Off Balance

1

Kay rubbed the towel across the mirror on the bathroom cabinet and peered at her reflection. Her hair needed a trim that was why it looked so untidy this morning. The damp air in the bathroom, condensation from Mandy’s long soak didn’t help. She must be in love again Kay thought. Whenever Mandy switched boyfriends she spent hours luxuriating in foam filled refills of hot water then washing and conditioning her long wavy hair until it glistened and she gleamed. It happened about every three months.

Although she was thirty Kay too was still trading men in. The difference was that she didn’t fall in love, couldn’t remember having allowed herself to do so. Work and serial gentle courtships were enough to keep her happy or at least busy and content.

‘Kay, Mandy, the car is five minutes away,’ Neil Bridges shouted. ‘Are you taking Rob, Araminda?’

‘I’m going on my bike dad. Mum is taking Dorinda but she needs you to collect her from ballet in Covent Garden at five thirty.’

The four of them arrived in the wide hallway together, Mandy just two days before her eighteenth birthday looking more like a Vogue model dressed in school uniform than a sixth former; Rob at fifteen determinedly scruffy struggling into bicycle clips for his journey to Pimlico; Neil Bridges at fifty still with the sportsman’s body of a much younger man resplendent in his police uniform. As an Assistant Commissioner in London’s Metropolitan Police he wore a suit most days but today’s timetable included a ceremonial occasion.

Kay looked across at the family she had come to love and was once again grateful that Neil and Araminda had taken her in when she had been Dorinda’s age and suddenly orphaned. Then Neil had been a mere inspector as Kay was now. A bomb in Belfast had successfully targeted Araminda’s politically significant father. Kay’s parents and grandmother had also been killed along with seven other incidental victims. Neil had immediately offered Kay a home in Thurloe Square even though it was actually Araminda’s house. Within a year Mandy had been born and had bonded with Kay from day one.

Dorinda had been fostered only a month ago. She had been at boarding school in England when her parents had been killed as their farm in Zimbabwe had been taken over. Like Neil, Dorinda’s maternal grandfather was a Knight, a member of the Loyal Order of the Knights of something or other Kay could not remember though the activities organised by the Knights had often played a part in her life as a teenager. The boarding school wouldn’t keep her on without fees. Kay had marvelled again at Neil’s generosity of spirit in taking Dorinda in. Just as with her, Araminda seemed more distant but aloofness was her way and she had been a good carer to Kay and Kay was sure she would be to Dorinda as well. But she would never be a mother as Neil had been a father, not with the same spontaneous wholehearted love.

When Kay had left for Cambridge Neil had kept the relationship alive, insisting that she joined them at Christmas and Easter and suggesting a post graduate course in criminology at LSE with a return to Thurloe Square. By the time her PhD was awarded he had secured her placement on the Metropolitan Police fast track.

Three years ago as Assistant Commissioner he had taken over strategic planning and research and Kay had begun to work directly for him evaluating policing strategies in a budget conscious and anti-terrorist obsessed climate. Given her lack of long term interest in any man and the cost of London housing the subject of her once again moving out of Thurloe Square had never been raised.

Although it was an official police car its first duty was to deliver Mandy in the opposite direction to her Holland Park School collecting her friend Fiona on the way. Fiona’s mother would drive Mandy home later. Fiona’s father was a senior banker. Both sets of parents were sufficiently security conscious to ensure that their daughters were not at risk of kidnapping in a public place or on public transport and the girls seemed to accept this as a fact of life.

Neil took the opportunity to quiz Mandy about her scholastic progress and she was remarkably open and positive in her responses. Kay recognised that Mandy was emerging from the reluctant to confide adolescent into self assured adult mode. She’ll be grown up before I am, Kay thought.

‘There’s a Knights’ Christmas revue. Rehearsals start this evening. I thought Dorinda might enjoy it,’ Neil said. ‘You could probably still be part of it if you wanted to be Mandy. Or are you too grown up these days?’ Mandy didn’t even bother to reply, just gave her father that ‘I’m not ten any longer’ look she had perfected years ago as the car drew up outside Fiona’s house.

Mandy greeted Fiona in halting Mandarin and the girls stuttered through a basic conversation in Chinese in preparation for an oral test later in the day. When they finally ran out of phrases they knew, Kay congratulated them. ‘Have to survive in this world,’ Fiona responded. ‘I’m not planning to marry for at least fifteen years and by then the only rich men in the world will be Chinese or Indian. Indians speak English but the Chinese can’t be bothered with it.’

