Deadly Friends Read Online Free PDF Page B

‘Er, no.’
    ‘How much do you know about the Dr Jordan job?’
    ‘Next to nothing. Why, what’s Makinson done?’
    ‘Humph!’ he snorted, tossing his head. ‘Only gone and booked himself some leave to celebrate Hogmanay, hasn’t he? Thought he’d grab a couple of days skiing in the Cairngorms while he was at it. Region have been on, asking what you’re up to. Any chance of you looking after things while he slides up and down the side of a hill wearing a pink suit and make-up on his face?’
    ‘Good for him,’ I said. ‘His priorities are right. I wish I could be more like that.’
    ‘It doesn’t catch villains, though, does it?’
    ‘It probably does. So what’s the state of play?’
    ‘They know who did it, apparently, but he’s gone away for a few days, too. If he’s not done a complete bunk they’re expecting him back anytime, so it’s just a matter of keeping an eye on his usual address and picking him up. Can you take over tomorrow morning’s meeting at HQ? Young Newley and Dave Sparkington are in the team, so they’ll fill you in if you can’t wait that long.’
    ‘No problem,’ I said. ‘I’ve already had a bet with Sparky that they’d have to call me in to catch him.’
    ‘Then it looks as if you won the bet. Now, how are you getting on with this rape job?’
    * * *
    The period after Christmas is harvest time for burglars. Garden sheds, bedrooms and hallways are bristling with new bicycles, power tools and electronic gadgetry. All desirable and highly portable. We’d raided three shops that claimed to ‘Buy ’n’ Sell Owt’, and two of our cells were now stuffed with several thousand pounds worth of goodies, all still under guarantee.
    ‘He said it was an unwanted present,’ was the excuse of the week.
    ‘What an ungrateful little sod he must be,’ we’d respond, followed by, ‘Get your coat.’ There must be hundreds of fifteen-year-olds in Heckley who didn’t really want another 21-speed, chrome-moly-framed Muddy Fox mountain bike. Just think what they could buy with the thirty quid they’d get for it at the hock shop.
    We contacted grandparents and favourite aunties and asked them to find the receipts and anything else that might bear a serial number, and a few lucky people had their presents returned. Some were still gift-wrapped.
    The rape wasn’t so straightforward. Maggie took Janet Saunders on a tour of the town’s hostelries without finding Darryl. They had a quick look in the Tap and Spile on two evenings but avoided the landlord. We couldn’t be sure how pally he was with Darryl and didn’t want him scaring off. We dabble in something called sector policing. Certain officers are allocated areas of town and they try to familiarise themselves with the more visible characters who live there. Jeff Caton, oneof my DCs, knew the landlord of the Tap, and gave him a reasonable character reference. He’d once alerted us to a drugs dealer who was using the pub to do business but was himself suspected of selling consignments of booze brought in cheaply from the Continent. That’s the sort of villainy I can live with. I wasn’t sure whether he’d finger one of his better customers for a rape, but in the absence of any other line of action decided that in the next day or two I’d better have a word with him myself.
    At ten to nine on the morning of the thirtieth of December I ran up the front steps of City HQ and asked the WPC manning – personning? – the front desk to direct me to the Dr Jordan incident room. This was the big day, when I took over the enquiry. Walking down the corridor I contemplated Field Marshal Montgomery’s pep talk to the Eighth Army prior to the battle of El Alamein. That should rouse them, I thought. Or should I make it Henry V’s Agincourt speech? Then again, if I gave them a compilation from the two they might not recognise the sources. At the door to the incident room I paused and looked at my watch, other hand poised over the handle.