Rainstone Fall Read Online Free PDF Page B

the underground car park before he had a chance to catch up. Suddenly the escalator stopped. My frantic running motion tipped me forward and I landed painfully on my front. The next second it started going down again and by the time I was once more on my feet it had deposited me and the running bloke, who had also fallen, in front of Deeks who still had his finger on the emergency button.
    ‘Just as well one of us has brains, isn’t it?’ he said with a theatrical sigh and stuck his warrant card into my face. I had to lean back to read it. It didn’t tell me anything new. I looked at him with little interest and much loathing. Deeks had been Superintendent Needham’s preferred sidekick for years, something I’d always found hard to fathom. For a start he was not a thing you wanted to have to clap eyes on every working day of your life. Especially first thing in the morning. He was one of those blokes who probably wanted to look like his dad when he was twelve and by the time he was sixteen had succeeded. There was no way of telling how old he was. Forty? Sixty? His face was long and jowly, his eyes dark and narrow and his scar-puckered nose nearly hid his ungenerous, thin-lipped mouth. His bad breath alone was enough to make me want to go on the run. His attitude to civilians in general and PIs in particular was one of profound contempt. He brought his cadaverous face close to mine and wafted his halitosis up my nostrils. ‘A word.’ Several came effortlessly to mind. He grabbed me by the arm so he could lead me aside to the window of a silversmith’s shop. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Sorbie,’ he introduced the other officer, who was peeling chewing gum off his trouser knee. The DS looked equally unpleasant with an unhealthy pallor, an inept shave and tired, bloodshot eyes which seemed to have problems fastening on to anything in particular. ‘You’ve been traipsing after James Lane, sitting outside his house in your car, even following him to the pub,’ Deeks continued accusingly.
    ‘Don’t tell me he made a complaint,’ I said, wondering how Lane could have clocked me so quickly.
    ‘He didn’t. I’m making the complaint.’ He drew me further back and pointed out Lane who was just then stepping off the escalator. Only a few seconds later the ubiquitous bloke in the raincoat appeared from behind one of the large fake columns and followed him out of the building. ‘DC Howell. A bright new detective constable, good practice for him.’
    ‘So you’re having him followed as well. Care to tell me why?’
    ‘None of your business. Who’s paying you to sniff about?’ he asked.
    ‘Sorry, client confidentiality.’
    ‘Bollocks.’
    ‘Tough titty.’
    ‘Stop fucking me about, Mr Honeysett, or I’ll be forced to arrest you,’ he said in an unpleasant singsong.
    ‘I’m not breaking any damn laws by following Lane until he takes out a restraining order against me,’ I said, serious now.
    ‘You’re interfering with a police investigation.’
    ‘You’ll never make it stick. Especially since I demanded clarification on the matter and was refused. Your sergeant here’s my witness.’
    ‘You what?’ grunted Sorbie.
    ‘Look, we’re bound to follow him for the same bloody reasons, aren’t we?’ I said reasonably. ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.’
    Deeks considered for a second. ‘All right, let’s go and find a bike shed somewhere.’
    Five minutes later in the Green Tree, just around the corner from where Lane was still waiting for the bus with his personal DC in attendance, Deeks lifted a pint of Janglepaws or some other odd-sounding stuff to his pale, floppy lips and slurped. I stuck my nose into my Guinness to help me through this. I couldn’t believe I was sitting at the same table as Deeks without a tape recorder running. DS Sorbie was staring glumly into his glass of reconstituted orange juice.
    ‘Okay, you first,’ Deeks said.
    ‘N-nn. You first,’ I countered