From detectives to filing clerks. The lot. Custodians as well, I have no doubt. He's a popular figure."
"I know. I've met him. He's quite the gent. That would be the word, wouldn't it? Gent."
Hillier eyed her in a way she didn't much like, suggesting he had some thoughts on the wheres and hows of her acquaintance with Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley. She considered an elucidation on the subject, but she rejected the idea. Let the man think what the man would think. She had her chance to capture the job she wanted, and all that mattered was proving to him that she was worthy to be named permanent and not just acting detective superintendent.
"They're professionals, the lot of them. They won't make your life a misery," Hillier said. "Still, there're strong loyalties among them. Some things die hard."
And some don't die at all, she thought. She wondered if Hillier intended to sit or whether this interview was going to be conducted entirely in the headmaster/recalcitrant pupil mode that his present position seemed to indicate. She also wondered if she'd made some sort of professional faux pas in sitting herself, but it seemed to her that he had made an unambiguous gesture towards one of the two chairs that were positioned in front of his desk, hadn't he?
"...won't give you a problem. Good man," Hillier was saying. "But John Stewart's another matter. He still wants the superintendent's position, and he didn't take it well when he wasn't named permanent superintendent at the end of his trial period."
Isabelle brought herself round with a mental jolt. The mention of DI John Stewart's name told her that Hillier had been speaking of the others who had worked temporarily in the detective superintendent's job. He'd have been talking about the in-house officers, she concluded.
Mentioning those who, like her, had auditioned - there was no other word for it - from outside the Met would have been pointless as she was unlikely to run into them in one or another of the endless, lino-floored corridors in Tower Block or Victoria Block. DI John Stewart, on the other hand, would be part of her team. His feathers were going to need smoothing out. This wasn't one of her strengths, but she would do what she could.
"I understand," she told Hillier. "I'll tread carefully with him. I'll tread carefully with them all."
"Very good. How are you settling in? How are the boys? Twins, aren't they?"
She made her lips curve as one would normally do when "the children" were mentioned, and she forced herself to think about them exactly like that, in inverted commas. The inverted commas kept them at a distance from her emotions, which was where she needed them. She said,
"We've decided - their father and I - that they're better off remaining with him for now, since I'm only here on trial. Bob's not far from Maidstone, he has a lovely property in the countryside, and as it's their summer holidays, it seemed wisest to have them live with their father for a while."
"Not easy for you, I expect," Hillier noted. "You'll be missing them."
"I'll be busy," she said. "And you know what boys are like. Eight years old? They need supervising and plenty of it. As both Bob and his wife are at home, they're in a good position to keep them on the straight and narrow, a far better position than I'll be in, I daresay. It should be fine." She made the situation sound ideal: herself hard at work in London, nose to the metaphorical grindstone, while Bob and Sandra breathed copious amounts of fresh air in the countryside, all the time doting on the boys and feeding them home-cooked chicken pies filled with everything organic and served with ice-cold milk. And, truth be told, that wasn't too far from how it likely would be. Bob, after all, adored his sons and Sandra was perfectly lovely in her own way, if a bit too school-marmish for Isabelle's taste. She had her own two children, but that hadn't meant she had no room in her home and her heart for Isabelle's boys. For Isabelle's boys were Bob's boys as well, and he was a good dad and always had been. He kept his eye on the ball, did Robert Ardery. He asked the right questions at just the right time, and he never made a threat that didn't sound like an inspiration he'd just been struck by.
Hillier seemed to be reading her, or at