Crusher Read Online Free PDF Page A

every rule of procedure and possibly jeopardizing a murder enquiry, and Prendergast’s voice was coming back, loud, brusque, short on words and very much to the point.
    Amobi didn’t come back in straightaway. I sat there while the clock ticked, thinking about my dad, wondering why he’d been killed, wondering if I’d ever know. Something told me this wouldn’t be a police priority. Yeah, they didn’t like unsolved murders, but unless there was a PR angle, or the victim was a child or a pretty girl, they’d leave the file open until it was buried deeply enough under other cases to be officially written off. Maybe I was the prime suspect, but the evidence was pretty thin, and now Prendergast had managed to screw up the case before the investigation proper had even started. The cops upstairs in the neat uniforms with the gold braid would be desperate to kick this into the long grass.
    Amobi entered again, doing a very good impression of casual and relaxed, as if he hadn’t just witnessed his boss having a dump in the swimming pool.
    “Finn, we have no more questions for now. Is there anyone you can stay with tonight—a relative, a family friend?”
    I shook my head. “No, there isn’t. Can’t I go home?”
    “It’s still a crime scene,” said Amobi. “But I can ask. Wait here, please.”
    He left again. I suddenly realized my head was swimming. I was tired, really tired. I was sweating and chilled in this stupid paper suit, and I felt hungry andsick at the same time. I didn’t know whether it was day or night outside. I just wanted to go home and go to bed.
    Amobi returned. “If you really want to go home, that won’t be a problem,” he said. “The Scene of Crime people are all done, and the clean-up crew. Two of our uniformed officers will give you a lift.”
    “Thanks,” I said.
    Amobi stroked his nose between two fingers, contemplating how he was going to say what he was dying to say. “Finn, DI Prendergast said you made certain statements when you were alone with him? Regarding the incident?”
    “I didn’t murder my dad,” I said. “It was a wind-up.”
    “OK,” said Amobi. “But bear in mind, DI Prendergast doesn’t have a great sense of humour. You need to be—”
    “Can I go home now, please?”
    It was still night, as it turned out. The small hours of the morning. It had been raining, and the yellow of the street lights gleamed and bounced and glared from tarmac and sleeping cars and shuttered shop fronts. I sat in the back of a patrol car, pushing down the associations that brought up, trying not to look at the close-cropped necks of the uniformed officers in front. They sat silent, not bothering with small talk. Were they tired as well, I wondered? Were they being considerate to the childof a murder victim? Or did they just not want to have a late-night casual chat with a punk who had brained his dad and walked out of the nick a few hours afterwards? I was curious, but too shattered to care.
    They watched me walk to the door and open it with the key that had been retrieved from my jeans, which were still with forensics. When I shut the door behind me and stood in the darkened hall I heard the engine rev and speed away, tyres hissing on the tarmac and shashing through distant puddles. Silence. I reached out and flicked on the light like I had a few hours earlier. No body at the table this time. There was a faint smell of disinfectant, but otherwise the only sign that strangers had been in here were the ruts in the dust where stuff had been shifted as the room was searched. And when I looked closely, the furniture was at odd angles, as if someone was trying to recreate the way it had looked a long time ago, in the days before my dad had been killed. But I was too tired to look. Leaving the light on I stomped wearily up the stairs, my stupid paper suit rustling. My bedroom had been searched, I could tell—it was way too tidy. I shuffled out of the tired grey trainers the cops had lent