“If those bastards choose someone else to take over, you know what I’ll do? I’ll quit, I mean it! I’ll throw in the towel, because if I don’t get the case—I mean, with Shefford dead it leaves only four on the AMIT team, and I know the other three are working, so they’d have to bring in someone from outside. And if they do, I quit. Then I’ll take them to a fucking tribunal and show them all up for the fucking chauvinist pigs they are! Bastard chauvinists, terrified of giving a woman a break because she might just prove better than any of them! I hate the fuckers . . .”

Tentatively, Peter suggested that they go home early, have a relaxing evening, but she shot back at him, “No way, because if they should call me and I’m not hanging by that phone, then the buggers have an excuse.”

“Use your bleeper.”

She grinned at him, and suddenly she looked like a tousle-headed tomboy, “You’re not going to believe this, but I was so pissed off I left it at the station.” Then she tilted her head back and roared with laughter. It was a wonderful laugh, and it made him forget the way she had snapped at him.

That was the first time he became aware of the two separate sides of Jane Tennison; the one he knew at home, the other a DCI. Today he’d caught a glimpse of the policewoman, and he didn’t particularly like her.

The moment Tennison reached her office the telephone rang. She pounced on it like a hawk. She replaced the receiver a moment later and gave it a satisfied pat. She took a small mirror from her desk drawer and checked her appearance. She suddenly realized that Maureen Havers was sitting quietly in the corner.

“Wish me luck!” she said, and gave Havers a wink as she opened the door.

Havers sat at her neatly organized desk and stared at the closed door. She’d seen Tennison’s satisfaction and knew something was going down. Wish me luck? She put two and two together and knew that Tennison was going after John Shefford’s job. She was disgusted at Tennison’s lack of sensitivity; she seemed almost elated.

Havers picked up the phone and dialed her girlfriend in Records. “Guess what, I think my boss is going after Shefford’s job . . . Yeah, that’s what I thought, real pushy bitch.”

Chapter 3

3

Otley was the last to arrive in the Incident Room. He apologized to the Super and received a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.

The room was filled with palpable depression; there was a heaviness to every man. Some of them couldn’t meet Otley’s eyes but stood with heads bent. Only yesterday they had been laughing and joking with their big, burly boss. Shefford had been loved by them all and they took his death hard.