Sympathy for the Devil Read Online Free PDF

back before she was assigned to one of the DI’s teams.
    ‘You ready then?’ he called out chirpily.
    He hasn’t aged much, the bastard, she thought. He still walked with the old swagger, his broad chest moving through the air slightly ahead of him. If anything the walk seemed to have become more pronounced with the years.
    ‘Maybe we could cover another sector tonight?’ she said. His grin was still fixed on his face.
    ‘The way this works, love –’ there was a slight edge to his voice now – ‘you shadow me, not the other way around.’
    Catrin nodded, without looking up at him. She’d have to toe the line for this first week: what other choice did she have?
    Thomas was walking ahead of her back to the car. ‘My report will go to Human Resources. The various DIs in Major Crimes, they’ll all see it, decide which is the right team for you.’
    It was something he had over her, for these first days at least. After that, she’d make sure he never had anything on her ever again. He opened the car door for her, and held it as she got in.
    ‘I heard you used to be on the Drugs Unit,’ he said, ‘back in the day?’
    Didn’t Thomas remember her then? If he did, he was making a good show of disguising it. He was treating her as if they’d never met before. She saw him glance briefly at her legs before closing the door.
    She remembered him well enough. He’d been CID intake three years ahead of her, before that a sergeant based down in Butetown, the old docks. Always used to give her little looks whenever their paths crossed, the sort of looks that made you check all the buttons on your blouse were done up. Was it her imagination, or hadn’t he had a bit of a thing for her? He’d had a habit of turning up in places just before her, as if by chance, or perhaps it had been chance. And then there’d been that night they’d got drunk together, and what had followed. She felt a little inward shiver of shame at the memory of it. Maybe he was embarrassed. Maybe he’d genuinely forgotten. Men can be like that, she thought.
    Had she really changed that much? Catrin looked briefly into the passenger mirror, pushed her hair away from her face. Though her hair was longer, her make-up more rigid, it was not a face someone would forget that easily. Childlike still, a little weird, the features not quite spaced right, as if once they had been pulled apart and they’d never been put back quite right, and dark in that Celtic, almost Romany way. And the way she dressed hadn’t changed. It wasn’t a look you forgot in a hurry either, at least not on a plain-clothes. More like a reject from a biker gang than a cop, everything black, leather, heavy eyeliner, black tatts on her arms, and on a lot of other places. But then, twelve years was a long time to have been away. Twelve years working in London and Reading. Twelve years since her mam died. Twelve years since Rhys and all the pain and con-fusion that she had coped with in her own strange, stubborn ways.
    ‘Why did you come back?’ he asked. She pretended not to hear, focused on the radio.
    Why was she back? She’d asked herself the same question enough times, not found an answer that made sense yet. On one level she knew. It was a decent opportunity for her, a promotion. But there were other jobs out there. If she’d been more patient she could have held on for something in her home force in Reading. She’d had a life there, she’d felt safe. And instead she’d taken Cardiff, where there were nothing but ghosts. Or maybe that was the reason why. Maybe it was time to lay the ghosts to rest.
    As on the three previous nights, their brief was to follow up on some minor complaints from members of the public. It was midweek, and cold. The streets in the centre of town were quiet. Thomas drove first to an alley near the station. There’d been reports from a residents group that a gang of Kosovans was using it to sell drugs to passers-by.
    ‘So what are we looking out