Crunch Time Read Online Free PDF Page B

wife, not even his girlfriend. It was something that gnawed relentlessly at Anger and he did not seem to be able to let it go, especially since his wife had left him and rubbed his nose in it. His vendetta against Henry was a growing legend throughout the force and had resulted in very bad blood between them.
    Henry averted his eyes, looked through the window at the car park, sipped his coffee and ignored Anger’s presence. He was soon lost in dark thoughts again, though, his mind’s eye recreating a scene of savage butchery. Two people lying dead, their throats cut so badly their heads were almost severed from their bodies …
    â€˜Henry?’
    He twitched and looked up. Dave Anger was standing in front of him, a pretty unusual occurrence as both men steadfastly ensured their paths did not cross if at all possible.
    â€˜Dave,’ Henry acknowledged the superior officer dubiously, their eyes interlocking for one fleeting, flinty moment. He then glanced at the woman with Anger. She was standing slightly behind him, to one side, a grin on her face. Anger half-turned, ‘Can I introduce you to …’
    Her smile widened. She extended her hand. ‘No need, Dave. We already know each other.’
    Henry rose quickly, his chair scraping backwards, shaking hands with her, their eyes making an altogether different contact than his and Anger’s had only seconds before.
    â€˜Andrea … it’s great to see you.’
    Her name was Andrea Makin. When she and Henry had last met, some six years earlier, she had been a detective superintendent in the Metropolitan Police Special Branch. Henry guessed she would have probably moved up at least a rank by now. His eyes gave her the quick once-over – as hers did him – and he saw she had changed somewhat from the woman he remembered. She was still tall and rangy, but her facial features had tightened, her once wide nose now seemed pinched and her full lips were a little thinner. Her body, Henry guessed, from the appraisal, seemed pretty much as before. But she looked tired now. Stress or illness, Henry couldn’t decide.
    Still, he thought, I’ll bet I don’t look like the spring chicken she knew back then.
    â€˜Nice to see you, too,’ she responded. ‘You haven’t changed a bit.’
    â€˜You mean I looked this bad six years ago?’ he jested.
    She smiled.
    Anger’s face had changed expression during this brief exchange – to annoyance that Henry seemed to have stolen some of his thunder. He coughed, bringing attention back to him.
    â€˜Seems a long time since the Nazis and Hellfire Dawn,’ Andrea said, ignoring Anger.
    â€˜Yeah, yeah.’
    â€˜And how is Jane Roscoe?’ she asked, like a minx.
    â€˜As far as I know, OK,’ Henry answered, feeling himself redden up at the mention of a woman he was once illicitly involved with. He cleared his throat. ‘So what brings you to this neck of the woods again? Still chasing Hitler lovers, or is it all Islam now?’
    Anger, having been cut out, felt the need to interject. ‘Neither of those things.’
    â€˜Ah, well, nice of you to say hello,’ Henry said, lowering himself back down, thinking the encounter was over.
    â€˜It’s actually you we came to see,’ Anger said, causing Henry’s eyebrows to ride up. There was a note of reluctance in his voice.
    â€˜Special Projects, me. Team misfit,’ Henry said. ‘What could you possibly want with someone like me?’
    Andrea swooped past Anger into a chair opposite Henry, leaned on the table and said, ‘Got a proposition for you – and your alter ego.’ She smiled and Henry knew he was all hers from that moment on.
    The trio retreated to Dave Anger’s office in the FMIT block on the far side of the playing fields. Once an accommodation block for students on residential courses at the force training centre, it had been commandeered several years