Behind Dead Eyes (DC Ian Bradshaw #2) - Howard Linskey Page 0,21
‘open-door’ policy but not that afternoon. Now her door was very firmly shut against an unfair world. God help anybody who tried to disturb her before this day was through.
Durham Constabulary’s solitary female DI should have seen it coming. She half expected there’d be a spy in the camp, reporting back to DCI Kane on her competence and fitness for leadership but she hadn’t expected Kane to be so bloody blatant about it.
He hadn’t liked it when she bridled then asked him why he needed to see one of her team so he had invented some bullshit story about needing a lift home. There was something else that was bothering her about the whole thing: Bradshaw. She’d actually thought he might be different, that he could, quite possibly, be one of the good ones and Lord knows there weren’t many of them. Well, at least now she knew differently.
In the morning she would challenge Bradshaw, maybe even ask him outright if he was Kane’s spy and see if that put the wind up him. If he wavered for an instant, she would never trust him again.
Chapter Nine
‘Working late again, I see.’ The words were spoken like a reprimand, as Graham Seaton surveyed the rows of empty desks in the newsroom but, as usual, there was a smile behind her editor’s eyes. ‘Aint you got a home to go to?’
‘So are you,’ Helen reminded him, ‘working late I mean – and you do have a home to go to.’ Graham was married with children, not returning to an empty one-bedroom flat like she was.
‘I’m planning on being there very soon and I didn’t put the hours in that you do when I was your age.’ This sounded funny, coming from her relatively youthful boss. Graham was still in his early thirties, which was very young for an editor on a daily.
‘I bet you did.’
‘Mmm, well maybe,’ he admitted, ‘but back then I was keen,’ he was heading back to his office, ‘not a cynical, clapped-out old veteran who never gets out of the newsroom anymore.’
‘I wouldn’t say you never get out of the newsroom.’
‘Oi, watch it, Norton,’ he grinned back at her, ‘or I’ll transfer you to the obituary page.’
‘Then who would get you all your exclusive crime stories?’ she asked. ‘You know you’d be lost without me.’
He pretended to ponder this for a while. ‘Maybe I would be.’ And their eyes locked for a moment. ‘Don’t stay too late though,’ and he disappeared into his office.
Oh God, did she just flirt with her boss? Was that flirting or was it blokeish banter? There was no innuendo; but maybe it wasn’t what she said, but the way she said it. Her editor was good-looking, but it wasn’t just that. What really made him attractive was how damned capable he was. Helen felt she was learning something new every day here and the six months she had been in the job had flown by. Graham was such a contrast to her old editor on the Durham Messenger. Malcolm had been lazy, and sleazy with it, which was never a winning combination. After that experience anyone would have been an improvement but Graham had trusted her from day one, despite her lack of experience, handing her plum assignments and letting Helen follow her own judgement. He provided wise counsel to ensure she didn’t drift into territory that could prove ruinously expensive for the newspaper if somebody sued but he was never less than encouraging. Now she actually had a boss who behaved like she always imagined a newspaper editor should.
He was also married with kids, she reminded herself again, but even if he hadn’t been, Helen Norton was in a relationship; a long-standing and committed relationship she almost jeopardised once before by becoming too close to a colleague and she told herself she was never going to allow that to happen again.
There was no one else in the newsroom and the light from her editor’s open office door was enticing. More than once she had gone to see him at the end of the day with a question about a story. He would answer in his usual, unhurried manner and this often lead to a more general chat until they both realised time was getting on. She glanced towards that open door again now and found herself thinking of an excuse to knock on it.
That would be a bad idea.
Helen decided to take her editor’s advice and go home.