I Am the Only Running Footman Read Online Free PDF Page B

abrasive comments to Fiona Clingmore before he came in to look suspiciously at the pile of gifts, as if Jury might have nicked one in his absence.
    â€œHappy Christmas,” said Jury pleasantly, as Racer deposited several folders on his desk and sat down.
    â€œNot for me it isn’t,” he said, waving his arm across the active files he was carrying. Action, Jury knew, would be taken elsewhere. “What progress have you made on this Childess case?” Without stopping for an answer, Racer said, “Couldn’t you shut up the press, at least?”
    â€œCan anyone? I made no comment.”
    â€œWith this rag you don’t have to.” He waved a tabloid in Jury’s face and then read: “ ‘Garroted with her own scarf.’ Hell. Every villain in London — rapists, muggers — will have a nice, neat way to go about his business.”
    â€œWell, it might warn women not to toss their scarves down their backs.”
    â€œA bit late in the day for that, isn’t it?”
    As if Jury had failed to issue the warning, had alerted the papers.
    Racer crossed his arms, encased in what looked like cashmere from his bespoke tailor, and leaned toward Jury. “As for you, Jury —”
    It was ritual, like Cyril’s storming of the battlements. As for you —
    â€œâ€” do you think this time you could depend on police for your backup? Rather than deputizing your friends?” For Racer, Melrose Plant’s role in that Hampshire business was a brand-new drum to bang. “Do you realize I’m still catching flack from the commissioner about that?”
    â€œHe did save my life.”
    Finding nothing here that merited a response, Racer wenton to test the waters of Jury’s career, keeping as much as he could to the shallows. The career had probably come up in Racer’s meeting with the assistant commissioner and would be bobbing up again, as it was now. “Understand Hodges is retiring. Picked a fine time for it, I must say.”
    There would be for Racer, of course, some personal affront to the lawkeeping forces of Greater London in what he seemed to think was Divisional Commander Hodges’s capricious decision. That it left a district minus one of its divisional commanders was a point that Racer would sooner skirt around. For Racer it would be a real quandary if Jury were promoted. Having Jury around was like having a mirror in which a face formed out of smoke reminding Racer that someone fairer still lived; on the other hand, the removal of Jury was the removal of Jury’s expertise, which now reflected happily upon Racer.
    He was still talking about N Division. “Wouldn’t have it on a bet, myself, not with its spilling over into Brixton. Riots, that’s what anyone can expect with that thankless job.” He went on. . . .
    Jury tuned him out, turning his attention to the pyramid of gifts that had shifted slightly, and wondered, with a momentary pang of envy, at Cyril’s determination to outwit the forces leveled against him. Racer was descending the ladder of Jury’s career and would soon move from the CID to the uniform branch and have Jury back walking a beat. Jury, though, was way ahead of, or way behind him, in that sense. He wondered, with a feeling of guilt, at his own lack of ambition. He had nearly had to be shoved into a superintendency as it was. Perhaps it was the season; Christmas had never been any reason for rejoicing, except for one or two that might have started well, but ended miserably. Or perhaps it was the sky. Jury watched the snow drift down in big, feathery flakes that wouldn’t stick, that would turn to grayslush by nightfall and drain away. He remembered the two boys, fourteen or fifteen they’d been, that he’d nicked twenty years ago for shoplifting in a sweet shop. They’d looked very pale and uncertain and reminded him of himself a dozen years earlier, younger even