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a.m. 12th May 2014
“I’m sorry about the other day, but I had to dash. Urgent enquiry,” he said, affecting an air of pleasantry a long way from how he felt. There was something about the SB Superintendent that always made his teeth itch.
“Anything I should know about? Something you’re not telling me?” the SB man said as he sat, his hands held to his lips as if in prayer, fixing Thurstan with a long stare.
“No,” he replied, adding “and anyway it’s a need to know basis.” It was SB’s own mantra.
The Superintendent narrowed his eyes in annoyance.
“I think I do need to know.”
Thurstan stared back at him.
“That may well be, but I know you don’t.”
An awkward silence, then: “Why didn’t you provide us straight away with the camera footage you recovered of the vehicle and occupants you knew would be of interest to us in connection with the Councillor’s murder?” He was more forceful in his tone this time.
“I did,” Thurstan prevaricated.
“Oh no, you didn’t, Chief Inspector!” the SB man retorted. His dropping of the word ‘Detective’ from Thurstan’s title was deliberate. “Effectively, you kept that piece of information from us for a week! We should have had it when you handed over all the original statements and evidence. You’re well aware of that!”
Thurstan leant forward on his desk, his voice raised slightly. “Yes! However, I couldn’t give you something which, at that time, I didn’t have, hadn’t seen and couldn’t assess!”
“And this simple task took a week! I should have expected nothing better,” the SB man replied condescendingly.
“No, it didn’t take a week!” Thurstan could feel his annoyance rising. “I delivered those discs to the SB office, properly labelled and exhibited, within two days.”
“Oh, really!” His opponent’s voice was raised. “Then why did you fail to highlight to my Exhibits Officer the importance of what they contained? Why didn’t you bring them directly to me?”
Thurstan leant back in his chair. “You weren’t there,” he said casually. “Anyway, it was all on the report I left.”
“So what did you do? Sneak in when he was on his lunch and casually leave it in a pile of other items on his desk? Oh, granted, there was a report! In a separate envelope which was, mysteriously enough, found on someone else’s desk!”
Thurstan leant forward again. “Listen to me very carefully. I don’t sneak! That’s your department. I left those items. If your office management isn’t up to it then you need to get your act together!”
Taffy sat at his desk. Gandalph passed him a coffee ‘to go’ and a bacon sandwich from the cardboard holder he’d carefully balanced all the way from the canteen. He placed his own coffee on the desk, pulled up a chair and unwrapped his coronation chicken sandwich.
“You didn’t forget the brown sauce, did you?” Taffy enquired as he took a sip of his coffee and pulled his brunch from its paper bag.
Gandalph took a big mouthful of sandwich and shook his head.
“Oh, look at that!” Taffy said as he peeled the top layer of toast from his sandwich revealing the succulent bacon, smothered in tangy brown sauce. “Lush, that is,” he said, replacing the toast and taking a big bite.
They sat in silence, chewing steadily, watching from a distance as Thurstan and the SB man’s discussion became more and more animated. They couldn’t hear what was being said but now and then the voices rose loud enough for them to discern a “what!” or a “how dare you!”
Taffy, having finished the first half of his sandwich, started on the other. Gandalph wiped his hands on a serviette, thoughtfully provided by the canteen, before taking a swig of his coffee, his cheeks bulging with the remains of his coronation chicken.
“I’ve not seen him this angry before, have you?” Taffy observed.
Gandalph shook his head, held his hand up, pointing to his bursting cheeks. He took another swig of coffee and swallowed several times. “No,” he eventually answered.
Suddenly the door to the DCI’s office flew open and the SB Superintendent shouted: “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. I’m off to Personnel!” and stormed off through the main office towards the exit. Thurstan stood in the doorway. Taffy and Gandalph had the impression he was going to say something else, but he shot them a glance then simply shouted back: “You do that!”
Thurstan slammed his office door shut and returned to his desk.
Gandalph, finishing his coffee, switched on his computer and keyed in his password. As he waited for access to be granted he idly glanced at the news report on the office television. A Newcastle gangster had been machine-gunned to death, in a quiet corner of a local industrial estate, by the pillion passenger of a motorbike. The DCI giving the interview to the news crew seemed to think, for some reason, there was a link to Eastern European organised crime in the London area.
Thurstan knew what the SB Superintendent was inferring when he said he was ‘off to Personnel’. A veiled threat, his personal file was going to be marked in such a manner it would ‘limit’ his future career in some way. He’d heard other people complaining this’d been done to them. The ‘conspiracy theorists’ had maintained ‘you can never find out what they’ve written because they take it out of the file before they let you see it.’
He’d taken it with a pinch of salt but knew the SB Super would hurt him if he could. The man had waited a long time. Of course, he could’ve followed him up there, but it would’ve undoubtedly resulted in a ‘scene’ and Thurstan was trying hard not to draw attention to himself and his enquiries, at least for the time being.
He sat down and scratched the Personnel Department and Special Branch from the career ‘to do’ list he hadn’t written. At the same time, in the main office, Taffy scrolled down the information on his computer screen and chewed thoughtfully on the remains of his bacon toasty.