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and Rawndesley, Simon could see Proust’s trim, immobile form at the front. He wasn’t looking in their direction, but Simon could seethe Snowman noticing his and Sam’s lateness. A tilt of an eyebrow, a twitch of the jaw – that was all it took. Wasn’t it supposed to be women who were passive aggressive? Proust was both: passive aggressive and aggressive aggressive. He boasted a full repertoire of noxious behaviours.
    It was clear from the noise in the room that they’d missed nothing; the meeting hadn’t got going yet. ‘Why now?’ Simon addressed his question to Sam’s ear, raising his voice to be heard over the mix of murmured conversations and the irregular drumming of feet against table legs. He was still suspicious. More so, if anything, for being told there was no cause. ‘Two briefings a day? It’s not like this is the first murder we’ve ever worked. Even with the multiples we’ve had in the past, he’s barely stuck his nose out of his box apart from to carp at you or Charlie, whoever’s been skipper. Now he’s leading every—’
    ‘Helen Yardley’s the first . . . celebrity’s the wrong word, but you know what I mean,’ said Sam.
    Simon laughed. ‘You think the Snowman’s keen to get his carrot nose and coal eyes in the papers? He hates—’
    ‘No choice,’ Sam interrupted him again. ‘A case like this, he’s going to get publicity one way or another, so he might as well get it for taking a strong lead. As SIO, case this visible nationally, he’s got to step up.’
    Simon decided to let it lie. He’d noticed that Sam, who normally was courtesy itself, cut him off mid-sentence whenever he talked about Proust. Charlie, Simon’s fiancée and former sergeant, put it down to Sam’s concern for proper professional conduct: you didn’t badmouth the boss. Simon suspected it had more to do with the preservation of self-respect. Even someone as patient and hierarchy-conscious asSam could barely put up with what he had to put up with from the Snowman. Denial was his coping mechanism, one that must have been made all but impossible by Simon’s constant dissection of Proust’s despotism.
    Ultimately, it came down to personal preference. Sam preferred to pretend he and his team weren’t abused daily by a narcissistic megalomaniac and helpless to do anything about it, whereas Simon had long ago decided the only way to stay sane was to focus, all the time, on exactly what was going on and how bad it was, so that there was no danger it would ever start to seem normal. He’d become the unofficial archivist of Proust’s abhorrent personality. These days he almost looked forward to the inspector’s offensive outbursts; each one was further proof that Simon was right to have cut off the goodwill supply and all benefits of the doubt.
    ‘You’d think Proust had an evil ulterior motive whatever he did, even if he dragged sacks of grain across the desert to famine victims,’ Charlie had teased him last night. ‘You’re so used to hating everything about him, it’s become a Pavlovian response – he must be doing something wrong, even if you don’t yet know what it is.’
    She’s probably right, thought Simon. Sam was probably right: there was no way out of the limelight for Proust on this one. He had to be seen to care, so he was doing it with gusto, while secretly counting the days until he could revert to his usual mode of doing as little as possible.
    ‘He’s bound to feel responsible, like we all do,’ Sam said. ‘Professional considerations aside, you’d have to have a heart of stone not to want to pull out all the stops in a case like this. I know it’s early days and there’s no proof this murder’sconnected to the reason we all know Helen Yardley’s name, but . . . you have to ask yourself, would she be dead now if it weren’t for us?’
    Us
. By the time Simon had worked out what Sam meant, Proust was banging his ‘World’s Greatest Grandad’ mug on the wall to get the