‘Matt Damon will still be rich,’ Mandy said and Fiona countered with the name of a boy band singer Kay had never heard of. The girls compared their attributes as husband material, Mandy was deliberately trying to embarrass her father and Fiona was giving out an air of sophistication with hints of sexual knowledge to impress him.

‘I pity the men, who will have to contend with those two,’ Neil laughed as the girls waved at the departing car. Then, as usual, their conversation turned to work topics.

‘I’m having a problem with the NIC assessment,’ Kay confessed

‘The Home Office summary looked pretty straightforward, why the doubts?’

‘You asked me to check through the crime stats for the designated Neighbourhood Improvement Zones and the areas immediately surrounding them.’

‘Yes,’ Neil agreed, ‘whenever there are special security measures in an area, like CCTV in city centres, crime tends to move to neighbouring areas. According to the Home Office summary this didn’t happen with NIZ. Crime went down in the areas and didn’t go up anywhere else. If that is the case the pilot schemes were a success, why do you doubt them?’

‘I think something is being rigged, the assessment period is too short. It was a two year trial and they only measured the year from month seven to month eighteen.’

‘I don’t see how we can argue with that. It would take several months for an effect to show and the report needed to be in before the two years was up.’

‘I also looked at the records of the core criminals in the NIZ areas. There is hardly any change in their offending rates but most of their crime scenes are outside the NIZ areas during the evaluation period.’

‘So why aren’t the overall figures for the surrounding areas up?’

‘I don’t know sir.’ Kay responded.

Neil laughed. ‘I didn’t mean to put you on the defensive Kay. There’s no need for sir outside the office. But if you can’t come up with a detailed refutation we’ll be forced politically to offer our unqualified support for NIZ.’

Kay smiled back but weakly. ‘I’ll work on it tonight see what I can come up with.’

‘I thought you had a hot date.’

‘David! David isn’t a hot date. We just like vocal jazz. Anyway I’m meeting him at Pizza on the Park at nine. I’ll have NIZ well rubbished by then.’

‘Well rubbished? A Cambridge education obviously isn’t what it was in my day.’ The car drew to a halt outside the hotel across the road from New Scotland Yard and Kay got out. Only a few knew of her connection to the AC and she didn’t think that being driven into the car park with him was appropriate.

By eleven Kay had dealt with all the routine paperwork she needed to clear and turned her attention to the crime statistics in the NIZ areas month by month.

There were four Neighbourhood Improvement Zones. All of them were within what had been the Greater London Council area before Margaret Thatcher had abolished the concept. Each was an area ripe for gentrification. Each contained neglected 1960s tower blocks and other unimproved housing stock. The commercial buildings were secondary and tertiary shopping areas serving only the low income occupants of much of the housing who had limited choice and few transport options. Most of the industrial buildings were old, used for warehousing or distribution with the occasional often Asian staffed sweatshop. Within each area though there were rows of gentrified houses for professionals and skilled office workers who commuted to the City or West End to earn their living. Some schools had been selected for special treatment to cater for the children of these better educated people.

The pilot areas had been identified by an organisation called The Lifeskills Consultancy. The major expenditure had been on security cameras, the setting up of committees to identify needs and opportunities for youth facilities and the introduction of neighbourhood boundaries and the presence of uniformed Neighbourhood Lifestyle Improvers who doubled as security guards, recruited and trained by the Lifeskills consultancy.

Each of the zones lay in a corridor through which late night revellers from the West End passed on their way to the suburbs. The guards quickly made these through routes unacceptable, cutting off easy access to late night drinking spots and burger bars and moving on vans offering fast food. Drug pushers, car thieves and burglars moved to nearby areas with fewer cameras and fewer patrols. The sport and music based youth projects lowered the incidence of teenage boredom crimes.

When Kay looked more carefully into the figures month by month she discovered that after month eighteen when the youth projects were left to local volunteers and the specialists who had founded them moved on, teenage nuisance crime began to rise. Border patrols remained but there were fewer guards on duty and the old patterns of post West End activity gradually increased. Although still lower than in month one, the crime statistics for month twenty four were a lot higher than those of month eighteen.

