Great North Road Read Online Free PDF Page B

eyes peered at him as the first of the hair clips went in. “Well?”
    “About three thirty,” he admitted.
    “Aw, pet! Why? What happened?” Suddenly she was all sympathy again.
    “I got a one-oh-one.”
    “No! Your first night back? That’s bad luck.”
    “Worse,” he admitted. “Not to be shouted about at work, okay, but it was a North.”
    “Crap on that,” she breathed in astonishment.
    “Yeah, well.” He shrugged. “O’Rouke will take me off it about a minute into the morning shift.”
    “You sure?”
    “Oh yeah. This has to be a perfect investigation.”
    “You can do that,” she said immediately, and with not a little indignation.
    “Yes.” That was the shame of it: He knew he really could handle the investigation, and handle it well. In fact, he rather relished the challenge, half the night having been spent formulating a case strategy ready to begin as soon as the morning shift arrived at work. That was the thing with a career-killer—done right it could be a career-maker just as easily. “But I’m only six hours back into the job.”
    She gave him a significant look. “Aye, pet, but let’s not forget why, okay? The Norths will want someone they know is good.”
    “Whatever …”
    Loud thumps from the landing, followed by an outraged shout, announced the morning struggle between William and Zara for the bathroom. Will was abruptly banging on the door, yelling at his younger sister to let him in. “I canna wait, you cow,” he yelled.
    Her contemptuous response was muffled.
    “You’ll have to take them to school for me,” Sid announced quickly, hoping it would get overlooked in the general morning chaos.
    “No bloody way!” Jacinta exclaimed. “We agreed. I’ve got a full cardio replacement booked for this morning. Top-money vat-grown heart with DNA screening and everything. Her insurance pays full whack and bonus to theater staff.”
    “I’ve been dumped a one-oh-one with a North.”
    “You just said you’ll be taken straight off.”
    “Oh away wi’ ya, pet!”
    She laughed contemptuously at his attempt to speak Geordie. “My theater has been in the diary since before Christmas.”
    “But—”
    Out on the landing there was another fast exchange of heated insults as Zara came out of the bathroom and Will rushed in.
    “It’s their first day back at school,” Jacinta said. “You’d let them go alone? In this weather? What kind of father is that?”
    “It’s not like they’re just starting there.” Sid knew it was coming; she knew it, too. It was down to who broke first.
    Him … of course.
    “Can’t you call Debra?”
    She threw her hands up. “She’ll start bloody charging us, she’s like a taxi service for our kids these days.”
    “We do it for hers.”
    “Aye, when there’s a month with a z in it.”
    He gave her the firm-bordering-on-exasperation look. Because that made so much difference when you’ve been married for eleven years.
    “I’ll call,” Jacinta said with a sigh. “Given as how you’re so scared of her.”
    “I am not—”
    “But we’ll need to have them around to dinner. To say thanks, an’ all.”
    “Oh, not John for a whole evening? If boring was a sport he’d be trans-space champion.”
    “Are you taking them to school, or do you want me to make the call?”
    Sid growled and shook his head furiously. “Make the call.”
    Even now, with Will eight years old and Zara six, Sid still couldn’t quite get his head around seeing them in their school uniforms. They were babies, far too young to be wrenched out of the house each day. Yet there they were at breakfast, looking impossibly smart in dark red sweaters and blue shirts, like miniaturized adults.
    Sid busied himself making the porridge, checking the certification seals before opening the packets. There had been talk down at the station about companies slipping unregulated batches into their processing plants, importing them from some of the settled worlds where organic