Crime Traveller: The View from the Top
The report had been on Grisham's desk when she arrived at work that morning, and she couldn't have been more surprised if someone had told her she'd won the lottery. Ordinarily, to get Jeff Slade to complete paperwork, she had to either resort to threats or actually stand over him until he got it done. But there was the report, neatly typed and presented ahead of schedule. Grisham's immediate thought was that this must be a bad omen.
Slade had called late the previous evening to give her an update on the case; Stephen Marlowe had confessed to the murders of Nigel Chapman and Ron Haywood - killed for the lucrative piece of equipment they had engineered - and later perished in a fire of his own creation in the basement of Webb Biotech. Grisham was surprised by the unusually thorough nature of Slade's report, and was still amazed at how quickly he had picked out the right man. It reminded her why she continued to put her faith in Slade; in spite of everything – the tardiness, the lack of attention, the unreliability – he still had great instincts.
Although these days there seemed to be more going on.
While she prepared for her morning briefing, she saw Slade arrive in the office. Her immediate thought was that the clock in her office was wrong, that she was running late, and it was unnerving to realise that he was actually early. But he had arrived with Holly Turner, and Grisham felt that this and Slade's being on time was no mere coincidence.
In the quiet hours at the end of the day, and sometimes even at home, Grisham had found herself thinking about the change that seemed to have taken place in Jeff Slade. Well, not him per se, but the amazing improvements in the results he was getting - and had been getting for the past few months. He went from being an underwhelming and unenthusiastic detective – albeit one with an occasional streak of brilliance – to the department's star performer. The only difference in his work habits that Grisham had observed was the amount of time he spent with Holly Turner. As the department's Science Officer, Holly was expected to attend crime scenes, undertake analyses and pass the results on to the relevant case detectives, but Grisham suspected that she was doing much more when it came to Slade. She had started to notice the increased time Slade spent in her office, the fact that Holly had begun to follow him around on his investigations, and Grisham's first instinct had been to chastise Slade. After all, Holly was a shared department resource, and he had no right to monopolise her time like that. But the partnership seemed to produce instant results, and so it seemed churlish for Grisham to question it; the statistics spoke for themselves.
Grisham had known Slade the entire time he had been a detective, and there were two things that were inherently true about him: he had never had a partner, and he was deeply antagonistic towards Science Officers. Holly Turner represented a complete turnaround in both respects. Where Slade was reckless and impulsive, Holly was clear-thinking and methodical, so Grisham could see where the benefits lay. Maybe, she wryly pondered, Holly Turner had missed her calling; maybe she should have been a police detective.
But whereas Slade's lightning-fast clear-up rate was the upside, the downside seemed to be the occasional vagaries of his reporting, which had never been crystal clear to begin with. There had been a number of incidences when she had questioned how Slade could have gained the information he had, how he had managed to get to certain locations or overhear certain conversations. But if there was one thing Slade was good at, it was talking himself into and out of any situation, and Grisham had often had no choice but to take him at his word.
On one occasion, Slade's rapid case closures and his inconsistencies had really started to rankle, and Grisham had been determined to get to the bottom of it. Having Morris tail Slade during an investigation probably wasn't her finest hour professionally, and in hindsight was probably rather misjudged, but she just needed to know that everything was above board. But then Morris had come back to her with some muddled tale of informants and body-doubles - bizarre even for him - and Grisham had decided to just let sleeping dogs lie. That was what she got for questioning good performance.
It wasn't the only thing she had come to question, however. When Slade begun to involve Holly in his investigations, Grisham was certain it was a purely professional relationship. Apart from anything, he really didn't seem like the sort of man to interest Holly Turner. But she had been given reason to doubt this on a number of occasions; nothing definitive, just small things. There was the time Holly became a suspect in her aunt's murder, when Slade had been there in Holly's flat when they arrived to re-arrest her; likewise, when Slade had been implicated in the Layton Diamonds affair, he sought refuge with Holly.
But this most recent investigation involving Webb Biotech had made Grisham really question the nature of their friendship. She had eventually gathered that Slade's prime suspect, Stephen Marlowe, also happened to be a former boyfriend of Holly's. Grisham recognised jealousy when it reared its ugly head, and Slade had exhibited all of the signs. She saw Slade's expression on hearing that Holly had been with Marlowe until the small hours of the morning.
What she had witnessed that morning, however, strongly suggested that whatever differences the two had had were forgotten. After Grisham saw them arrive together, she watched as Slade followed Holly into her office, closing the door behind them. Later, as the staff waited for the briefing to begin, the pair sat beside each other on Slade's desk, and Grisham witnessed them toying with each other's fingers when they thought they weren't being watched. She saw Slade lean in and whisper something in Holly's ear. Usually so cool and professional, Holly was smiling and blushing at Slade, who couldn't have looked more pleased with himself. There seemed to be very little room for doubt now, but at that point Grisham was still reserving final judgement.
After dismissing her team from the briefing, Grisham returned to her office, but left the door ajar. Slade had been assigned to a new case, but as she suspected, he didn't leave the office right away. Presumably believing that they were now alone, Grisham watched Slade stop Holly just inside the doorway to her office, and saw all of her suspicions confirmed as the two of them shared a kiss. It was the kiss of two people for whom kissing each other was clearly still a novelty, an endorphin-drenched thrill. Yes, something had clearly changed since yesterday, and it didn't take a genius to work out what.
Grisham smiled to herself as she silently closed the door. Tomorrow, she'd have to have a talk with the pair of them, to remind them of the protocols around workplace relationships. But right now there didn't seem any harm in letting them have their time.
THE END