for here, Monika thought, perhaps something along the lines of; ‘It’s really very kind of Derek to make the offer, but it wouldn’t be fair on him to have the mother-in-law living so close.’

  That was what it sounded like while it was in her head. What she actually heard herself say – in a voice so rasping and tremulous that she hardly recognized it as her own – was, ‘No!’

  ‘Derek really wants you there,’ Louisa told her. ‘He’d never have made the offer if he hadn’t.’

  ‘It’s a granny flat,’ the wildcat running around Monika’s brain hissed, ‘and I’m not a granny!’

  Did she sound bitter? It was hard not to. She so desperately wanted to be a grandmother, but Derek and Louisa had ruled themselves out, Thomas couldn’t have children without breaking his vows, and as for Philip – well, it would be at least ten years before he was free to even take the first basic steps.

  ‘Was I a good mother?’ she asked.

  Louisa paused for perhaps half a heartbeat before saying, ‘You were a loving mother. I couldn’t have asked for a more loving mother.’

  ‘Answer the question?’ Monika said.

  ‘And you were an understanding one,’ Louisa said. ‘All my friends were always complaining that their mothers never listened to them, but you listened to me, when you were there.’

  When you were there!

  Aye, there’s the rub.

  ‘I know I didn’t spend enough time with you …’ she began.

  ‘You did what you could,’ Louisa interrupted. ‘Look, Mum, if you hadn’t cared about your job so much, you wouldn’t be the person you are – and I love that person. For God’s sake, I followed in your footsteps, didn’t I?’

  No, you didn’t, Monika thought. Not really. We might both have served in the police, but you’re much more detached than I could ever be.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said aloud. ‘I should never have put you in such an awkward position.’

  ‘It’s all right, Mum,’ Louisa assured her. ‘Think nothing of it.’

  ‘You’re very nice to your old mum,’ Monika said humbly.

  But there was a voice in her head screaming, ‘Why won’t you give me grandchildren I could help to bring up? I’d do better next time.’

  A car horn hooted in the street.

  ‘I have to go,’ Louisa said.

  ‘Isn’t Derek coming in?’ Paniatowski asked, because he always spent a few minutes with her when he came to pick his wife up.

  ‘We daren’t risk it,’ Louisa told her. ‘If there’s a traffic jam on the motorway, he could miss his plane.’ She stood up, kissed her mother on the cheek and headed to the door. ‘You will think about what I said, won’t you?’ she asked, before stepping outside.

  ‘Yes, I will,’ Monika replied, knowing that she didn’t mean it, and that Louisa would know that, too.

  The kitchen door closed. Louisa had hardly touched the brandy, probably wise, since she would have to drive back from Manchester. When Monika lifted the vodka bottle from the ice bucket, however, she saw she was already well passed her daily ration.

  ‘You don’t mind if I have another one, do you?’ she asked the kitchen wall.

  And since the wall seemed to have no objections, she poured herself a generous shot.

  Everyone experienced losses in their lives, she thought, and she’d had at least her fair share: there’d been her father, an officer in the Polish cavalry, who had led a gloriously insane charge against Hitler’s tanks; there’d been her mother, whose heart had been broken as she had looked on helplessly while her second husband had sexually assaulted her daughter; Bob Rutter, her lover and also Louisa’s father, who had sacrificed his own life to save the reputation of their beloved boss, Charlie Woodend; Charlie himself, who had retired to Spain and whose comforting presence she still missed …

  She shouldn’t complain. If she hadn’t always had a happy life, she’d at least had an eventful one. And though many waves of misery and despair had washed over her, they seemed like no more than ripples when held up against her precious moments of joy.

  Her retirement, though not sought, had been productive. She worked hard for several charities, lectured in schools and institutions and had become a ferocious bridge player.

  So what did she want in the years left to her?

  She wanted grandchildren!

  Well, it had now been clearly established that wasn’t going to happen.

  A lover, then?

