Page 48 of End Game
‘I can only hope you don’t live to regret your decision, Inspector,’ said Sinclair, as he put his phone down.
‘I can’t imagine why I would,’ replied Paul, if only to himself.
He continued his circuit of the stadium, checking in with a few of the constables on duty, before making his way back to the Gold Suite about half an hour later. He found the Commander absent – no doubt attending to an urgent matter somewhere else in the Olympic Park – while Jackie was manning the phones and keeping a close eye on the CCTV screens.
Ross was sitting on the other side of the room trawling through last night’s CCTV footage for any clue as to where the two Russians had gone after he lost them, but came up with nothing. They clearly knew what they were doing.
Rebecca was tucked in another corner, talking into her mobile, and Paul arrived just in time to hear the tail end of her conversation.
‘Thank you, sir,’ she was saying, ‘but I’m proud to be a Detective Sergeant in Commander Warwick’s team, so I think I’ll stay put for the time being.’
Paul picked up a faint annoyed retort from the speaker, and then Rebecca tucked her phone back in her pocket, muttering, ‘I’d rather be a Constable in admin than work for that man.’
‘Let me guess,’ said Paul. ‘You’ve just had a job offer from Commander Sinclair?’
Rebecca laughed. ‘I suppose that means I was his second choice?’
‘Luckily, neither of us are going anywhere.’
‘Should I be offended that I haven’t had an offer?’ asked Jackie, glancing around from the CCTV screens.
Just then, her mobile phone began to ring.
‘Probably him now,’ said Rebecca, laughing as Jackie took her phone from her pocket.
Ross smiled, turned from his desk and said, ‘If it’s any consolation for being the last resort, Jackie, you can be absolutely sure of one thing: Commander Sinclair won’t be calling me.’
Jackie laughed as she answered her phone.
‘Good evening, Sergeant Roycroft,’ said a voice Jackie immediately recognized.
‘Good evening, Commander Sinclair,’ she responded, to suppressed laughs from the rest of her team. ‘How can I help you?’
‘By becoming a member of my team, Jackie,’ said Sinclair. ‘When I was invited to head up the murder squad, the first name to cross my mind was yours.’
And yours would have been the last to cross mine, thought Jackie, but somehow managed, ‘How kind of you to even consider me sir, but I currently work for one of the finest officers in the Met, and I wouldn’t consider leaving him for someone else, whatever position or rank you offered me.’Jackie only just stopped herself saying,for a sleazebag like you.
She put down the phone before Sinclair could respond, and the team all cheered.
•••
Artemisia was at the tiny desk she’d been assigned in the corner of theDaily Mailoffices, working on her plan to somehow get into the athletes’ village, when the editor’s secretary hurried over to her. ‘The editor would like to see you immediately.’ She repeated the wordimmediately.
‘Can I ask …?’ Artemisia began, but the secretary was already heading back to the editor’s office.
Artemisia left her desk and took the lift to the top floor, her mind whirring. In the few minutes it took her to reach the editor’s office, she came up with a dozen reasons why he would want to see her. Perhaps he had loved her article? Was he discussing with his inner team which page it should go on?
By the time she arrived outside his office door, she was on the front page, and the cub reporter had become a lioness.
The first thing Artemisia noticed as she entered the editor’s office was a printout of her article, along with several of the photographs, spread out on his desk. When he looked up, she gave him her warmest smile.
‘What in hell’s name do you think this load of crap is?’ were the editor’s opening words, as he held up her article between a finger and thumb, as if it was contagious.
‘A human-interest story,’ stammered Artemisia, ‘about a girl from Wakefield whose dreams were shattered on the opening day of the Games.’
‘TheDaily Maildoesn’t do shattereddreams,’ snapped the editor, ‘not least because shattered dreams don’t sell papers. Our two million readers want stories about winners, not losers, preferably gold medallists in a sport they are interested in, and I can assure you épée fencing isn’t amongst them. In future, I expect you to come up with stories no other paper has, not ones no other paper wants, with the possible exception of theWakefield Evening News, and I suspect even they would spike it.’
Artemisia could feel her legs wobbling and was beginning to wish she’d taken up the offer to be a graduate trainee with Peter Jones.
