The Chalon Heads by Barry Maitland

Author:Barry Maitland
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: ebook, book
ISBN: 9781742695334
Publisher: Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd
Published: 2011-06-05T22:00:00+00:00

12

Cobalt Square

Cobalt Square had been intended as the doom of Queen Anne’s Gate and all the other scruffy little outposts in the bureaucratic diaspora of Scotland Yard. When it was completed in 1995, it had brought a thousand civilian and police staff together within the one block, emptying Drummond Gate, Bessborough Street, Jubilee House, Mandela Way and a dozen smaller headquarters buildings and annexes in the force’s biggest move since New Scotland Yard vacated Norman Shaw’s buildings in Westminster. Located not far from the south end of Vauxhall Bridge, where the MI6 building stands, it is naturally seen as part of some sort of nexus of the forces of law and order. Less flashy in its post-modernism than the MI6 building, more sober in its brick-framed glass curtain walling, Sally Malone would have pointed out that this was the two-bob side of the block, as against the half-crown riverbank site of the other building. Taken with its size, this more sombre expression of the Met complex makes the security services building seem almost frivolous. Approaching the front door of Cobalt Square, Kathy wondered what bureaucratic amnesia had allowed Brock’s team to remain free at Queen Anne’s Gate for so long.

Superintendent McLarren was not available when Kathy arrived at level five. After half an hour, she was told to get herself a cup of coffee and return at ten. This was repeated several times. Towards noon, just as she was wondering if she was doomed to spend the rest of her life like this, wandering the corridors of Cobalt Square, she was told that Superintendent McLarren had returned and would see her immediately.

A tall, wiry Scotsman with a sharp beak of a nose and unexpectedly luxuriant eyebrows, McLarren was in good spirits. ‘Come in, lassie, come in!’ He waved her into his office and told her to sit.

‘We’ll go through and join the others in a minute, but I wanted a wee word with you first, Kathy. Welcome aboard!’ He thrust his hand at her. It was bony and the grip hard.

‘Thank you, sir.’ She knew that he liked to be referred to as Old Jock in his absence, and sir to his face.

‘You only just made it, you know.’ He gave her a grim smile and perched himself on the edge of his desk.

‘Really?’

‘Oh, yes. So . . .’ He stared at her with a gleam in his eye, as if he were expecting her to say something heartfelt.

‘Thank you for having me, sir,’ she said, dutifully.

‘Yes, yes.’ He continued fixing her with the enigmatic gleam. He wanted more. ‘Do you know what I’m thinking, Kathy?’

‘No, sir.’

‘I’m thinking, Kathy, that I’m looking at a shipwrecked sailor who’s been pulled into the lifeboat from the stormy seas, but who doesn’t yet understand what a near thing it was.’

Kathy tried not to look surprised. ‘Really, sir?’

‘Aye, really. Is there anything you regret, tell me, about coming aboard?’

Kathy found it hard to find something appropriate to say. ‘Er . . . Well, I suppose I regret coming off the Starling case, sir.

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