Nothing but Memories (DCI Wilson Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

years in Belfast, the station had been constantly under construction until it came to resemble a fortress. It still had a long way to go before it reached the totally armoured state of its sister stations in the Springfield Road and Andersonstown and although efforts were being made to create a ‘softer’ image to go with the new name, the impression of a fort was still unmistakable. No amount of remodelling was going to change its’ character: it would always be an alien body nestling among a hostile population. Wilson wore a blue anorak over his somewhat faded suit. The Desk-Sergeant gave him a cursory nod as he passed through the public section of the station and made his way to the rear of the building where the spartan accommodations of the Criminal Investigation Division were located.
                  He sometimes forgot that he had been entering this building every working day for the past ten years. If the RUC, or the PSNI as it was now called, had been father and wife to him, then the building at Tennent Street was the womb. As soon as he entered through the tall grimy oak front door, he felt at home. There among the stench of sweat and cigarette smoke, cursing and swearing detectives and screaming miscreants, he had found his true element.
                  His small office was roughly the size of the broom cupboard at his house in Malwood Park. Four pieces of furniture dominated the room; the ancient wooden desk which he had salvaged from the wreckers took up at least fifty percent of the floor space, a dilapidated swivel chair stood facing the desk and what little space remained was taken up by a steel filing cabinet and a battered coat-stand. The floor space directly in front of his desk was covered with stacks of files which stood like mini ‘Leaning Towers of Pisa’, swaying in defiance of the laws of gravity. The office had been cut out of a much larger room by the erection of a glass partition. Beyond the glass in the remnants of the large Victorian room stood the six desks inhabited by the other members of the Criminal Investigation Division. Wilson oversaw them from his glass-walled cubby hole. He often wondered what thoughts ran through the heads of the members of the public who were unfortunate enough to experience the sight he gazed on every day. Raised on a diet of pristine police stations in `Z Cars' and other police soaps, the dirt and grime of a building which the Office of Public Works should have long ago condemned generally came as a surprise.
                  He tossed his anorak and suit jacket on the battered wooden coat-stand and sat in his chair. The base of the chair creaked under his weight. As usual, a copy of the Belfast Newsletter lay draped over the top of the  computer keyboard which had pride of place directly in front of his chair. He wondered casually whether last night's victim had made the paper. If he had, it would be page ten at best. Killings in Northern Ireland still did not constitute real news. Headlines of general interest such as `Vicar Elopes With Fourteen Year Old Schoolgirl' formed the daily staple of news for the Province's readers. Death, whether by tens in Iraq or thousands in a tsunami, was too real to be confused with `news'. He flipped the paper over to the sports section and gradually moved from the rear of the paper towards the front page. The six line story was on page eight. The text was interchangeable with that of any hundred similar stories which had been run over the past twenty-five years. An unidentified man found shot in a Belfast street. Police to release the name of the dead man when the relatives have been notified. Thankfully the newspapers had refrained from speculating on whether the man was the victim of a sectarian killing. At least that was an advance. Nobody wanted to raise the spectre of a return to the past. With a bit of luck there might not even be a follow up story. ‘You’re full of shit,” he said