The Sun Will Still Shine Tomorrow Read Online Free PDF Page B

visualize him as the dirty tramp he’d seen in the doorway a couple of months ago.
    Days to weeks, weeks to months, months to years, one good job after another, time was skipping by. Ash and Andy had become inseparable. They had become a formidable partnership and had been at the hub of every decent job that had been pulled off by the crime squad. But Ash knew that things were likely to change. Andy had been mentioning it more and more of late and it came as no surprise when he dropped the bombshell. Ash understood. He had thought that he would more than likely do the same thing if he was in Andy’s shoes, but for Andy it was here and now. Both of his parents were in poor health and their only other child, Andy’s sister, lived in New Zealand. He knew he would have to transfer to his native north-east to be closer to his parents and nobody could criticise him for that. This was a bitter blow for Ash. He was losing his work partner, soul mate, best friend, and there was only one way Ash would cope and that was to totally immerse himself in the job.
    After fifteen years this had become Ash’s town; he’d seen the whole spectrum of the underworld, he’d eaten, slept and breathed the job year after year. He’d seen all there was to see in the undercover world and had been seconded from time to time to various Scotland Yard squads.
    Being an undercover cop had brought Ash all of the excitement and variety that he could have imagined, and more. He’d never considered promotion at all; he’d seen all of the halfwits and yes men jumping up the ladder over the years and he didn’t want to be part of the same circus. He wasn’t in it for the extra money or credence of rank; he was on a decent wage and, with years of selling his soul to the job, he had earned a small fortune in overtime which he had invested wisely in the purchase of a splendid apartment in Belsize Park. He had latched onto the apartment when property was affordable, before the property boom of the late 80s.All in all he was in a very healthy financial position; he wanted for nothing except the love of a good woman. Unfortunately with this line of work any woman would have to have the patience of a saint to put up with all that went with it.
    And Alexis had put up with it, she did have the patience of a saint, but then again there was only so much a girl could put up with. Alexis… why?
    Everything was beginning to take its toll; he’d lived in a dirty world for a long time. He’d worked hard but played hard too. All too often. He was still a fit man and when he got the time in between working and drinking he would take his aggression out on the punchbag in the basement gym at Trenchard section house.
    He would pound away for what seemed like an eternity, his thoughts drifting back to his youth at Whitley Bay Boxing Club as the sweat cascaded from him in the hot stuffy basement. And as the frustration and aggression evaporated through his pores his thoughts would wander back to Alexis.
    Yes, he still felt fit… fighting fit, but he also knew that nearly twenty years of hard drinking with his workmates had done him no favours.
    The Smithfield Tavern at Smithfield Market saw the more extreme version of a quick pint after work, for it was here that cops from all over the Met would descend after finishing the night shift at 6am for a handy eight to ten pint session. The only patrons within the establishment that had a special licence to open at that hour for the market traders would be the night shift cops and a handful of vagrants that would invariably end up having their drinks bought for them from pissed-up, off-duty cops. The same cops that would probably arrest them for begging, if both parties were on the other side of the pub threshold.
    Ash always kept an eye on the impending premiership fixtures as he knew when he was likely to get the phone call, a very welcome call at that. Andy was welcome at any time but the visit of the black ‘n whites for a