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said.
    ‘How much?’ she asked, glancing at the contents.
    ‘Normal rates. Two for the job, plus a bonus of a hundred each for the bodies. How’s your boyfriend?’
    ‘A cool thousand pounds. Thank you very much. How’s Duncan? I’m worried about him.’
    ‘Did he take the money?’
    ‘Oh, he took the money, no hesitation.’
    ‘He’ll be all right then. Don’t forget you’ll need a hundred from him for the abortion,’ he told her, grinning.
    ‘Well, let’s make sure they’ve got something to look for, Dr Kingston,’ she whispered. She put her arms round his neck and kissed him, then lowered her hands and started to undo his belt. Nick Kingston grasped her hair, pulling her head back, and explored her mouth with his tongue. If he imagined she were the nineteen-year-old maths student he’d shagged last night, he might just about manage it. He was beginning to find Melissa repellent and sensed it would lead to trouble between them.

CHAPTER TWO
    I made inspector bang on schedule, but by then I had a wife, Vanessa, and a mortgage, and had been sucked into a way of working that wasn’t negotiable with much in the outside world. I’d had a brief spell in CID and enjoyed it, so when the opportunity came to head the branch at Heckley I grabbed it with enthusiasm and outstretched arms. The job fell into them and Vanessa fell out. My dad was dying of cancer at this time and I desperately needed a rock to lean on. I rang Dave Sparkington.
    ‘Could I speak to Sparky, please?’ I said when he answered.
    ‘Hiya, Shagnasty,’ he responded. ‘Congrats on the move. Sorry I didn’t make the bash but I wasn’t invited.’
    ‘We haven’t had it yet. Do you still want to be a DC?’
    There was a silence, apart from his breathing, then he said: ‘Are you serious?’
    ‘Deadly. There’s an aideship coming up. Interested?’
    ‘You bet!’
    He did six months as a CID aide and sailed through the twelve-week course at Wakefield training college. The day he joined us he came into my office carrying six pairs of white socks and insisted that we change into them, right there and then.
    Slowly, I built up the team I wanted. Gilbert Wood arrived as our new superintendent and gave me a free hand to run the show my own way. We rewarded him with the best arrest rate in the division, and some of them were big fish. I’d worked for Gilbert before. He was one of a dying breed – the old school – who believed that we were there to catch villains and protect the public, and if this meant we upset a few local politicians, or failed to keep within budget, so be it.
    Trouble was, Gilbert had no time for meetings, either. Somebody had to go, which was why I was now sitting at the bottom end of the long polished table that graced the conference room at City HQ, while he cast a fly across some lake filled with tame but hungry trout. It was nearly six o’clock and the deputy chief constable was drawing proceedings to a close.
    ‘As you know…’ he was saying, ‘…this will be my last Serious Crimes Operations Group meeting, so I’d like to take the opportunity…’
    ‘Let’s have a look,’ Les Isles whispered to me, leaning closer. Les is another one of my protégés who leap-frogged past me in the promotion stakes.
    I’d spent nearly three hours doing sketches of the DCC on my note pad, and the last one had his likeness to a T. He was leaving at the end of the month and I knew that the day before he went somebody would ring me and ask for a cartoon illustrating some inglorious moment from his past. They thought I could churn them out like Barbara Cartland novels. I slid the pad across to Superintendent Isles.
    ‘Brilliant. Can I have it?’ he hissed.
    ‘Mmm,’ I mumbled.
    ‘Sign it.’ He slid the pad back my way.
    With a few deft strokes I gave the DCC a quiff of black hair falling over one eye, added a Penny Black of a moustache, scrawled L. Isles across the bottom and pushed it in front of him again.
    ‘Was