Finch carried the ratty fur to her like it was a fine mink stole.
Wicks wolf-whistled and Finch’s colouring deepened to cherry red.
Rowan glared at him with vengeance in her heart. It was only a small consolation he’d lost his bet — she wanted much more if she was going to take an ear-bashing from old Warhorse. Then Wicks turned to the crowd and tipped his hand in the universal gesture that means ‘fancy a pint?’, and Rowan had an idea that brought a smile to her face.
She snatched up a teaspoon and tapped it against a Merseyside Police issue mug till it rang like a dinner gong. When she had everyone’s attention again, she said, ‘The Baltic Fleet. Wicksie’s buying.’ She beamed at Wicks. ‘Nice one, Roy!’
DC Wicks’s protests were drowned out by the cheers of his colleagues.
Keys in hand, Rowan turned to leave and came up against her boss. If Rowan thought that Detective Chief Inspector Pat Warman had gone to the trouble of walking from her office to check on her well-being, she dismissed the notion in a microsecond.
Pat Warman’s face was not made for smiling; in fact, the skin over her cheekbones was stretched so tight it looked like a smile might cause actual physical pain.
The cheers and words of appreciation for Wicks’s generosity died down under the arctic glare of the DCI.
‘Someone from Scientific Support is waiting for you in the custody suite,’ she said, as if Rowan had deliberately kept him waiting. ‘When you’ve finished there, make yourself decent and report to my office.’
* * *
Rowan was relieved to find that the representative from Scientific Support was Ian Chan. Chan was twenty-five, gay, and angry that his parents couldn’t accept his sexuality. He had a wicked disregard for others’ feelings and an almost magical way with all things technological. Rowan had met him on a forensic awareness training course three years previously and they had been friends ever since.
‘Sweetheart!’ he cried. ‘What have they been doing to you?’ It wasn’t a particularly sincere exclamation of concern, and Rowan knew that she was safe from a comforting hug, but it made her smile, all the same. Chan handed her a mirror — its presence in his kit was a hangover from his commercial photography days — before he’d moved to forensic work, he had specialized in family portraits.
The worst damage was to her face: the skin over her left cheekbone had started to scab and the flesh under her eye was swollen and purple.
‘Well, I knew the applause was ironic, but . . .’
‘Who applauded?’ Chan said.
‘The entire CID room.’
‘Charmers, all. Mind you, you haven’t looked this bad since the disaster of the blonde experiment, last summer.’
Rowan narrowed her eyes.
‘Well, don’t look at me like that — at least I had the heart to tell you.’ He fitted a close-up lens to his camera and invited her to sit. ‘I mean, with your skin tone, what were you thinking?’
Rowan’s chest ached where she’d been kicked; it felt tender to touch, and a dull brown oval of bruising had already started to form.
His gaze flitted over her face and hair and she knew he was sizing up the best angle to make her look her worst. She fingered her hair; it was stiff with mud.
Chan slapped her hand away. ‘Leave it alone. I want every festering spatter of slime intact,’ he said, plucking the mirror from her fingers. ‘It’ll make a wonderful victim-shot for the jury.’
‘Yeah, well, good luck with that.’ Rowan sat still while Chan zapped off a few shots, but refused to look pitiful for the camera.
After a minute or so, he exclaimed, ‘Don’t move! Do not even blink.’ The shutter clicked a few more times. ‘Perfect. Just the mood of despondency I need. Now tell me what you were thinking about — it was her, wasn’t it?’
He meant Warman.
‘I knew you were in trouble. That tone — all gruff and dominatrix. Is she very cross?’
‘I wasn’t the only one on this op,’ Rowan grumbled. ‘I don’t know why she’s so pissed off with me.’
‘Warman’s permanently pissed off,’ he said, clicking off a few more for the album. ‘But credit where it’s due — you do have a talent for bringing out her inner Grinch.’
‘This is not helping, Ian.’
‘Okay, then, look at it this way: she puts you on shit detail to teach you a lesson in humility — and what do you do? You go and collar yourself a big bad criminal, that’s what.’
‘The big bad criminal got away, remember?’
‘Which, technically, gives her another excuse to be pissed off — see how it works? But she can’t even blame you for it, cos you did your job. I mean, where was your backup?’
‘Don’t ask,’ Rowan said.
Chan stopped clicking off shots for a moment and gave her another appraising look.
‘Your photo-session is complete. Unless there’s any . . . unseen damage.’ He gave her a theatrical once-over. ‘And from where I’m standing, there’s not a lot I could have missed.’
He set the camera down carefully and offered his hand in one of his unthinking chivalrous gestures, and Rowan was so stunned that she took it.
He helped her on with her shrug, wincing with her as she caught her breath.
She smiled, tilted her head in a gesture that was supposed to convey, It’s no big deal, but his look of concern brought humiliating tears to her eyes.
For the first time since she walked through the door, Ian Chan looked serious. He smoothed the matted fur over her shoulders and gave her a gentle squeeze. ‘Sweetheart, you did just fine — it’s those two who’ve got some explaining to do.’
This was why Cassie Rowan loved The Evil Chan — just when you despaired of him, he said something that made you feel wonderful.
* * *
DCI Warman stood with her back to the window, her fingertips just brushing the surface of her desk. She wore no make-up and her skin, sallow and lined, had the papery thinness of a heavy smoker, though Rowan had never seen her with a cigarette. Her hair, ash-blonde fading to grey, was cut short and neat. Her grey-blue eyes were flat and expressionless, but the room hummed with her sanctimonious disapproval. Finch stood to the left of the desk, looking fidgety and unhappy.
‘You should have waited for backup,’ Warman’s voice had a harsh edge — a consequence, no doubt, of having spent a career trying to make her voice heard over alpha males.
Rowan ground her teeth and said nothing. If she landed Wicks in the shit, Finch would be right in it with him, and even worse, it would make her look like a whining snitch.
Warman frowned, annoyed by her silence. ‘You broke protocol.’
‘I heard a scream,’ Rowan said. ‘I went to check it out. The Furman had Tiffany by the hair. His fist was drawn back, ready to punch her in the face. If I’d abided by protocol, he’d’ve—’
‘He’d’ve what?’ Warman raised her eyebrows. ‘Got away? He did get away, Cassie. And caused fifty thousand pounds-worth of damage making good his escape.’
‘I was going to say he’d’ve smashed the girl’s face in.’ Rowan’s mind flashed to Tasha McCorkindale after the Furman’s failed attempt to bundle her into his car.