“A woman. Her husband got angry at her. I could hear shouting.”
“Did he hurt her?”
“I don’t know,” he said, trying desperately to convince himself, never mind Dziko.
“Why did he want to hurt her?”
“I’m not sure. I went to speak to her, at her home. We think she was involved, romantically, with our murder victim.”
“And you told her husband that?” There was anger and shock in her voice now, which raised in volume just slightly.
“No, no,” he looked up at her, desperately trying to placate her. “I would never.”
“Good,” she settled again. “So, what happened?”
“He wouldn’t let me talk to her, let me in the house, anything.”
“Are you not the police?”
“Yes, but…”
“So should he not be scared of you?”
“That’s not how it works. Some people, they just… they don’t fear us because that’s not how we do things.”
“I beg to differ. I’ve seen police scare people.”
“Maybe some can do that, but do you want me to be like that?”
Dziko paused for a moment, reflecting on what he had said. “No.”
“Exactly.”
“But I do want you to be brave.”
“I wasn’t. I was scared. I heard the noise and I ran.”
Dziko put down her spoon and smiled, reaching her hand out to place it on his. “It’s okay to be scared, you know.”
Her touch comforted him. She still believed in him. She still loved him. It was all that mattered.
“I want to do better.”
“Then let me help you.”
That was all he wanted to hear. That she could offer him some sort of solution that would make everything better.
“Please.”
“Wait there.” She stood and left the table, heading up the stairs, into their room. He heard the scrape of a wooden drawer as it opened and then closed. More footsteps as she came down the stairs and back to the dining room. “Here.”
She placed something on the table and he looked down, struggling to comprehend what she had asked of him as he saw it.
“Your underwear?”
A plain pair of knickers. Loose-fitting, probably comfortable, just off-white, with a frilly lace edging making them unmistakably hers.
“If you want to conquer fear, you need to own it. Tomorrow, this is the underwear you’ll be wearing when you go to work. You’ll have the fear with you all day, that someone might spot them. You won’t be able to run away, you won’t be able to escape it and if someone spots them, you’re going to have to find a way to own your embarrassment, to vanquish that fear and make it yours so that you can do your job, just like you should have done today.”
He looked at her and then at the underwear again, wanting to object, but not being able to. She had asked him to do it, so he would do it gladly. It made sense after all. So many times he had heard the refrain that people should face fear to overcome it. This would be the perfect test. He smiled at her, a grateful smile, welcoming her decision, consenting completely to what she wanted him to do.
9.
The next morning, he carried out Dziko’s request without question, as he knew he would. That was their relationship. He had placed her firmly in charge. It was liberating to lose control like that. To place someone else in charge of all the decisions of his life. Now, as he wore her underwear, he knew that everything would be okay.
The morning had begun in the station. Joseph and Ray had met with Claude Banks who had been keen to hear more about any possible link to organised crime.
“The docks are rife with this sort of thing. It’s the scourge of this part of London,” he lamented. “It’s easy to see why someone like our Mr Trainer could be tempted to get himself mixed up in that sort of thing and how he would have ended up coming a cropper.”
“There are other angles we’re looking at. We believe he was having an affair with a married woman,” Ray explained.
“Did the husband find out?”
“Joseph?” Ray beckoned for Joseph to take up the tale.
“That’s an angle we need to investigate at this point. I tried to speak to her last night but she wasn’t in.”
“Still a bit of a stretch if we don’t know that he knew.” Banks rubbed his chin. “I think we need to keep it in mind, of course, but I want to know more about what’s happening down on the docks with gangs.”
