To his surprise, Winston laughed heartily. “I was wondering when you would work up the courage to ask me that,” he confided.
Garston was confused by this reaction. He’d been expecting an outburst of pure rage. “I don’t get it. I thought you’d be really angry,” he confessed.
Winston shook his head. “I’m not angry, boy. What you’re asking makes perfect sense.”
“So, you’ll let me do it, then?” Garston asked. He hadn’t been expecting that.
“No,” Winston said, still laughing. “There’s no way in hell that you’re doing that. And just so we’re clear, I would rather cut your head off than my dreadlocks, and if you bring it up again, that’s exactly what I’m gonna do. Now, be a good little boy and fuck off.”
Chapter 18
Tyler ambled along the corridor, intent on having a quick word with Andy Quinlan before setting off for home. It was only 5 p.m. but there was nothing more for him to do at the office so he’d decided to call it a day. It looked like Kelly was going to be working silly hours again, so he figured he would be all alone for a second night on the trot. He couldn’t justify having another takeaway – that would be too much of an overindulgence – so perhaps he’d stop off at the supermarket and get himself one of their freshly cooked chickens, and then treat himself to another Bond film. Thunderball would do very nicely.
The door was ajar and Andy’s office was empty so Jack went looking for him. He wasn’t in the MIR or the main office, and no one had seen him for a little while. Curious. Maybe he was in the loo, but Jack wasn’t so desperate to talk to him that he was prepared to check in there.
Returning to his own office, Tyler logged off his computer and put the docket he had been reading back in the filing cabinet. He was just slipping his jacket on when his mobile rang.
“DCI Tyler,” he said, slipping his man bag over his shoulder and flicking the switch to kill the lights.
“…Jack…” It was Andy, but he sounded like he had his head in a bucket, and he was out of breath as though he had been sprinting.
Tyler stopped in his tracks, frowning. “Andy…?”
“BBBLLLUUURRRGGGHHH!”
As if the retching wasn’t bad enough, the unmistakable sound of projectile vomit splashing all over the toilet turned Tyler’s stomach, and he instinctively snatched the phone away from his ear in revulsion.
After a few seconds of heavy breathing and low moaning, Quinlan was back on the line. His voice sounded pitiful. “I think that egg sandwich must have been off…I can’t stop throwing…” the sentence was interrupted by another violent bout of sickness.
“Jesus!” Tyler said, looking at the phone in horror. Quinlan was obviously in the toilets with his head stuck down a bowl, and he wondered if he should go in and help. But what could he do? Besides, if there was one thing that Tyler couldn’t stand, it was the smell of puke.
He recalled that Susie Sergeant was a trained ‘First Aider at Work’, so he decided to find her and turn her loose on Quinlan. That would either kill him or cure him, he thought wryly.
“Sorry…” Quinlan said when he came back on the line. “Listen, Jack, I’m gonna have to go home but I can’t leave poor Carol running a Cat A enquiry. Would you mind taking over for a …” Quinlan threw up again, so loud and so hard that Tyler was afraid he’d ruptured something internally.
“Bloody hell mate,” he said, worried. “You really don’t sound good. Do you want me to call out the FME?”
“No point,” Quinlan moaned, sounding very weak. “I just need to let it run its course and then rest.”
He was probably right, but Jack didn’t want him being left alone in that state. “I’ll get someone to drive you home,” he said, thinking that they would need to make sure they had a bloody big bucket with them.
“Thanks,” Quinlan said, breathlessly. “Listen, can you step in and take over as SIO until I come back to work? I know it’s a bit of a liberty for me to ask…”
“Don’t be silly,” Tyler said. “I haven’t got anything on the go so it’s no trouble at all.”
“You’re a star,” Quinlan said, and then chortled mirthlessly. “Come to think of it, are you sure you didn’t poison me just to get me out of the way? I know how much you and Dillon wanted this job.”
Jack laughed. “You poisoned yourself, you brainless wally. I told you not to eat that sandwich, but you wouldn’t listen. So much for you having the constitution of an ox.”
“I do have the constitution of an ox,” Quinlan insisted. “A very sick ox.”
◆◆◆
It turned out that Susie Sergeant was unavailable to do her Florence Nightingale routine as she was still tied up interviewing Mullings. Luckily, one of the DCs on Andy’s team had also gone on the course, and between them, she and Jack managed to get Quinlan out of the toilet and into the first aid room.
Returning to his office a few minutes later, Jack phoned Holland to let him know that he was temporarily taking over the investigation. Thunderball would have to wait for another night.
There was no reply, so he left a voicemail for the boss to call him back.
That done, he went straight into Quinlan’s MIR and asked his Office Manager to give him an in-depth briefing on where they stood with the investigation.
Quinlan’s OM was a fair-haired man in his late forties called DS Tom Wilkins. For some bizarre reason, Wilkins had a thing about wearing bow ties instead of regular ones, and today he wore a burgundy number with a swirl leaf pattern. His accent betrayed his Lancashire origins, and his weathered complexion suggested that he was a man who liked spending time outdoors. Wilkins had a fairly high-pitched voice, and when Jack closed
