Quintin Jardine: Fallen Gods

His green eyes flashed as he smiled at her; there was a new warmth in them, a depth of feeling that had appeared at the moment of Danielle's birth, and had stayed there ever since. He nodded towards the infant, asleep in her carry-cot. "At least we've got her to take our minds off it."

He pushed down the lever to start the bread toasting. "As it happens I'm not going to Dundee. No, I'm going down to the North Inch; the flood water's subsided, and it's just about dry enough for us to begin the clear-up operation. In theory it's down to the householders, but I've detailed fifty officers to help them. Community policing, remember; that's part of my remit now'

Karen frowned. "Is there anything that isn't part of your remit?" His duties were a sore point with her. An ex-detective sergeant herself, she knew how badly her husband had wanted a break from criminal investigation, yet during his first month on the Tayside force, he had come to realise that within the smaller force he had joined, there was nothing over which the DCC did not have a level of oversight.

"No," he agreed, 'probably not. But I'm enjoying it, nonetheless; the chief and the senior officers are all first-class professionals and good to work with. And don't tell me you don't like living in Perth, either."

"I don't know yet whether I do or not," she replied. "Fine, it's prosperous, the streets are clean, and we have this nice old house up on the hillside, but we're lucky. Suppose we'd bought that place we looked at in the town centre. We might have been flooded out with the rest of those poor sods."

He laughed. "But we didn't and we weren't, so don't damn the whole town because of something that didn't happen. Anyway, it was an absolute freak of nature. There were precautions taken after the last time, but nobody could have predicted last week's weather. If you didn't believe in global climatic change before, believe in it now."

Karen Martin frowned. "So that's what our daughter has to look forward to, is it?"

The toaster popped; he took out the first slice and began to spread it with honey. "It won't be that dramatic all the time," he replied;

'besides, it'll be her norm. We were brought up during the Cold War, remember; that was ours, frightening as it seems now. I was at a dinner last month and I met a guy who'd flown nuclear bombers. He told me that in 1962 the world was literally five minutes away from the edge. The crews were in their cockpits, with sealed envelopes containing the bits of

Russia they would be expected to find and obliterate. You know what else? They didn't have enough fuel to get back… not that there would have been much to come back to. No, I'm glad she hasn't been born into a world like that."

"She hasn't? What about September 11, and the aftermath…"

"Ah but…" He stopped. "Let's change the subject. That wee girl over there represents the start of the finest years of our lives. She's a shining light in all the gloom we've had recently. Let's just focus on the good times and enjoy them."

"That's a deal," Karen agreed, pouring coffee into two mugs. "We can start with our holiday this summer. Where are we going to take Danielle?"

Andy took his two slices of toast and honey, and his mug, and sat down at the kitchen table. "Well," he began, "Broughty Ferry's quite nice."

The baby was still asleep when he left the house fifteen minutes later, having agreed with his wife's proposal that they find a rental villa somewhere in France, in early September, and drive there. He climbed into his metallic blue Mondeo, reversed it carefully out of the driveway, and headed into the centre of Perth.

Even in the morning traffic, it took him less than ten minutes to reach his destination. He parked beside a row of five police transport vehicles, each one full of officers, and stepped out into the morning sunshine. He looked out over the flat plain of the North Inch; the sun of the previous few days had begun to dry it out, but it was still muddy and unsightly. He dreaded to think what the insides of the houses looked like.

He glanced around him as he walked towards the terrace that faced the River Tay, where, he knew, the worst of the flooding had happened. His eye fell on a uniformed inspector, in summer dress, as was he. "Good morning, Harry," he called out.

Inspector Sharp turned and made an involuntary move to attention as he recognised the newcomer. He was one of the two senior officers in charge of policing Perth and its surrounding area. In the larger

Edinburgh force, which Martin had just left, his opposite number carried a much higher rank.

"Hello, sir," the dark-haired, middle-aged policeman responded; he made to salute, but the deputy chief constable waved it away with a smile.

"Don't start that, for Christ's sake; on my first week in this job I started to get tennis elbow. How's it going?"

"It's not yet, sir, but then it's not quite time. As you ordered, we contacted all the householders who moved out and told them we'd pick them up from their temporary lodgings and get them here for nine." He nodded towards two patrol cars that had just drawn up. "That's them starting to arrive now. I've got our boys and girls waiting in the minibuses over there, ready to help with the really dirty stuff, and with the heavy lifting. Some of these people have lived here for years, and are quite old."

"Fine. Have you got plenty of tools; shovels and stuff for shifting mud? I guess there'll be plenty of it down there."

"There'll be all sorts of stuff down there in those cellars, sir. I was a young constable the last time something like this happened, and I was involved in an operation just like this one. There was fish, rats, condoms, you name it… and this flood's been a lot worse." He frowned, briefly. "Mind you, it's not quite right to call them cellars; with these houses they're more like basement floors, some of them with several rooms. Their gardens are well below street level, and they back on to the houses in the street behind; so they've filled up, and the water's come in from there as well as from the front door above."

"How deep has it been?" Martin asked.

Sharp scratched his chin. "The water was over four feet deep across the Inch," he replied. "That means it was above ground-floor level in the houses. So it must have been fifteen to eighteen feet inside them, anyway."

"Bloody hell; I understand now what you mean about the mess. We'd better see for ourselves, then. Go on, Harry; get the show on the road."

He stood back and watched as Inspector Sharp went about his business, speaking to each of the householders who had been brought to the scene, then waving the waiting constables and sergeants, some of them smiling, no doubt at the prospect of overtime, from the transport vehicles. They were all wearing overalls, and green rubber boots. Suddenly, Martin felt gripped by guilt; or perhaps it was only the eagerness of a new commander to set an example.

"Inspector," he called again. Sharp turned back towards him. "Do you have a spare set of waders, and boots, my size? Ten at a pinch, or bigger. Oh yes, and a shovel."

"Probably, sir," he shouted. "Bobby," he yelled across to a sergeant, who seemed to be supervising the helpers. "See if you can sort out some gear for the DCC The officer nodded, and headed off towards the minibuses; Martin decided that he would be as well to follow, to simplify the process.

The waders and boots that were left in the limited carry space of the vehicles were, not unnaturally, the dirtiest and scruffiest in the police stockroom, fifty officers having had their pick of the rest. He grabbed a set that looked as if they would fit him adequately, and struggled into them, trying not to guess where and why they had last been used.

When he returned to the terrace, he found Inspector Sharp speaking earnestly to a second group of homeowners who had been brought to the scene. There were five of them, and from the way they stood together, he guessed that they were two couples and one single person, an old lady who looked at least seventy-five years old. She was white-faced, and her dull grey hair was tied back in a bun, from which a few wispy strands had escaped, to wave on the morning breeze. She was dressed in a long, shabby blue coat, even on a day that was already fulfilling its promise of warmth, but, like the other four, she had come prepared for her task, in that she wore a pair of black, ankle-length rubber boots over her thick brown stockings.