Team Spirit (Special Crime Unit Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

the room, a tall, rangy
individual with a big nose and a set of face that suggested someone had put
cold rice pudding in his shoes. He wasn’t wearing a tie either. The women,
similarly, seemed to have dressed for comfort or according to personal whim.
They were all preoccupied. An anaemic-looking blonde in her thirties sat,
headphones in ears, hammering away two-fingered at a computer keyboard as she
transcribed an interview. At a corner desk a young black woman had her head
down, phone in one hand and flipping through what looked like an archived case
file with the other. Two women, one pale and exotic, one small and dumpy with a
sharp nosy face, were talking intently; whether about work or not it was hard
to tell. Distracted by their entrance, the pale one glanced over and held
Lucky’s gaze just long enough to make her uncomfortable.
    The
woman Zoltan led them over to was short but massive, almost impossibly so even
for a copper, her rotund form stretching the material of her dark green dress.
She turned at their approach and pushed shut the drawer she’d been rummaging
in. As it had during the interview process, her smile brought Lucky up in a
more direct way than Zoltan’s sarcasm ever would. Sophia Beadle’s eyes were the
purest, deepest blue she’d ever seen that didn’t belong to a baby, but there
was nothing babyish about the way the smile stopped before it reached them.
Lucky understood, abruptly and unmistakeably, that she, not Zoltan, was the
guv’nor.
    ‘How’d
it go?’
    ‘Fine,’
her DI replied in a laconic way which conveyed that he would tell her more when
Lucky wasn’t listening. ‘Made her mark.’
    Again
the smile. ‘Welcome to the team, Larissa.’
    ‘Ma’am.’
    ‘“Guv”
will do. We’re pretty informal around here, as you may have gathered.’
    Before
she could stop herself Lucky blurted out, ‘At Gipsy Hill people called me
Lucky.’
    ‘Lucky?’
    ‘’Cause
I’m usually the one nearest to a 999 shout five minutes before end of shift.’
She deflated mentally. She’d had a job and a half living the nickname down, and
it seemed she wasn’t going to get away with it here either. Oh, well. Handles
had a knack of following you around in the Job; she’d merely pre-empted the
inevitable.
    Reading
her discomfiture, Sophia smiled again, this time with real warmth. ‘Well, we’ll
put “Larissa” on the duty board for now. If people want to call you something
else and you’re OK with it that’s up to you. Right - Helen.’
    The
DS looked up. ‘Guv?’
    ‘Anything
major on?’
    ‘I
can save the world any time.’
    ‘Good.’
Sophia indicated Lucky with an open palm. ‘Can you show Larissa the ropes?
Introduce everyone, take her through procedures and our current caseload, a
guided tour of the office, the building and then hop in a car and whizz round
the ground. That should occupy you both for most of the morning, barring a
crisis.’
    Helen
made a face. ‘Some hopes.’ She grinned at Lucky. ‘Come on. This over here’s
where the magic happens.’
     
    ‘Go back and do a
thorough search of that bedroom again,’ Sophia had decreed. ‘Don’t take no for
an answer. I’ll think up some excuse for a warrant if necessary, but I want to
know what Debbie’s involvement with these people is.’
    ‘What
about Carruth?’
    ‘Since
Sandra is familiar with that case, I’ve put her onto trying to track him down.’
Sophia’s faint frown conveyed that Kim’s disappointment was noted. ‘You two
have an in with the Clarkes, so I’d like you to stay on them for now.’
    And
so Kim and Marie were back at Ballards Way. Andrew Clarke wasn’t there. He’d
gone to work ‘to keep occupied’, leaving strict instructions to his wife to
ring him if there was any news. ‘Nice. Leave her to do all the worrying,’ had
been Marie’s opinion, expressed without too much consideration as to whether
Charlotte Clarke was out of earshot. Kim had been careful to persuade Mrs
Clarke that