XI
"This has been a horrible fuck up." The funny thing was, despite his obvious disgust at the outcome of the investigation into Dorothy Lange, Vanderzee seemed pretty upbeat about how the undercover had turned out. Bodies had disappeared, there was no way a report could be filed that made the Met come out with credit. But still …
Hunt stood at the window, looking down to the street view below. He'd never seen it from this angle before, from so high up. Luigi's entrance and the cheesy Italian lettering on the red awning. He could see the Quattro and how carelessly he'd parked it.
A fuck up was right. Dorothy had her streets back just as she wanted them and the recommencement of the uneasy truce with Raymond Gage. Crimes would still be committed in and around Stepney and money laundered through that decrepit cab company, but in Astley Square her ex-husband Noel would have no more trouble at the chippie from Marc's boys and kids would be let out onto the streets to play again until dark.
"We know what happened and you two are covered in anything but glory." But from the look on the Assistant Commissioner's face, the result was acceptable. Hunt glanced from the window to Drake, but she had tilted her head as if she sensed there was something more and her eyes cleaved to the expression on Vanderzee's face. There was more. The Assistant Commissioner opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out an envelope. From it he drew some black and white photographs and placed them side by side before her. He stepped back so Hunt could see too.
Ten photos taken over a minute of him and Drake on the street down below, when the dark night had poured and poured down a torrent of rain to soak their clothes. The first photo showing the cab driving away and the last Hunt pulling her down the steps to Luigi's. One photograph a close up of their kiss and her hands on his face as they stood pressed hip to hip.
"Alright, alright." Paulson scrambled to put the photographs back in the envelope.
Thank you, Dorothy. Hunt could only bite the nail on his thumb in lieu of being able to light a cigarette. Again he had underestimated her. Because how could anyone who read tarot cards and plastered on coral pink lipstick be so fucking clever? He could just picture the exact hiding spot the photographer had sheltered in to capture them on film.
"I don't have to tell you, do I?" Vanderzee looked from one to the other. "How inappropriate such a relationship is."
"It's not!" She stood up quickly, shaking the desk as she knocked it with her leg. "It's not a relationship." She put a hand to her mouth. Hunt thought that maybe it was the most embarrassed he'd ever seen her.
"You are the superior officer." Vanderzee smacked the envelope into Hunt's chest. "You know how bad it looks to have it as if you're pressuring someone who works for you into a relationship! At this bloody time too! Do you know how bad this looks? I can quite see how you managed to make such a horrendous mess of the investigation into Dorothy Lange when you have been occupied in something that would make you incredibly foolish if it got out beyond the walls of this office!"
"It won't." She didn't look at him, but he could see the determination set in her mouth, pushing him and the night captured in the photographs to the back of her mind. She concentrated her gaze on Paulson. She was right to - it was useless appealing to Vanderzee. "It won't happen again. You have my word." She looked desperate, like she would have taken Vanderzee's arm and shaken it to get through to him. "Please, Sir. It was a mistake and..."
Hunt let out a laugh at the heart-breaking tone of her entreaty.
"What about you Hunt?"
He really couldn't think of what he should say. Get stuffed. None of your fucking business. That's what he would have told them, but she had spoken so quickly, and so definitely just then. It won't happen again.
Outside the AC's office, the secretary was typing a report and there was no thought of sharing that narrow couch. Alex stood against the wall, arms folded and straining to hear any of the discussion from within. Finally she came over to him.
"Gene, please." Yeah, she picked up the distrust he was feeling. What a stupid fucking place their attraction had brought them to. "Please talk to them, Hunt. Don't let them transfer me out. Explain that..."
At that moment he looked up - Paulson called him back into the Assistant Commissioner's office.
"Well the big boys won again." Alex had returned after an hour from the tenth floor where she'd spent thirty minutes alone with Paulson in his office. After a long wait Paulson had explained what had obviously already been pre-determined. With his tongue nervously running over his teeth, he told her he would be finding a transfer for her to another branch within the Metropolitan Police. It would not be a demotion, he assured her, and she would not be transferred outside of London. But she could read on his face that the position she would find herself in shortly would involve a lot of paper work.