When Kay examined the figures for surrounding areas she saw that petty crime had increased because of migration from the NIZ areas but that armed robberies on banks and high value item premises and car thefts of upmarket vehicles to order, all the province of organised gangs, had declined significantly.

Kay knew that the apparent success of the NIZ pilot areas wasn’t real but until she could explain the fall of organised criminal activity in surrounding areas she would not be able to challenge the Home Office interpretation. But what was the point of claiming success for NIZ? Just to make the government look good? To put more cameras and private security forces on the streets? To make money for somebody, enough money to make it worth getting the co-operation of organised crime? Money would come into it, Kay was sure. NIZ wouldn’t ultimately be about improving the lives of ordinary people. Kay sighed at how cynical her thought process had become, cynical but realistically so.

Neil had always described the police service to her as a force for the common good, a force to improve the lives of ordinary people. He had almost resigned at the time of the miners’ strikes in the 1980s when the police were seen as a force of suppression of ordinary people. He would have done if he’d been asked to participate directly he’d told Kay. She’d admired him even more for that. She would do all she could to prevent him supporting something that wasn’t in the interest of ordinary people just because she had failed to find evidence.

2

Kay couldn’t sleep that night. She showered then took the crime comparison sheets from her bag and began to study them. Damn, Kay thought, the figures weren’t complete. In each zone there were no crime figures at all for four or more estate resident criminal families. They had been charged with nothing at all during the evaluation year. They and their families, over thirty career criminals, had suddenly gone straight. No way! Kay had to get back to New Scotland Yard and check things out.

She concentrated hard on raw data knowing that the next day she had to write about it. It was four in the morning when Kay began to call up computer records. It was almost ten when she had finished her research on the zones and neighbouring areas. She had identified well over a hundred career criminals who had suddenly stopped offending, not just in their usual territories but anywhere in the UK. It was four in the afternoon by the time Kay had scrutinised council housing and benefit records and discovered that over three hundred people, the criminals and their families had simply stopped claiming, moved and disappeared without official trace. NIZ, the Neighbourhood Improvement Zone activities had contributed nothing long term to crime reduction. The significant statistics had been achieved by the disappearance from the scene of the major criminal families.

In the afternoon, Kay tabulated all of the information and then downloaded it onto her laptop. Just after five she knocked on Neil Bridges door, exhausted, but happy with her achievements.

‘NIZ didn’t mean a thing. I can show why the crime figures were reduced. I’ve put all the stats together and I’ll have the report ready for the Home Office tomorrow,’ she told him triumphantly.

Neil looked up with a worried frown on his face. ‘Are you sure about this? The Home Secretary isn’t going to like it. He’s gone on record applauding the success of the zones.’

‘Whatever else they have done they aren’t responsible for significant crime reduction. I’m sure of that,’ Kay confirmed.

‘Then also be sure it’s a confidential report and doesn’t get circulated. Send the only copy you release to the Home Secretary’s P.A. It isn’t going to be welcomed.’

‘Don’t you want to see it first?’

‘No. I trust you,’ he smiled. ‘And I don’t want to make it official yet, otherwise it will have to be circulated. Mark it first draft as well. Let’s see what reaction you get.’

‘Are we all in for dinner tonight?’ Kay asked.

‘Think so, do you want a lift from the hotel car park?’ Kay agreed readily. She felt far too tired to use public transport.

In the car talk turned to family matters. ‘Has Mandy talked to you about her eighteenth?’ Neil asked.

‘I’m not sure she’s impressed by the venue. The Savoy isn’t exactly pitched at teenagers is it?’

‘Araminda’s family have used it for decades. Eighteenths at the Savoy are a second best to the old debutante system apparently.’

‘Only in Araminda’s mind surely.’

‘Don’t be cruel Kay, Neil grinned, ‘there must be at least two other mothers on a charity committee somewhere who share that view.’

‘You know Mandy will find some way to undermine the occasion.’

‘She already has. She refused to go at all unless it was fancy dress. Araminda was appalled but had to give in. At least Mandy will be able to view the young men Araminda thinks suitable for her. About thirty of them have been invited against Mandy’s wishes. There’s even a fifteen year old who got onto the list because he is a minor royal. The oldest is thirty five. I can’t see Mandy going for someone twice her age but she does seem to tire of boys quickly and this one makes lots of money designing computer games so he may be sufficiently immature for her. She won’t take Araminda’s mating game seriously of course but if she happens to drift into a relationship with any of them in the future at least she’ll have been formally introduced. That seems still to matter to Araminda.’

