Lies Sleeping (Peter Grant, #7)(70)

I wondered about the cursed safe. It wasn’t a case I’d worked on. But I decided this was not the time to ask about it.

‘A sense of powerlessness can seriously exacerbate stress,’ said Seawoll. ‘Especially for individuals who are burdened with the expectations of a wider community that assume they’ll master any potential crisis.’ He looked straight at me again. ‘They fucking want us to look like we sodding know what we’re doing. And you might know what you’re doing, although I doubt it. We sure as shit don’t. Not even Nightingale knows what he’s doing half the time.’

He sighed again, his big shoulders rising and falling in exaggerated despair.

‘It’s simple. I need to know that you two are going to look out for each other,’ he said. ‘And I don’t mean physically – that goes without saying. There’s far too much macho bullshit in this job and I expect you two to rise above it. Is that understood?’

We both said it was.

Seawoll turned his attention back to me – because obviously I’m cursed.

‘I want you to include a mental health component in your stage two discussion document,’ he said. ‘I want it incorporated into the Falcon risk assessment matrix.’

‘Stage three,’ I said. ‘Stage two has already been distributed and I don’t have any experience with mental health issues, so I’m not competent to draw up such guidelines. Neither are Dr Walid and Dr Vaughan.’

Seawoll gave me a long-suffering look.

‘I know a couple of specialists. They’ve done work with combat-related PTSD and the like. If that’s acceptable to you.’

‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘Subject to approval by Chief Inspector Nightingale.’

‘Yes, obviously,’ said Seawoll. ‘Now fuck off. You’re making me tired and it’s only eight in the morning.’

Me and Guleed just about made it to the door before Seawoll spoke again.

‘And let’s be careful out there,’ he said.

‘You’re unbelievable,’ said Guleed once we were safely out the back on Ebury Square, where I’d left the surviving unmarked Hyundai. The glittering aftermath of Thursday night’s thunderstorm was long gone and we were back to sweaty and overcast.

Guleed said that since I’d totalled the old Rover she had to have the Hyundai, because she was actioned to check out some scrap merchants in Enfield as part of the hunt for Chorley’s second bell. She did at least offer to drop me off at the Folly first.

‘Even though it’s out of my way,’ she said.

I got my revenge by asking about Michael Cheung, on the pretext that a senior officer had asked me to keep a close eye on her emotional stability.

‘We’re dating, if you must know,’ she said.

‘Dating?’

‘Yeah. Dating, Peter. That’s when you go out to social events with someone and get to know them rather than just diving in and shagging the first river you meet.’

‘So you’ve been doing that since last October?’ I said.

‘Maybe.’

‘That’s like eight months,’ I said.

‘I don’t like to move fast.’

‘You’re so totally shagging him,’ I said.

‘Fuck off, Peter,’ she said. But she was smiling when she said it.

‘Just remember I’m keeping my eye on you.’

‘Don’t you worry about me. I’m not the one that jumps out of moving vehicles.’

‘It made sense at the time,’ I said.

‘Only to you.’



I got into the Folly just in time for Stephanopoulos to hold the briefing. It was the usual stuff, but some of the reconstruction of events surrounding the kidnap at the Goat and Crocodile was interesting. I’d only seen one van and one henchman, but it turned out there’d been at least two decoy vans, three relay vans to transfer into, and half a dozen Essex boys recruited for the one job. All of which had gone for nothing, because I hadn’t even seen the decoys and thus chased the right van. Afterwards Nightingale used the incident as an exemplar of why you shouldn’t make your operations over-complex.

‘Always try to match your strengths to his weakness,’ he said.

I was tempted to ask what our strengths actually were, but that probably would have been a cue for more practice and I do, eventually, learn from my mistakes.

With Guleed out checking scrapyards, I ended up working through a couple of Carey’s actions. As I started phoning a list of foundries in the Midlands I couldn’t help wonder whether I shouldn’t have spotted that he was in distress. He’d said he wasn’t happy and uncharacteristically smacked Zach . . . but that could have been general grumpiness. It was all very well telling people to look out for each other, but what were we supposed to look for? I added Check Seawoll’s guidelines include stress awareness training into my medium-term action file. Just under Buy modern Latin textbooks.

A bit after lunch I got a call from Special Police Constable Geneviève Nguy?n, who said she once again had something she wanted me to look at.

‘Not another goat?’ I said, but she said no and gave me an address.

Amen Court – within spitting distance of St Paul’s Cathedral.

Surprise! I thought sourly.