Today he was actually rather hoping he wouldn’t get invited to sit down. He wanted to deliver his angry message standing up, with the advantage of height.

She didn’t disappoint him. Giving him a cold, hard stare, she said, ‘Yes, Roy?’

And he felt himself trembling. As if he had been summoned to his headmaster’s study at school.

In her early forties, with wispy blonde hair cut conservatively short, and framing a hard but attractive face, Assistant Chief Constable Alison Vosper was very definitely not happy this morning. Power-dressed in a navy suit and a crisp white blouse, she was sitting behind her expansive, immaculately tidy rosewood desk with an angry expression on her face.

Grace always wondered how his superiors kept their offices – and their desks – so tidy. All his working life, his own work spaces had been tips. Repositories of sprawling files, unanswered correspondence, lost pens, travel receipts and out-trays that had long given up on the struggle to keep pace with the in-trays. To get to the very top, he had once decided, required some kind of a paperwork management skill for which he was lacking the gene.

Rumour was that Alison Vosper had had a breast cancer operation three years ago. But Grace knew that’s all it would ever be, just rumour, because she kept a wall around herself. Nonetheless, behind her hard-cop carapace, there was a certain vulnerability that he connected to. In truth, she wasn’t at all bad-looking, and there were occasions when those waspish brown eyes of hers twinkled with humour and he sensed she might almost be flirting with him. This morning was not one of them.

‘Thanks for your time, Ma’am.’

‘I’ve literally got five minutes.’

‘OK.’

Shit. Already his confidence was crumbling.

‘I wanted to talk to you about Cassian Pewe.’

‘Detective Superintendent Pewe?’ she said, as if delivering a subtle reminder of the man’s position.

He nodded.

She opened her arms expansively. ‘Yes?’

She had slender wrists and finely manicured hands, which seemed, somehow, slightly older and more mature than the rest of her. As if making a statement to show that although the police force was no longer a man-only world, there was still considerable male dominance, she wore a big, loud, man’s wristwatch.

‘The thing is…’ He hesitated, the words he had planned to deliver tripping over themselves inside his head.

‘Yes?’ She sounded impatient.

‘Well – he’s a smart guy.’

‘He’s a very smart guy.’

‘Absolutely.’ Roy was struggling under her glare. ‘The thing is – he rang me on Saturday. On Operation Dingo. He said you’d suggested that he call me – that I might need a hand.’

‘Correct.’ She took a dainty sip of water from a crystal tumbler on her desk.

Struggling under her laser stare, he said, ‘I’m just not sure that’s the best use of resources.’

‘I think I should be the judge of that,’ she retorted.

‘Well, of course – but-’

‘But?’

‘This is a slow-time case. That skeleton has been there ten to fifteen years.’

‘And have you identified it yet?’

‘No, but I have good leads. I’m hoping for progress today from dental records.’

She screwed the top back on the bottle and set it down on to the floor. Then she placed her elbows on the shiny rosewood and interlocked her fingers. He smelled her scent. It was different from the last time he had been here, just a few weeks ago. Muskier. Sexier. In his wildest fantasies he had wondered what it might be like to make love to this woman. He imagined she would be in total control, all of the time. And that as easily as she could arouse a man, she could rapidly make his dick shrivel in terror.

‘Roy, you know that the Metropolitan Police have been one of the first forces in the UK to start getting rid of bureaucracy on arrests? That they now employ civilians to process criminals so police officers don’t have to spend two to four hours on paperwork on every person they arrest?’

‘Yes, I had heard that.’

‘They’re the biggest and most innovative police force in the UK. So don’t you think we can learn something from Cassian?’

He noted the use of the man’s first name. ‘I’m sure we can – I don’t doubt that.’

‘Have you thought about your personal development record this year, Roy?’

‘My record?’

‘Yes. What’s your assessment of how you have done?’

He shrugged. ‘Without blowing my own trumpet, I think I’ve done well. We got a life sentence on Suresh Hossain. Three serious crime cases solved, successfully. Two major criminals awaiting trial. And some real progress on several cold cases.’

She looked at him for some moments in silence, then she asked, ‘How do you define success?’

He chose his words carefully, aware of what might come next. ‘Apprehending perpetrators, securing charges against them from the Crown Prosecution Service and getting convictions.’

‘Apprehending suspects regardless of cost or danger to the public or your officers?’

‘All risks have to be assessed in advance – when practical. In the heat of a situation, it’s not always practical. You know that. You must have been in situations where you had to make snap decisions.’

She nodded and was silent for some moments. ‘Well, that’s great, Roy. I’m sure that helps you to sleep at night.’ Then she fell silent again, shaking her head in a way that he really did not like.

He heard a distant phone ringing, unanswered, in another office. Then Alison Vosper’s mobile pinged with a text. She picked it up, glanced at it and put it back down on her desk.

‘I look at it slightly differently, Roy. And so do the Independent Police Complaints Authority. OK?’

Grace shrugged. ‘In what way?’ He already knew some of the answers.

‘Let’s look at your three major operations in the past few months. Operation Salsa. During a chase you were handling personally, an elderly member of the public was hijacked and physically injured. Two suspects died in a car crash – and you were in the pursuit car right behind them. In Operation Nightingale, one of your officers was shot and another was severely injured in a pursuit – which also resulted in an accident causing serious injury to an off-duty police officer.’

That officer had been Cassian Pewe. Delaying his start here by some months.

She continued. ‘You had a helicopter crash, and an entire building burned down – leaving three bodies beyond identification. And in Operation Chameleon you allowed your suspect to be pursued on to a railway line, where he was maimed. Are you proud of all this? You don’t think there is room for improvement with your methods?’

Actually, Roy Grace thought, he was proud. Extremely proud of everything but the injuries to his officers, for which he would always blame himself. Maybe she genuinely did not know the background – or she was choosing to ignore it.

He was cautious in his reply. ‘When you look at an operation after the event, you can always see ways you could have improved it.’

‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘That’s all Detective Superintendent Pewe is here to do. Bring the benefit of his experience with the best police force in the UK.’

He would have liked to have replied, Actually, you are wrong. The guy is a total wanker. But his earlier feeling that Alison Vosper had some other agenda with this man was even stronger now. Maybe she really was shagging him. Unlikely, for sure, but there was something between them, some hold over her that Pewe had. Whatever, it was clear that at this moment he was definitely not teacher’s pet.

So, on one of the rare occasions in his career, he played along with the politics.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Thanks for clarifying that. It’s really helpful.’

‘Good,’ she said.

As Grace left the room, he was deep in thought. There had been four Senior Investigating Officers at Sussex House for the past five years. The system was fine. They didn’t need any more. Now they had five, at a time when they were short of recruits lower down and running way over budget. It would not be long before Vosper and her colleagues started reducing the number back down to four. And no prizes for guessing who would be axed – or, rather, transferred to the back of beyond.