  She had had several affairs since Bob’s death, but fate had always determined that they should not flourish, and though, at the time, she had felt bitter regret, she could feel no such regret looking back.

  So things had worked out about as well as they could have been expected to.

  But late at night, alone in her bed, she would catch herself wishing that she could lead just one more major investigation.

  It was just a fantasy, she told herself. It was never going to happen.

  Yet not four miles from her house, Kate Meadows, a.k.a. Zelda, was walking down an alley leading to a nondescript door, which was the entrance to a place its clients called the Hellfire Club. And every step she took was a step closer to making Monika’s dream a reality.

  FOUR

  The door was in the alley that ran alongside the direct-sale carpet warehouse, and standing in front of the door was a man.

  He was big.

  Actually, big was a bit of an understatement, Meadows thought.

  He had a head the size of a blacksmith’s anvil, and shoulders as wide as a corporation bus. The only thing covering his hairy chest was an open leather jacket from which hung a series of heavy chains. He had a shaven head, and several of his teeth were missing. As a living advertisement for the Hellfire Club, he was more of a deterrent than an inducement – and perhaps that was just what the management intended him to be.

  Meadows walked towards him with a slinky swagger. He didn’t move – showed no sign that he’d even seen her approaching. She came to a halt in front of him – God, he was big – and slotted a cigarette in her mouth.

  ‘Got a light?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t smoke,’ the man said. ‘And neither should you. It’s bad for you.’

  The words sounded convincing enough, but the fact that he had a cigarette smouldering in his right hand seemed to suggest that he wasn’t being entirely truthful.

  ‘I want to come in,’ Meadows said.

  ‘Into where?’ the man asked.

  ‘Into the club.’

  ‘What club?’

  ‘Don’t piss me about,’ Meadows said, in a voice which nicely combined exasperation and menace.

  The man looked her up and down.

  She was wearing her outrageous purple wig, and heavy make-up around the eyes. For her outfit she had selected a tight leather corset, a black skirt and the shoes she had been wearing in her encounter with Lofthouse.

  It was clear that he liked what he saw, but not enough to grant her carte blanche.

  ‘I’ve not seen you round here before,’ he said.

  ‘Around where?’

  ‘Around the club.’

  ‘Ah, so now there is a club.’

  ‘The thing is, the management’s a bit cagey about me letting in people I don’t know,’ the bouncer said.

  ‘Maybe you do know me, if only by reputation,’ she suggested. ‘My name, once darkness has fallen, is Zelda.’

  The bouncer whistled. ‘Well, I’ve certainly heard of her, but, you know, you don’t look anything like how I expected her to look.’

  Meaning he would have expected someone well over the minimum height for a policewoman – someone a little less elfin.

  ‘I’m Zelda,’ Meadows repeated, flatly – as if she found the conversation both boring and unnecessary.

  The bouncer chuckled, ‘Nice try, love, but Zelda is a bit of a legend on the circuit, and—’

  ‘I’ll stay here until somebody comes along who can identify me,’ Meadows said, ‘and when they do, you’ll have to let me in, won’t you?’

  ‘I suppose I would – if that was what actually happened,’ the bouncer conceded.

  ‘But before I go inside, I’ll make you get down on your knees and lick my shoes clean.’

  A look of excitement came to the bouncer’s eyes.

  ‘But you won’t enjoy it, because I’ll order you not to,’ Meadows said harshly. ‘And if I do that, you’ll never dare to, will you?’

  ‘Do you really think you could make me go down on my knees?’ the bouncer repeated, fighting back valiantly.

  ‘I know I could,’ the petite woman said with absolute certainty. ‘And you know it, too.’

  The bouncer bit his lip, then forced a smile to his face, as if to indicate they were old friends, and none of this had been any more than merry banter.

  ‘In you go, Zelda,’ he said, indicating the door with one of his great thick thumbs.

  ‘Who do I pay?’ Meadows asked.

