A Certain Justice by James P. D

Author:James, P. D. [James, P. D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Crime, thriller
ISBN: 9780307813534
Goodreads: 13534799
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 1997-10-01T07:00:00+00:00

23

It was now just after ten o’clock. Dalgliesh, still at the desk in his office on the seventh floor of New Scotland Yard, closed the file he had been working on and for a moment leaned back and closed his eyes. Piers and Kate would be with him shortly for their review of the day’s progress. He had left them to attend the post-mortem at eight o’clock, and Miles Kynaston had promised to fax through his report as soon as it was ready. He was aware for the first time of his tiredness. The day, like all days charged with a multiplicity of activity, physical and mental, seemed to have lasted for more than the fifteen hours he had been working. He reflected that, in defiance of popular opinion, time passes more quickly when the hours are filled with predictable routine.

Today had been anything but predictable. The afternoon meeting between senior officers of the Yard and their counterparts in the Home Office to consider yet again the ramifications of the Security Services Act had not been acrimonious—both sides had tiptoed with almost over-punctilious dexterity around the most dangerous ground—but it might have been easier if words, carefully unspoken, had actually been said. The co-operation had already proved its value in the recent success against the IRA; there was no wish on anyone’s part to sabotage what was being painfully achieved; but, like two regiments in the process of amalgamation, both brought with them more than their insignia. There was a history, a tradition, a different way of working, a different perception of the enemy, even a different language and professional argot. And always there was the complication of class and snobbery present at every level of English society, the unspoken conviction that men could only work best with their own kind. The committee on which he served had, he thought, passed its interesting stage and was now slowly battling through the hinterland of boredom.

He had been glad to turn thought and energy again to the more straightforward rituals of a murder investigation, but even here he was becoming aware of unexpected complications. It should have been an easy enough case—a small community of people, the relatively secure building, an investigation not particularly difficult since the field of suspects was necessarily limited. But even after the first day he was beginning to suspect that it could turn into one of those cases which all detectives abhor: the inquiry in which the murderer is known but the evidence is never sufficient in the eyes of the DPP to justify prosecution. And the police team was, after all, dealing with lawyers. They would know better than most that what condemned a man was the inability to keep his mouth shut.

The office in which he waited was uncluttered, functional, a room which only a perceptive visitor might have found revealing of character, if only because of its occupant’s obvious intention that it should be nothing of the kind. There was the minimum furniture prescribed

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