said, ‘Hello? Burrthorpe 227.’
He didn’t speak.
‘Hello?’ Impatient now. ‘Who’s there?’
Still he kept silent.
And now the voice changed, the pitch lower, the tone anxious.
‘Colin, is that you?’
But still he did not reply and the woman cried out angrily, ‘Get stuffed!’ and banged the phone down.
Colin Farr left the receiver dangling and went home.
Ex-Deputy Chief Constable Neville Watmough awoke on the Friday morning after the SDP candidate selection meeting with that dull ache of the heart which warns the mind of a disappointment before the mind itself has recollected it.
He had been rejected. Again. The local councillor had won the nomination after a period of debate so short that in a jury it must have meant one show of hands in the corridor outside the court-room. The bastard was a car salesman, for God’s sake, fit enough no doubt to sort out local problems of street-lighting and refuse-collection, but with little grasp of national or international affairs. As for his person – the suede boots, the two-tone shirt, the thin moustache which he kept on touching nervously while the anaemic tongue lubricated the narrow lips in preparation for yet another ingratiating smile – what kind of image was this for a Party with any real belief in its right to govern? Not that the selection committee itself had inspired any confidence. Schoolteachers, small businessmen, a solicitor’s clerk, a token manual worker, and in the chair, that fat female JP who never missed any opportunity of scolding the police like a stern aunt from the Bench. At least in court you didn’t have to look at her huge splayed legs.
Perhaps he had picked the wrong Party. Perhaps he should have listened to the frequent overtures from local Conservatives to become a bulwark of their Law and Order lobby.
But Watmough was not a stupid man any more than he was immoral or opportunist, and over breakfast he settled down to sorting things out into their true relations in the chain of causality.
‘It looks as if it could be nice enough to finish tidying up the garden today, dear,’ said his wife brightly.
He smiled and grunted and sipped his coffee. It might have been pleasant to discuss things with her, but after three decades of conditioning to regard her husband’s professional affairs as unapproachable, it would be as difficult for her to listen as for him to speak. Fleetingly he wondered if he had been altogether wise to treat, say, Mid-Yorkshire’s traffic flow problems as confidential within the bounds of the Official Secrets Act. But he had made that decision and now must live with its loneliness.
At least, he told himself with some complacency, he did not blame his wife. She had accompanied him dutifully the previous night and said all the right things on cue. He guessed that he alone had detected her mighty relief when the chance that they might have had to move to London had been trampled on by those suede boots.
No, the cause of his disappointment had been bad timing. He had come too late into the race. Or rather, he had come too early. And the cause of that was his failure to get the Chief’s job. Now that had been a real shock. No waking up the next morning then to the dull ache of disappointment, for he had been kept awake all night by its searing pain. It had shattered his hopes and scattered his plans, and worst of all, it had clouded his judgement. It had seemed a cleverly contemptuous act to chuck in his own resignation so quickly afterwards. He would have been wiser far, he now realized, to hang on and look around for a Chief’s job in another part of the country. The local man, because he was known and taken for granted, was always at a disadvantage in such matters – except in the case of car salesmen, it seemed. No, he should have withdrawn, regrouped …
A clock chimed. Ding dong ding dong. Ding dong ding dong. Dong ding ding dong. Ding dong ding dong.
The sound filled him with sudden fury. He counted himself back to control with the hours … seven, eight, nine.
‘I find those chimes a little irritating,’ he said mildly.
‘Do you dear? I’m sure they can be turned off. Most things can.’
Was this irony? he asked himself in amazement. A glance across the table reassured him and he let his mind count another link back in the chain of causality.
The support of his colleagues, their simple loyalty, that too had been missing. That cunning old bastard Winter, the outgoing Chief, had never liked him. God knows what he’d said to the Committee. And as above, so below. That gross grotesque, Dalziel …
He shuddered at the memory.
At least he was now free of them, free to make his own decisions. Free to set the record straight.
There was his book, a serious review of the problems and future of modern policing, based on his own experience and observation, and leavened with accounts of some of the more famous cases he’d been involved with. It was a long way from being finished, of course, but he’d shown an outline and some draft sections to Ike Ogilby.
What was it Ike had said as he returned them?
‘Very interesting, Nev. Should rouse a lot of interest in the so-called quality papers and heavy chat shows. But a lot of it would be above our readers’ heads. It’s not as if you’re claiming you get your ideas from God or anything really wild like that, is it?’
‘I didn’t show you the drafts with a view to Challenger publication, Ike,’ he’d replied, genuinely surprised.
‘Of course not. But I was thinking, Nev, in the remote circumstance things don’t go right for you politically, this time. I mean – you could do worse than keep yourself in the public eye with a series of pieces in the Challenger …’
‘But you said that your readers …’
‘No, I wasn’t meaning the main meat of your book, Nev. You wouldn’t want to show your hand too early there, would you? I’m afraid the country’s too full of unscrupulous senior cops who aren’t above nicking a good idea. No, I was thinking of the more popular market. Memoirs of famous cases. Telling it like it was. We wouldn’t need to take up all that much of your creative time either. I took the liberty of showing your draft to Monty Boyle, our chief crime man. He was most impressed. Monty could work with you. He’d do the leg work and stitch it all together. You’d have copy approval, of course, but this way it wouldn’t interfere with your serious writing.’
‘Interesting idea,’ he’d replied. ‘But hardly the thing for a parliamentary candidate.’
‘Perish the thought,’ said Ogilby. ‘But have lunch with Monty anyway. Never any harm in having lunch, is there?’
So he’d had lunch, and found the journalist a civilized and entertaining companion. The man had asked if he’d mind if he ran his cassette recorder as they talked. ‘It’s best to keep a record, especially when it’s informal. Things get missed. Or misunderstood. This keeps us both straight.’
‘No, I don’t mind,’ said Watmough. ‘Though it seems a waste of your batteries as I really don’t envisage writing anything other than campaign speeches in the near future.’
‘No, of course not. But as a crime reporter, I’m always keen to pick the brain of an expert.’
They had spent a fascinating hour talking about famous cases, then, as they parted, the journalist had said, ‘By the way, I know it’s unlikely to happen, but if Ike ever does sign you up, don’t settle for less than …’ and he had named a quite surprising sum.
Since then, Ogilby hadn’t referred to the matter. Would he bring it up again when news of last night’s débâcle reached him? It wasn’t that Watmough needed the money – there were any amount of run-of-the-mill