‘I had no idea Araminda thought in those terms,’ Kay said then let the silence lengthen when she realised the significance of her observation. Araminda had never thought of her as a daughter. Neil watched the realisation hit home then changed the subject.

‘Go easy in that report. I don’t want you to get hurt,’ he said.

Kay smiled at him, an acknowledgement of his strength of feeling for her compared to that of Araminda.

That evening Araminda had made a special effort for dinner, or at least organised cook into doing so. Everyone’s favourite food made it to the table in one guise or another. Rob had passed an important exam and for once seemed as pleased as his parents about it. As a reward he was allowed egg and chips, his all time favourite food.

Dorinda looked radiant. Her cheeks had a glow about them and her eyes sparkled. She was being allowed a ballet costume to wear to the first half of Mandy’s eighteenth bash. And, she announced, she might get to be Buttons in the Knights’ Christmas production that was always an amalgam of pantomime stories involving as many of the girls as possible.

Neil turned his attention to Kay. ‘She enjoyed the rehearsal almost as much as ballet. Do you remember the plays you were in?’

‘I can remember the dressing-up. There was a lot of that, but not much else.’

‘Thanks for being part of the family,’ Neil said suddenly and smiled the way he had in the car.

It was just after five when Kay awoke the next morning. She felt fresh and eager for the day to begin. The words she would use in her report to the Home Office on crime in the pilot Neighbourhood Improvement Zones were already forming in her mind. She had always been lucky like that. The talent had served her well in countless exams. If she then relaxed and slept soundly, her brain did the sifting and sorting and found the structure and the words while she slept. All she had to do the next day was input the words into the computer or on to the exam paper, no problem.

Swiftly Kay changed into her jogging outfit; put her work clothes in her backpack and paused only to leave a brief note on the breakfast table. She arrived at the hotel close to New Scotland Yard just as a light drizzle was beginning to fall. She waved to the doorman as she jogged through the courtyard then shook a spray of damp from her hair as she passed through the revolving door. Sophie was on reception duty. Kay was firm friends with five of the reception staff. If ever she had to wait for a lift from Neil in the evening she had a drink in the foyer and chatted to the staff. One morning jogging in she had been caught in a heavy shower and Sophie had offered an already vacated room where she could shower dry off and change. The facility had become a habit and each time she left a generous tip for the chambermaid.

She sat down at her computer terminal and let the words flow, drawing down statistics to prove her points. Remembering what Neil had advised, Kay marked the title page first draft, copied the report onto her laptop in case the Home Office wanted an electronic copy and printed out one hard copy. She looked at her watch. It was already eleven thirty. She had been typing solidly for five hours.

Kay was just about to ring Neil Bridges to see if he had changed his mind about seeing her report before she took it to the Home Office when he rang her. ‘I’ve just had a call from the Home Secretary’s PPS, an obnoxious chap called Duncan Meredith. He’s chasing our endorsement for a statement about crime reduction. I told him your report would be ready by two. Hope that gives you enough time.’

‘Did you say we couldn’t endorse that conclusion?’

‘I told him there were issues to be taken into consideration. He didn’t sound pleased Kay. Just let him have your report. Any statement the Home Office wants to make is up to them. I’ll get our PR people to work up a suitable statement if we need one.’

‘Perhaps you should see what I’ve written?’

‘Let’s keep this low key for now shall we. I’m booked solid until five today anyway so I couldn’t work on it.’

Kay loved most things about her dad, but not the way he sometimes played office politics. She realised that he wouldn’t be in line for the top job if he wasn’t skilled in that devious art, but she still didn’t like it.

3

Kay couldn’t concentrate on any of her other analytical work and something was nagging at the back of her mind, something she had forgotten to do. Then it came to her. She had no costume for Mandy’s party. She knew she had been putting off choosing something. Araminda had not issued her with one of the formal embossed invitations and to that extent she didn’t know if she was invited. This was real family stuff, man, wife, two biological children. She had never been adopted, just fostered and although she had a room in the family home that was much more to do with Neil wanting to talk to her informally about work. Araminda had made it plain that she had no interest in contamination by criminality as she termed it. Neil had his work, she her charities. They were mutually exclusive. She accompanied him to formal work related social occasions. He accompanied her to various fund raising bashes. Beyond that they shared only their family life and a few mutual pleasures, opera, Wimbledon and sailing a few weekends a year on the small yacht she had retained in the family when her father died.

