Wilmott (as she's known) is the Head of Communications for the New Zealand Police. She is also an ex-wife of Mike's. His most recent one. She obviously knows Mike well - all his strengths and definitely all his weaknesses. She cannot begin to count the number of times she has had to turn up to trouble-shoot on one of his cases.
Wilmott has a straight talking, straight-down-the-line, no-nonsense approach to her job. She would probably have made an excellent cop, but instead she's in PR. Wilmott is the first to admit that the police cases she is sent in to "clean up" for public consumption aren't always black and white. Any sort of crime is a mass of motivations and emotions - they're often murky, nasty environments to work in. It's Wilmott's job to sort out what's going on, cut to the core of a story and make it palatable for the public. Wilmott is under no misapprehension that she is in any way involved in solving crime. But she certainly makes it easier to understand.
It's through this process that Wilmott often clashes with the on-the-beat officers or investigators that she's supporting. They don't want to think that months of hard work exposing crime can be easily diluted into a two-sentence sound bite. While she's clear on her role in proceedings, Wilmott can't help feeling that her well-written, concise press statements often clarify for the officers what their case is really all about. And they've got to appreciate that she's also there to make them look good – not just in the media but within the community they're working with.
