The Dying Hours Read Online Free PDF

the patrol car could get a little… rank after an hour or two, she was always his first choice when it came to pairing up.
    ‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Why?’
    Treasure’s bleached-blonde hair was cut very short at the sides. She ran fingers through the longer hair on top, teased it into spikes. ‘Heard you had a run-in with a couple of suits last night.’
    ‘God’s sake,’ Thorne said, quietly. Woodley or one of the others mouthing off. Not that he could really blame them. He had guessed that the locker room would be full of it. He put the kettle down and switched it on. ‘Just the usual handbags.’
    ‘That’s what they
do
,’ Treasure said. ‘You should know that better than anybody.’
    ‘Why should I?’
    ‘Come on, you saying you were any different when you were one of them?’
    ‘Yeah, I was,’ Thorne said. It was the question he had been asking himself on a regular basis since his transfer. Now that the highly polished black boot was on the other foot. He tried to make his answer as convincing as possible. ‘I
was
.’
    Treasure shrugged. Whether or not she believed him, it clearly didn’t matter to her either way. ‘You need to get past it though, because it’s going to happen again. It’s going to happen a lot.’
    Thorne turned back to the fridge and picked up a stained teaspoon.
    ‘Come on though, isn’t this better?’
    ‘
Better
?’ Thorne spooned instant coffee into his mug. Stood over the kettle as it began to grumble.
    ‘Were you really any happier before?’ Treasure asked. ‘Sitting watching CCTV footage for hours on end? Talking to the wankers at mobile phone companies? I mean, that’s what most of the suits do all day, isn’t it?’ She picked up her cap, spun it round a finger. ‘We’re getting something different every ten minutes. We’re getting a bit of variety. God knows what we’ll run into tonight, could be anything, and that’s what makes it so bloody exciting. I’m actually buzzing on the way to work, d’you know that? Seriously, I can’t bloody wait. It’s like when you know you’re going to get your end away.’
    Thorne poured hot water into his mug then turned around to look at her.
    ‘You really prefer poncing around in a suit? Doing endless paperwork and getting screwed over by the CPS?’
    ‘It’s not always like that,’ Thorne said.
    Blinking away a gallery of killers and their victims.
 
    A girl in a coma, a man running towards a bridge, a brother and sister laughing as they take something out of a bag.
 
    The faces he still woke seeing sometimes
.
    ‘You want to swan about, being a dick like those two last night?’ It was clear from Thorne’s silence, the look on his face, that this was not something he really wanted to talk about, so Treasure shrugged and changed the subject. She pointed to her eye, then to his. Said, ‘That’s looking good.’
    Thorne said, ‘Yeah, not bad,’ and touched his finger to the bruise below his eye that had swelled up and turned purple while he’d slept. An almost perfect half-moon.
    ‘It’s quite sexy, actually.’
    ‘You on the turn, Christine?’
    ‘You wish,’ Treasure said. She jumped up and fixed her cap on. ‘Come on. Let’s get among them, shall we?’
    Thorne raised his mug. ‘Hang on—’
    ‘Leave it,’ she said. ‘We’ll stop off at the BP, get some decent stuff.’ The petrol station was a regular port of call on the night shift as it gave out free Wild Bean coffee to police officers. A small reduction in the profits of British Petroleum in exchange for the presence of uniformed coppers on their forecourt every half an hour or so.
    ‘Yeah, all right.’ Thorne put his mug down and gathered up his cap and raincoat. The radio chatter had already begun to get interesting. A group of young Tamils gathering near St Saviour’s church. ‘Promise me you’ve not been eating sprouts today.’
    ‘You’re perfectly safe, sir,’ Treasure said. She waited for Thorne in the doorway