‘As far as missing persons go, our hands are very much tied by law and policy, but you’re right: this is a wee bit different. I’ll flag it up on the system that he’s a retired officer and we’ll see what we can do.’

The Long View

Catherine was eating a sandwich at her desk when she saw Abercorn through the glass partition. He was talking to Sunderland, but she had little doubt that he was here to see her. She hadn’t officially informed Locust of the murder investigation (though it was genuinely on her to-do list – albeit quite far down) but there was no doubt Abercorn would have become aware of it first thing that morning. That he was equally aware that nobody directly involved in the investigation had bothered to contact him was a given too. How he would choose to react to that was anybody’s guess, but guilt trip, tantrum, humility or trade-off, it would be a precisely calculated response.

She brushed some crumbs from the sheet of paper she’d been writing on. It was a list of names: Frankie Callahan, Stevie Fullerton, Grant Cassidy and Craig McLennan. She told herself she was contemplating which one had really popped into Paddy Steel’s mind when he first heard about Jai McDiarmid, but in reality she knew an interruption was imminent and was trying to compose herself so that it wasn’t obvious to Abercorn that she had seen him coming.

She moved the sheet of paper to one side with a tut, annoyed at herself for acting like a daft wee lassie. She always slapped on a fake smile and played nice for Abercorn with the same politic insincerity she did for the likes of Paddy Steel. Unlike with the crooks, it wasn’t calculated. She couldn’t help it. It felt stupidly imperative that she not give off any sense of grudge or bitterness regarding the fact that he had been preferred for the job of heading the task force; doubly stupid given how it had subsequently worked out for their respective stock. The problem was, she was trying to kid a ninth-dan black-belt kidder, and feared that her attempts to appear magnanimous merely enhanced his impression that she had an even lower professional opinion of him than did her colleagues.

In the immediate aftermath of the decision to appoint Abercorn, unable to challenge her superiors for an explanation lest she look even more of a clown, Catherine had gone to Moira Clark instead. Moira had retired by this point, but was on so many panels and committees that she knew more about what was going on now than when she was still serving.