It was Mandy who had asked what costume Kay would wear. ‘Mother thinks she is choosing mine, something elegant to appeal to the eligible ones. Well she doesn’t know it yet but I’m going as a Texas cheerleader. I got a costume from one of those soft porn sites on the net. I’ll have to wear a bra under the poke through top, until later in the evening anyway, but it has all the tassels and the tiny thong will hardly show between the crotch-less panties. Can you imagine what the toffee nosed lot in their wigs and historical costumes are going to think? Mother will be devastated. Serve her right for not letting me have a party with my mates.’

‘I’m not sure I’m invited,’ Kay had replied.

‘Of course you are sis. You’re family. You know that. If you don’t come I’m not going whatever mother says. Anyway it will need two officers of the law to hold her back when she sees my outfit. You won’t warn her will you?’ Mandy knew Kay wouldn’t and Kay knew she knew. Kay couldn’t count the number of times Mandy had done things Araminda wouldn’t have approved of and confessed them safely to Kay. The only time Mandy had been out of control was when Kay had been away at Cambridge and unavailable as a steadying influence and boundary maker. For a while Mandy at nine had become sullen and withdrawn in her room, only recovering her spirits during Kay’s long vacation.

Despite Mandy’s assumption Kay had checked with Araminda that she was on the guest list. ‘Of course, Kay, how could you believe otherwise?’ The response however had been brittle and hurried. Kay wondered if Araminda had simply forgotten about her.

And so the decision about a costume had to be faced. Kay did not feel grand or as if she belonged in finery or high fashion as Araminda and Mandy did, although Mandy would have denied it absolutely. Nor could she, as Mandy had suggested, select a costume from a porn site. Certainly not the whip and mask to go with police issue handcuffs that Mandy had challenged her to wear.

Kay realised that she had time to go to a theatrical costumier in the West End before her Home Office appointment. ‘Who will partner you?’ the assistant asked. ‘At such an event one is usually invited as one of a pair, apart from the very young unattached.’ She stared up and down Kay’s body to emphasise the lack of very young in her appearance. ‘Costumes are normally ordered in pairs.’

‘I’m close family, invited solo,’ Kay insisted.

‘Ah!’ the assistant sighed and seemed to make a series of silent assumptions as she studied Kay’s body. She pursed her lips. She sighed again. And then she raised her arm and her head in a Eureka moment and disappeared.

Eventually she returned clutching a Robin Hood outfit. ‘Essentially metro-sexual,’ she insisted, as worn by a pantomime woman or a man in any other context. The Lincoln green will bring out the highlights in your hair and your figure is sufficiently boyish.’ She held the costume against Kay. ‘You can try if you wish, but it will fit,’

‘It will do,’ Kay snapped. She had intended to try the costume on but wanted to get away from the irritating woman.

‘With such enthusiasm it’s hardly surprising there isn’t a Little John or Maid Marion to be invited with you,’ the assistant spat and hurried away to take a deposit on Kay’s credit card.

Kay was determined to try the outfit on before the shop closed but there wasn’t time to go to her office before the Home Office. To her surprise she wasn’t left waiting in reception for the usual lengthy period. She was collected almost immediately by a woman in her fifties wearing what looked like a Dior suit from the nineteen fifties, elegant in cut and simplicity. ‘I’m Heather Cartwright. I run the minister’s office. You will be seeing the minister’s PPS Duncan Meredith when he eventually returns from luncheon. I believe he is at his club today so your appointment may be delayed.’

The woman’s voice was softly accented, from Cheshire perhaps then modulated by decades of Home Counties life. Soon Kay was comfortably settled in what Heather described as the interview room, an office that had been softened by the use of a coffee table and sofas rather than table and chairs.

‘I hope you are casting some doubt on this Improvement Zone charade,’ Heather said. ‘As a lifelong Fabian Society member, I had hoped for more substance and less of a sell out to business from a Labour government. Gordon was good with the minimum wage and pension credit but then he got into a muddle and now he seems as captive as that idiot Blair.’

