Without Consent Read Online Free PDF Page B

whom Ryan was a stranger.
    â€˜Was he drunk, I wonder?’ Bailey asked.
    â€˜Oh, merry. Not so drunk that he didn’t remember to take his wallet and warrant card out of his pocket before dunking his shirt into hot soapy water.’
    â€˜Hardly evidence.’
    Nothing was more debilitating than Bailey’s strangesense of grief. Todd and he sat together in the canteen, relieved at its relative emptiness. From the direction of the counter, over the Formica-topped tables and plastic plants, raucous laughter sounded as two large West Indian ladies poured glutinous soup into the heated container which would render it inedible by lunch-time. Soup was always on the menu, even in August. A few coffee drinkers huddled together, as far distant from Bailey and Todd as they could make it, as if whatever contagion they carried could drift and move above the smell of fried food.
    â€˜C’mon on then,’ Bailey said reluctantly, uncurling his long legs. ‘Got to go and see about a girl.’ The chair he pushed back made a loud fart-like noise on the floor. The place fell as silent as a church.
    T he station by day was an entirely different building to the station by night. This time, they traversed the front counter as an easier route to the suites at the back, passing
en route
the counter queue. It comprised mainly young men shuffling and scratching, signing on for bail; drivers producing documents; ladies with tales of stolen handbags, the air thick with subdued anxiety. While Todd excused himself to find the gents, Bailey took his chance, nodding to the custody sergeant, who pressed the buzzer through into the cells, watching without a word while Bailey practically ran to Ryan’s cell and opened the flap.
    â€˜You all right?’
    There wasn’t much else to say. Ryan was sitting still, staring at nothing. He turned a blank face on Bailey, then looked away. Something was said which Bailey almost missed.
    â€˜Pardon?’
    There was a glimmer of a smile, the voice only slightly louder.
    â€˜I said, I never liked that jacket, sir. Never.’
    There was little enough Bailey could do for Ryan without showing signs. Keep him clean and tidy for one. Get him out of the cell soonest and try and use some form of telepathy to stop him crying. His gaolers, those solid uniformed men, were bound to see that as an admission of guilt.
    T here was something terrible about a man weeping. Mrs Mary Ryan had read many a magazine article about the virtues of the new kind of man who wept at the drop of a hat, in case the hat was hurt, and was otherwise honest about his emotions, but it was not a culture with which she was familiar, or one she expected any man of hers to embrace. True, she would have preferred more honesty from her husband, or at least a greater ability to articulate when something was on his mind, instead of which he would put on a mood and hang around like the walking wounded, sulking and barking and waiting for her to guess the cause. Crying, however, was another matter. Tears were her prerogative, and even she did not shed them often. Daughter of a police officer, married to a police officer, with one of her sons dreaming of nothing else but becoming one of the same, she was watching the possible demise of every tradition which kept her family afloat, and there was her husband, her conquering hero, with a face puffy from tears.
    Mrs Ryan hugged Mr Ryan and, in its way, the embracewas heartfelt. She was not a hard woman, merely a practical one, and they had been together a long time. Married far too young, of course; twenty-one apiece and with all the sense of a pair of kids, so that each of them had kicked over the traces a few years later, taken their marriage to the brink once or twice, then, after more than a decade, got a grip. On her way here, driving with automatic care and rehearsing a dozen versions of what to tell the kids, she had made herself remember all she respected about Ryan.