Fall From Grace by Tim Weaver

stopped, her eyes fixed on a space between us.
    Come on, Ellie: give me something .
    I waited her out and, after a couple of moments, she looked back at me. ‘From a distance, and from what I can remember, it seemed like the type of file you’d expect the police to compile. I mean, it was in a folder – a beige one, I think; just a standard A4 loose-flap folder – and the paper inside …’ She paused again. ‘It looked pretty tidy and well maintained, but I don’t think it was bound.’
    ‘All right,’ I said, writing down what she’d said verbatim. ‘All right, that’s really good, Ellie. Thank you.’
    She smiled, and seemed to relax a little. It was clear she hated having to recall the day her husband vanished. Unfortunately for her, this was only the beginning.
    ‘So, I’ve been going through Leonard’s emails, and I see he still kept in touch with some old colleagues at the Met. I know he didn’t talk to you much about his job, but did he ever talk about the people he worked with?’
    ‘Oh yes, quite often.’
    ‘Okay. Anyone in particular?’
    ‘Goodness. There were lots. He worked across so many different commands, it was difficult for me to keep up. I guess there were probably four or five who he would have considered to be his best people: Donna Jones, Alastair Jordan … uh … Tony Mabena, Carla Murray … Gosh, I’m trying to think. Jim Paige. Is any of this even vaguely useful?’
    I cross-checked with the list of ten I’d made that morning and all five were on it. ‘Can you remember what those five did at the Met? Did they work for your husband?’
    ‘Jim Paige didn’t. He and Len were about the same age and came up through the ranks together. When Len retired in 2011, Jim was running the sexual assault … uh …’
    ‘Sapphire?’
    ‘Yes. That’s it.’
    ‘What about the others?’
    ‘The rest all worked for him at one time or another, though I guess Carla must have been around the longest. I wouldn’t be able to tell you how long, but Len recruited her from somewhere up in Scotland – Glasgow or Edinburgh – back in, I don’t know, maybe the mid nineties. It could have been earlier. He was a superintendent at the time, covering murders and all that sort of thing. After that, he went on to run the gang unit, and she went with him, then he moved on to the uh … oh, gosh, what are they called?’
    I knew from the potted history Craw had given me that Franks ran the Directorate of Professional Standards after leaving Trident, the gang unit. ‘The DPS?’
    ‘Yes, that’s it. Anyway, after that, he returned to run the Homicide command and Carla moved back with him – and that was where he stayed until he retired.’
    ‘ “Carla” is Carla Murray, right?’
    ‘Right.’
    I circled her name, as well as that of Jim Paige.
    ‘Did you ever meet any of his colleagues socially?’
    ‘We used to see quite a bit of Jim, as he and Len were old friends, like I said. They talked regularly on the phone too – just catching up with each other – once every couple of weeks. There were a few dinner parties, summer barbecues, that sort of thing. We hosted a couple. I wouldn’t say they were super-regular, but maybe a few times a year. Back in his forties and early fifties, he used to go out drinking one night a week with his team. He said it kept morale up, and got everyone together; he’d buy them all a couple of pints and they’d get to know each other, beyond what they knew already through work.’
    ‘Why only up until his early fifties?’
    ‘After he got the promotion to chief superintendent, he started to scale that sort of thing back. I think he felt he couldn’t be one of the guys any more, that there had to be a clear line between him and those who worked for him. That’s just how Len was. It’s what I loved about him. He was good with people, gracious, treated them well whatever their background and however they’d come to him. But when he needed to take tough