He had tried pointing out that it was staffed twenty-four-seven, to no avail.
‘I need to debrief the night shift before they go off duty.’
It was a fair point that had ended the discussion when he caught up with her at Express Park.
‘Are you all right, Sir?’ asked Louise. She was sitting in the passenger seat of Dixon’s Land Rover, watching him staring at the revolving doors. ‘Have you been here before?’
‘Funny you should ask that,’ he replied, sliding out of the driver’s seat.
Floor to ceiling windows, a huge atrium with palm trees in giant pots, automatic revolving doors; the staff car park full of electric cars plugged in to chargers.
His Land Rover would have looked out of place, even if he didn’t.
The receptionist recognised him, her face turning the same colour as her red blazer.
Warrant card this time. ‘Detective Superintendent Dixon to see Mr Page,’ he said, his voice taut. ‘And it’s urgent police business, so if you’d be kind enough to ask him not to keep me waiting half an hour this time.’
‘Move on,’ Jane had said. And he had been doing his best, but some things brought it all roaring back. His arrest for murder; job interviews at law firms. Beneath his sunny disposition, he was still seething.
Louise sat down on one of the red leather sofas, looking at Dixon with her eyebrows raised as far as they would go.
‘I came here for a job interview,’ he said, his voice hushed. ‘When I was on leave. It was a vacancy for a newly qualified corporate finance solicitor.’
‘You’d have loved that.’
‘This fellow, Page, kept me waiting in reception nearly half an hour, so I walked out.’
‘Good for you,’ said Louise, shaking her head. ‘Sounds to me like he did you a favour.’
‘Maybe he did.’
‘Certainly did us a favour.’ She picked up a newspaper from the glass coffee table, idly glancing at the headlines.
The receptionist replaced the telephone handset nervously. ‘He apologises for keeping you waiting and says he’ll be down in a few minutes.’
Dixon had heard that before and wasn’t having any of it. He walked over to the reception desk slowly, silently counting to ten, just as his anger management counsellor would have advised if she had been there instead of in the incident room. ‘Either he comes down now,’ said Dixon. ‘Or I go upstairs and arrest him for obstructing a murder enquiry.’
‘You really want me to tell him that?’
He nodded, slowly, menacingly, then listened to her repeating what he had said, word for word.
‘It’s that same police officer you kept waiting all that time when he came for a job interview,’ she added, her eyes fixed on Dixon.
He couldn’t quite make out what was being said on the other end of the line, but ‘Oh, shit’ carried plain as day.
Perhaps he was enjoying the moment a little too much?
Am I, bollocks.
The sound of running, then a door next to the lifts burst open.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Page. He was doing up the top button of his shirt and straightening his tie, his suit jacket draped over his arm. ‘I’m sorry about before too. I did ring the recruitment agent that afternoon, but they said you’d changed your mind.’
‘The recruitment agent was being diplomatic, I think, Sir,’ replied Dixon.
‘Quite.’
‘Forget it.’
‘Thank you.’
Maybe Dixon would too; one day.
Page looked at the receptionist.
‘Interview room four is free,’ she said. ‘Would anyone like a coffee?’
Red carpet, a round glass table, a pot of free pens in the middle, one of those folding cardboard calendar things emblazoned with the Oxenden Hart logo. It felt a bit like a Bentley dealership: ‘If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.’
Dixon waited until Page closed the door behind them.
‘We’re investigating the murders of Deirdre Baxter and Michael Allam,’ he said. ‘Clients of yours, I understand.’
‘Yes, they were. A while ago now, back when we were in Hammet Street, in the town centre. That was even before the merger. I was a litigator back then – managing partner now, for my sins.’
‘Do you still have the file?’
‘That would’ve been destroyed long ago, I’m afraid. We keep litigation files for fifteen years then they go off to be incinerated.’
