Piers Tarrant

Piers Tarrant is a Metropolitan Police detective who leaves Adam Dalgliesh’s Special Investigation Squad for the anti-terrorist branch, then reconnects with Kate Miskin, his former colleague and eventual lover. His relationship with Kate brings a private uncertainty into the opening of the Combe Island investigation: what had long been checked by professional boundaries becomes intimate, but neither the relationship’s meaning nor its future is settled before work separates them again.

Identity and Professional Background

Tarrant and Kate had worked together on Dalgliesh’s Special Investigation Squad for years. They respected one another and shared a stimulating, only partly acknowledged rivalry, which Dalgliesh had made use of. They sometimes argued passionately, but without acrimony. Their connection therefore predates their affair: attraction sits alongside professional regard and the challenge each presents to the other.

After leaving the Squad for the anti-terrorist branch, Tarrant and Kate did not speak for a time. Rumours circulating within the Metropolitan Police suggested that he was dissatisfied with his new position, although Kate did not assume that his invitation was a request to confide in her. In her view, men were more likely to tell women about successes than misjudgements. The gap in their contact leaves his reasons for getting back in touch uncertain at first.

Reunion and Relationship with Kate

Tarrant telephones Kate at her office early on a Monday and invites her to dinner on Friday. He proposes Sheekey’s for half past seven and asks whether she likes fish. The choice of a highly regarded, potentially expensive restaurant strikes her as a deliberate signal, but she cannot tell whether the evening is celebratory or simply reflects how he entertains a woman. She also knows that he has never seemed short of money and is rumoured never to be short of women.

Kate accepts readily, despite being puzzled by the invitation. She has long found Tarrant one of the most sexually attractive men she has worked with, but previously resisted acting on that attraction. An affair between close colleagues, she believed, could endanger more than their competence: one of them would have had to leave the Squad. Her job had come first, and she was unwilling to risk what she had achieved for an intimate relationship that might become professionally messy.

At dinner, Tarrant is waiting when Kate arrives, and both have taken unusual care with their appearance. The conversation begins with books and films, the guarded social talk of two people meeting almost as strangers, before returning to familiar subjects: cases they worked on together, Metropolitan Police gossip, and small details of their private lives. The evening is prolonged and enjoyable, without the constraints Kate had feared. Tarrant says little about his new job. Their shared professional history gives them common ground, but the dinner does not immediately resolve what either expects from the reunion.

Intimacy and Departure

By the following morning, Tarrant is making coffee in Kate’s flat. The night together is a striking change in her private life: her flat has been a refuge, and no colleague had previously been invited there. Kate looks back on the preceding day not with regret but with amazement that it happened. The account establishes that she welcomes the intimacy, while leaving her uncertain about its significance for him.

Before leaving, Tarrant thanks her for dinner, breakfast, and everything between them, then asks her to send a postcard from the island. He proposes a six-word message: “Wish you were here, love Kate.” Kate laughs without answering. At the garage, he notices a car displaying a “Baby on board” notice, takes a handwritten card from his glove-box, and holds it against the glass: “Herod on board.” The teasing exchange gives their farewell a note of ease, but does not supply the reassurance Kate has not asked for.

Tarrant leaves in his Alfa Romeo, raising a hand in farewell before turning onto the main road. Kate watches him go, then puts her private questions aside. A body is waiting to be investigated, and the work ahead offers the familiar structure of evidence and team discussion. Her departure for Combe Island does not end her thoughts about Tarrant: at the cottage, the sight of the sea calls back the memory of his hand reaching for her in the morning. She wonders how much of the night he had intended, whether she remains in his thoughts, and whether she was merely the latest in a line of easy conquests. The text leaves these questions unanswered.

Professional Partnership and Narrative Role

On Combe Island, Kate’s thoughts about how she would work with Tarrant sharpen the contrast with her new working arrangement. Had he accompanied her to interview a suspect at Atlantic Cottage, she expects they would have discussed the case, including their first impressions and the curious knot on the noose. With Francis Benton-Smith, she instead prefers to wait until Dalgliesh convenes the team. At dinner, too, she reflects that with Tarrant she would have eaten alongside a colleague, temporarily forgetting their rivalry to discuss and argue over the case; working beside Benton is different, though not because of his junior rank.

Tarrant’s presence in these reflections links Kate’s personal uncertainty to the rhythms of police work. Their history makes him the colleague with whom she anticipates unguarded discussion, yet the relationship is newly intimate and still open to doubt. As Kate turns from the garage farewell to the investigation, professional purpose provides an immediate way to defer those doubts, not a resolution of them.