  ‘There’s a bucket just inside,’ the bouncer said. ‘You’re supposed to put twenty-five quid in – but why don’t you have this one on me?’

  ‘I’ll pay my own way,’ Meadows told him, reaching into the concealed pocket in her wig, where she kept her cash.

  The club ran the length of the cellar under the carpet salesroom, and was mostly lit by subdued lighting. There must have been ventilation of some sort, but it was of the minimal kind, and the walls dripped with condensation. Nobody there seemed to mind the oppressive, sticky heat, because if it was a cosy, comfortable evening you were after, there was always the Prince Albert bar of the Royal Victoria, and down here they liked it a little rougher.

  Meadows walked over to the bar. The counter area was bathed – though perhaps drenched would have been a better word – in a harsh purple light which was the product of a dozen naked neon tubes. The barman himself looked surprisingly ordinary, but may have had hidden depths of kinkiness.

  ‘I’ll have a double whiskey,’ Meadows told him.

  She had no intention of drinking any of it, but if she’d ordered a fruit juice, chances were she’d have scared off any potential partners for the evening.

  The barman poured the drink, and quoted her a price which, not too long ago, would have been enough to buy a terraced house in some parts of Whitebridge.

  ‘I’ll pay for the lady’s drink,’ a man’s voice said, ‘if that’s all right with the lady.’

  She turned to look at him. He was tall and well-muscled, and, if his bare chest was anything to go, not overly hairy. He was wearing a velvet mask which covered everything but his eyes and mouth, and based on what she could see of him she judged him to be in his late thirties. In a more conventional relationship, the age gap would probably have mattered, but in the world of pain it was how you inflicted or bore suffering that mattered.

  ‘It’s all right with me,’ she told him.

  ‘Why don’t we go into one of the alcoves and talk about what we’re going to do to each other,’ he said, when he’d bought the drink.

  ‘You want to plan it out?’ she asked.

  He nodded. ‘I like to know where we’re going, and anticipation is half of the pleasure.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ she agreed.

  He walked with a slight limp, she noted, but she suspected it was less a disability and more as a result of a recent injury.

  When they sat down in the alcove, he said, ‘Tell me about yourself.’

  This was starting to feel wrong. That wasn’t one of the questions he should be asking, and his voice sounded unnatural, as if he was doing his best to disguise it.

  ‘I don’t like to get personal,’ she told him. ‘My name’s Zelda. That’s all you need to know.’

  ‘So I wonder what you do for a living,’ the man continued, as if she’d never spoken. ‘I’d guess you were some kind of social worker.’

  Meadows stood up. ‘Thanks for the drink, but I think we’ve gone as far together as we’re going,’ she said.

  The man grabbed her arm, and held it in a tight grip. ‘Sit down again,’ he rasped.

  ‘You’re hurting me,’ Meadows told him.

  ‘I thought that’s what you were here for,’ the man replied.

  ‘Not that kind of pain – and if you don’t let go, I’ll hurt you a lot more than you’re hurting me.’

  The man released his grip. ‘All right, I won’t force you,’ he promised. ‘But I really do think you should sit down anyway, Ms Meadows MBE.’

  ‘How did you …?’

  The man chuckled, though there was very little genuine amusement behind it. ‘It was the shoes I recognized first, but until I started talking to you, I couldn’t be absolutely sure,’ he explained. ‘Now, sit down!’

  She sat down. ‘What do you want, Mr Lofthouse?’ she asked.

  ‘We’ll come to that later,’ Lofthouse said, revelling in the power they both knew he had. ‘Don’t you find it strange, Kate – I can call you Kate, can’t I? – don’t you find it strange that a woman whose job it is to protect battered women enjoys being a battered woman herself?’

  ‘It’s not the same thing,’ Meadows said.

  ‘I know it isn’t,’ Lofthouse agreed. ‘But will your board of governors see the distinction? Will they be willing to accept that the warden of their hostel should visit a place like this?’