When Kay outlined some of her main points Heather beamed with satisfaction. ‘The cowboy won’t like it. It will be good to see the smirk freeze on his face.’ She then pointed to the costumier’s bag. ‘I’ve been dying to ask what you have in there. I love dressing up as you can see from the Dior. Mother was one of his girls in her youth and managed to hang on to a few uncollected modes.’ Kay unzipped the bag and explained the situation including her experience in the shop. ‘The minister isn’t in today and you have time to use his dressing room. I’d be happy to offer an opinion.’

Kay checked her watch but Heather assured her that Duncan Meredith would keep her waiting. ‘Did you bring a disc as well as a hard copy? Otherwise I will have to retype everything to prepare the appropriate appendix?’

‘No,’ Kay replied, ‘but I have it on my laptop, so if I call up the report you can download it while I change.’ Leaving her attaché case, Kay eased into the lavishly appointed walnut changing room and quickly put on the Robin Hood outfit. The leggings hugged her, showing that she had remarkably long and slender thighs for her height. The jacket flowed elegantly over her slim hips and allowed the rise of her breasts to show to best advantage. The colour did suit her complexion perfectly. Despite her feelings about the assistant she had to admit that the choice and fit were perfect. Even the rakish angle of the hat suited her. Feeling elated, she thrust the door open and leapt out into Heather’s domain announcing her with a ‘ta-ra’.

It was then she heard a loud slow handclap from the left of the room. A laconic man stood framed in the doorway of the interview room. ‘I have fifteen minutes to review your evidence. Beyond that I wouldn’t dream of interfering with your charade.’

Heather Cartwright moved quickly across the room to confront the man. ‘Whilst awaiting your return Miss Stewart and I discussed a charity children’s party I am organising to raise money for an under-funded children’s hospital. She happened to have collected a costume for another event and agreed should the outfit be suitable to appear at my event. I had informed her of your almost invariable late return from your club.’

‘Not today. I do have to leave in twenty minutes so can we get on?’ With that he stomped into the conference room, flopped onto a sofa and put his feet up on the coffee table ankles crossed. Kay had been flustered until she saw his cowboy boots and knew where his nickname originated.

She stared pointedly at his feet and said, ‘At least my fancy dress isn’t habitual.’ Then taking the printed copy out of the case that Heather had passed back to her, she sat down opposite to him and without reference to any notes began a quick summary of her findings. Although he was speed reading her report at the same time, Kay could tell that he was listening intently to what she was saying. ‘The Metropolitan Police therefore believe that the Home office should take some time to study these findings before proceeding further with the concept of Neighbourhood Improvement Zones.’

He looked at her with tolerant amusement. ‘And you are of course authorised to speak on behalf of the Metropolitan Police.’

Kay was taken aback by his attitude. ‘I have been asked to review the crime statistics.’

‘And you are authorised to make policy, beyond robbing the rich to feed the poor of course,’ he mocked.

‘Only to bring these further facts to the attention of the Home Office,’ she insisted.

‘I don’t see any further facts here.

‘The crime figures begin to rise again after the one year evaluation period.’

‘The evaluation period is what our conclusions must be based on. We used information provided by the Metropolitan Police that verified a fall in crime within the zones and no increase in surrounding areas. The techniques used were therefore more successful than ordinary police practice.’

‘But that is not the whole story.’

‘The rest of the story so far as I can see in this draft document is that the Metropolitan Police has knowledge of a significant number of known criminal families that it has failed to arrest in the past eighteen months and which are currently lost to effective surveillance. Is this something the Metropolitan Police wishes to draw to public attention? I think not.’

‘I was asked to let you have the full facts,’ Kay insisted.

‘Then I suggest you take your draft report and re-evaluate your research. The minister will issue his statement in support of the Neighbourhood Improvement Zones by the end of the day. Should the Metropolitan Police at a policy making level wish to make a contradictory statement about crime figures casting doubt on the validity on those originally supplied that is entirely up to the Metropolitan Police, but to contradict one’s paymasters is hardly ever good policy Ms Hood. Now if you will excuse me I have serious people to see.’

When he had gone leaving Kay shaking with anger, Heather came over to comfort her. ‘He’s an insufferable fool. I will make sure the minister sees your report but I would go back to your office and take advice if I was you. The cowboy has some powerful friends.’

4

Kay stormed out of the Home Office building to be greeted by lashing rain with no taxi in sight. By