Линда Ла Плант - Good Friday

The next morning, Jane unlocked the door of number 33 and walked into the flat she now owned. Her parents were helping her move and she could hear them panting their way up the stairs with suitcases of clothes and the few boxes of personal items that she’d accumulated during her time at the section house. Jane walked into the small kitchen. The previous owner had put fresh flowers in a jam jar on the kitchen table, and had left milk, sugar and a loaf of bread on the side. She’d also left Jane a note wishing her good luck and hoping that she would like living in the flat as much as she had.

Eventually her parents left and Jane was alone for the first time in her new home. She carried her suitcase into the bedroom and sat down on the bare mattress on the bed. She hugged herself, feeling sure she had made the right decision.

Jane arrived in plenty of time at Vine Street Police Station, in the heart of London’s West End, for her nine o’clock meeting with her new DCI. The Vice Squad also worked out of Vine Street, but on a different floor, while the much larger Flying Squad was based at Scotland Yard. The duty sergeant directed her downstairs. She walked past the station cells and charge room area, then down the old stone steps and into the darkened basement. A door was ajar with ‘DIP SQUAD’ printed on a card pinned on it. She hesitated and then knocked. Getting no reply, she gently pushed open the door, to reveal a large, dank, squalid room. A string of worn desks, typewriters on a couple of them, ran across the room, and along one wall was a row of battered filing cabinets. The only window, high in the wall, was tiny and covered in cobwebs. It looked as if it had never been opened.

‘Are you WDC Tennison?’

Jane whirled around to face a tall, angular man wearing a full-length leather coat, polo-necked sweater, and baggy trousers with a thick leather belt at the waist, walking out of a small office in the corner.

‘Yes.’

‘Bit early, aren’t you?’ He shook her hand. ‘I’m DCI Jimmy Church. Take a pew and let me fill you in.’ DCI Church spoke with a northern accent and chain-smoked, lighting one cigarette from the other as he moved around the room. He picked up an overflowing ashtray and emptied the butts into a waste bin as he spoke. ‘The team are usually out nicking dippers, so this office is usually empty. We work all over London, but we bring any arrests back here to Vine Street to be processed and charged. The team here consists of me, plus two detective sergeants who each have a team of four detectives working with them. We don’t have any clerical staff, so we take reports for typing up to the main Flying Squad office at the Yard. Bit of a drag, but it’s only a fifteen-minute walk. Or we use the one unmarked car we have.

‘Oh…’ Jane said, trying to take it all in.

Church turned at the sound of voices and heavy footsteps coming down the stone steps outside the office.

‘Here come the lads!’ He grinned. Jane was astonished at how much more youthful Church appeared when he smiled, his heavily lined face immediately lighting up.

The officers, who were all male, piled into the room. All of them wore worn-looking jeans and bomber jackets, and most had long hair and sideburns. They spread out sitting on the odd chair or perched on one or other of the desks. She recognised DS Stanley, who she’d worked with before, but the others were new to her.

‘This is WDC Joan Tennison everybody.’

‘It’s Jane,’ Jane said, as Church cocked his head to one side.

‘Sorry. Jane Tennison. OK, that little wiry DS over there, who looks like the cat just dragged him in, is Stanley—’

‘We worked together a long time ago at Hackney,’ Stanley said, nodding to Jane. He still wore fingerless gloves and was even scruffier than she remembered, looking as if he had slept in a park somewhere.

‘And that’s DS George Maynard.’ Church nodded at a well-built officer who was putting a stick of chewing gum in his mouth. He was dressed in a huge duffel coat, dirty trainers and jeans.

‘Maynard plays drunk better than a drunk,’ Church added.

Jane smiled at Maynard and was rewarded with a cursory nod.

Church gestured with his lit cigarette towards the rest of the group. ‘You can get to know the other reprobates later.’

Jane doubted that she would be able to remember all their names on her first day and realised that the Dip Squad, like the glamorous Flying Squad, had no female officers apart from her. She wondered if the Dip Squad might not be such an attractive proposition after all.

‘Right, before we get into what’s going down today, let me remind you all that the forthcoming Scotland Yard Detective Squad’s big annual black-tie dinner dance is only a couple of weeks away… Good Friday, 16 April, at St Ermin’s Hotel. You can’t miss it — it’s in Caxton Street, right opposite Scotland Yard. If you don’t have your tickets booked then you’d better get on to it, or you’ll lose out.’

Jane watched as a few of them handed over cash to Church. A couple said they would pay by cheque.

A young DC held his hand up. ‘It’s a bank holiday, isn’t it, Guv? Only I was booked to go on a fishing trip… can’t they change the date?’

‘Don’t be an idiot, Mead! It’s always on Good Friday because it is a bank holiday, and the squads are at minimum strength over the holiday weekend. Just cancel your bloody fishing trip… it’s a right knees-up, and worth getting your dickie bow out for.’

Church handed out some crime reports detailing theft incidents on the Underground and in the busy shopping areas around Oxford Street and Regent Street.

‘As you can see, the descriptions of possible suspects are pretty poor and most of the victims didn’t even know they’d been dipped until it was too late…’

Jane was flicking through the crime reports, trying to take in all the information, then realised that Church had stopped talking and, along with everyone else in the room, was looking at her.

‘Sorry?’

‘Tennison, just concentrate and read the reports in your own time.’ He addressed the room again. ‘This bunch are obviously professionals, possibly from abroad. They’re working in a group of around four to six people, and their marks tend to be the wealthier looking members of the public.’

He turned to Jane. ‘D’you know what a “mark” is Tennison?’

‘The intended victim, sir,’ Jane replied.

‘Correct. Now, start counting to ten…’

Jane felt embarrassed and suspected she was about to be the butt of an initiation joke.

‘Come on, don’t be shy,’ Stanley said, nudging her.

She started counting aloud and as she reached number six she felt someone push her from behind, causing her to stumble forward. Stanley grabbed her left arm to catch her, and she heard several chuckles from the other officers. She turned around to face the huge DS Maynard.

‘What did you do that for? It’s not funny.’

‘Carry on counting,’ Maynard said, with a serious expression.

‘What?’

‘From where you left off.’

‘Um… four, five…’

Church interrupted. ‘You’d got up to six.’

Jane looked at him. ‘Had I? Sorry… six, seven…’

Maynard pushed her gently on the shoulder. Jane turned back to him sharply.

‘Would you please stop pushing me!’

Maynard was holding up her warrant card.

‘Is this yours?’

Confused, Jane hurriedly unzipped her handbag to discover that her warrant card was missing. As Maynard handed it back to her, Stanley asked, ‘What’s the time?’

Jane glanced at her left wrist and found that her watch was missing.

Everyone laughed as Stanley held up her watch, swinging it like a pendulum.