Linda Steele and Andy Dalziel’s romance and her setup of him

Linda Steele and Andy Dalziel’s romance and her setup of him is a relationship built on a painful reversal: what Dalziel remembers as a welcome, intimate refuge becomes the means by which Steele gathers leverage over him. He recalls affection, companionship, and the pleasure of waking beside her, but also the later discovery that her access to his home and his trust could serve professional purposes. The account is Dalziel’s retrospective one, and its warmth remains inseparable from his belated suspicion of how much he had misunderstood.

Identity and beginnings

Steele entered Dalziel’s life after his return from the United States. She was a journalist who also worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, a dual role that made her arrival at once personal and professional. She told Dalziel that she had decided to leave the agency and travel in Europe. Before doing so, however, her superior asked her to check whether Dalziel intended to speak publicly about what had happened in the United States. Dalziel had already been firmly discouraged from talking by his own intelligence contacts, so he assured her that her employer need not worry.

Steele had nowhere to stay while making her plans, and the pair resumed what Dalziel calls their working arrangement. His account makes clear that this was an intimate relationship, though he does not present it as an equal emotional commitment. He liked her and enjoyed their time together, but admits uncertainty about how strongly she felt about him. He hoped she liked him; he did not believe her attachment matched his own. That gap matters in retrospect: the closeness was real to Dalziel, but it did not mean that he understood Steele’s purposes or could rely on her loyalty.

Intimacy, companionship, and divided attention

Dalziel remembers the relationship in terms of domestic ease and pleasure. They laughed together, she enjoyed drinking, and he describes waking beside her as a repeated source of happiness. His recollection of their morning routine, including his affectionate greeting and her answering smile, gives the affair a tenderness that complicates the later exposure of its instrumental side. These moments are not erased by the betrayal; rather, they explain why he trusted her and why the eventual manipulation left him feeling partly responsible.

At the same time, Dalziel noticed signs that Steele might be using drugs. He says he was not surprised by the possibility, given what he had encountered in the United States, but his suspicion did not initially end the relationship or prompt him to confront her. The account does not establish that he knew the full extent of her activities at this stage. Instead, it shows him registering a warning while remaining drawn to the companionship and continuing to treat their private life as a source of comfort.

Steele also brought Dalziel into contact with Kay Kafka. She had invited Kay to his home, and the three later went out together; Palinurus Maciver Senior was also present on some occasions. Dalziel valued Kay’s calm, nonjudgmental company and found her easy to talk to. He understood that Steele and Kay had a connection through Hartford: Steele had once worked for a newspaper there, and Kay came from the same city. Steele’s journalism then provided a reason to approach Ash-Mac’s, the company headquartered in Hartford. For a proposed human-interest story, Kay—who worked as Tony Kafka’s assistant and whose husband sat on the board—could help Steele gain access and speak with people at the company. The romance therefore existed alongside a network of professional introductions that Dalziel did not initially treat as threatening.

Suspicion and the setup

Dalziel’s confidence began to falter as he recognized that being absorbed in the relationship did not stop him from being a police officer. He suspected Steele of drug use, and he later concluded that she had noticed his growing doubts. He also wondered whether enquiries by Dave Thatcher about her United States connections had been less discreet than intended. The evidence leaves him uncertain about whether Steele acted on her own initiative or followed instructions; he says he would like to believe she was advised or ordered, but cannot confidently absolve her of planning it herself.

In Dalziel’s later reconstruction, Steele had prepared a safeguard against losing influence over him. She used her connection to the superintendent to approach local drug dealers, invoking his name to press for favourable treatment. On several occasions, men brought packages to Dalziel’s door, described to him as mail-order clothing or documents from the United States. He accepted them and handed over the cash requested. He did not know that the transactions were being recorded or that the couriers were people in whom the Drug Squad had a longstanding interest. The ordinary explanation he accepted at home thus concealed a second account of his actions being assembled for use against him.

The decisive turn came after a dinner at which Dalziel became unwell and experienced confused, dreamlike intervals. When he later saw photographs, he realized that the images showed him using drugs rather than dreaming about it. He also discovered puncture marks. The photographs had been left where he would find them, and Steele called him afterward. She apologized and said that she liked him and believed he liked her, but asked whether that affection would be enough to keep him silent. Dalziel’s answer was no. His own account nevertheless says that he already felt partly responsible, a response that reveals how effectively the intimacy had made him question his right to resist her.

Leverage and the relationship’s meaning

Steele told Dalziel that the photographs were only a sample of what existed. She said there was also video, images of him handling money for packages from known dealers, and a blood sample that could be analysed for evidence of drugs. She proposed taking a break while he considered the situation, while also expressing a wish to remain friends and eventually resume their intimate relationship. Affection and coercion therefore occupy the same conversation: her professed attachment does not cancel the explicit leverage she has accumulated, and her apology does not restore the trust that made their relationship possible.

The episode recasts Dalziel’s happiest memories without reducing them to mere deception. His pleasure in Steele’s company, his delight in their shared routine, and his ease with Kay were part of his lived experience; what changes is his understanding of the conditions around them. The irony is that he had treated the relationship as a private space in which professional vigilance could relax, while Steele’s own professional identity remained active within it. His affection made him vulnerable, but the setup depended on concrete acts—her access to his home, his acceptance of packages, and his name being used with dealers—not simply on romance. The resulting relationship is both a remembered love affair and a breach of confidence, with Dalziel’s tenderness persisting alongside his recognition that Steele had prepared to use it against him.