And if she decided to make any trouble, there were numerous incidents he could document where she had acted inappropriately in her station.
She couldn't look at Hunt when he himself came back after a long absence. Most of the team had made themselves scarce, and the insensitive ones who had remained as she sat at her desk now exited too.
"You can get back to your usual business now," Alex finally said, sick of Hunt standing there by her desk. "Resumption of normal transmission. That's right, isn't it? I'm being transferred and you got a smack over the hand from Assistant Commissioner?"
He was kind of nodding, head down, and now he looked up. There was no sugar-coating it obviously. "He said I could keep my job or I could resign and …" He gestured to the space between the two of them. "And what am I supposed to do? You made it clear in your little speech..."
"Forget about it."
"Well fucking hear me out." Hunt came around the desk suddenly. "You know what? I was burning at the thought of getting the chance that night." He winced at the words. Yes, she agreed. They sounded clumsy. "And aside from anything else, I might have just resigned anyway to save what is left of my pride. But I am not a mug." He kicked the rubbish bin between them out of his way. "We probably caught a lucky break. Well I did. I wanted you, I admit it. But I know what the score is. It's a one-shot deal with you, and then I'm left the next fucking day with..." He swallowed the words back. "And you head off to find that daughter of yours without a thought."
I don't have a choice, he thought after she had left the office and taken nothing with her, and the others had crept back, and the noise levels had crept up from church mice quiet to the usual bantering level, and he sat in his office with the door closed.
And later, when the lights were dimmed in his office, and he'd checked across the road to see her flat dark as well … then he'd taken out the envelope, which in the hurriedness of Vanderzee to get away to a lunch engagement he had been able to take from the Assistant Commissioner's desk. Hunt had hardly paid attention to the photos as they had been laid out carefully but now he was almost thankful for the quality of Dorothy's photographer. The deep, dense black and white contrast in the picture – the moment caught in time of their eyes closed and his arms around her so possessively. Staring at them reminded him of how badly she had been betrayed, but it gave him a dull thrill too. If he came to believe it was a mistake, and that she was just using him, he could look at the photographs and the passion caught with some anonymous bastard's SLR.
There was quiet knock on the door. Chris asking about whether they should all head over to Luigi's? No, he thought, not there. "You know, Christopher. I am sick of Italian food. I feel like a pie, a pint and a song at the piano."
Christmas decorations had gone up today all over the shops on London's malls, and high streets. It was December the third. Luigi had pulled out his own nativity scene and set it at the end of the bar – finger-high delicate dolls of Mary, Joseph, Jesus, shepherds, a tiny manger and kneeling sheep. Maybe he'd brought it from Italy.
She had never played Mary in the nativity scenes at her Sunday school. Unlike her parents, who had never taken her to church, Evan had decided she would attend Sunday School at the local Anglican church, at least until she was old enough to start arguing about the sexism of the Bible and the existence of God himself.
I was sometimes an angel, she thought, studying the wooden doll of Gabriel with its neatly painted gold halo and folded white robe.
"What's Italian for merry Christmas, Luigi?" Alex was getting up to leave and the restaurant was empty anyway although it was a brilliant, crackling winter night out.
"Buon natale."
"I thought it was something like that." She picked up the wine bottle off the bar and steadied herself for her walk back up the stairs. "Is it too early in December to wish you a buon natale?" He seemed melancholy himself, and perhaps a little drunk also. He didn't answer. "Enjoy your evening, Luigi." She felt sure tonight that he would be left alone by the CID team.
In her flat, with only a floor-lamp on to illuminate the lounge, she opened the folder and put it down on her coffee table, not caring how cold it was. She began to concentrate. 'Actaeon' printed so neatly on the cover in stenciled letters, exactly like the letters 'Artemis' on the file Hunt had hidden somewhere. Until now she had never thought much about whether he had taken the file, which she had only seen once, from that vault in Edgehampton. But now as she concentrated she was sure he had taken it.
Artemis and Actaeon – it was all she wanted to think about.
Concentrate. Analyse. Make a connection.
Hi again. If you want to keep reading, the next story in the series is In Paradise.