‘Just stop.’ Pearce pushed himself from his seat, fumbling with the zip of his wet coat. ‘Thanks for the tea.’
‘Pearce, he needs to be stopped,’ Harris blurted out, his composure wobbling. ‘Whether you believe me or not, I just want our city to be safe. Now you might believe his intentions are good, but the man is a criminal. No one gets to take the law into their own hands and the longer he is out there putting bullets in criminals, the more terrifying he becomes. He will lose himself to the point of no return and it will only end in one way.’
Pearce extended a hand to Harris, who took a couple of steps forward, frustrated at his lack of influence over the detective. Usually, he had most people eating out of the palm of his hand.
‘Good luck with the election,’ Pearce offered, leaving his hand in place for a few more moments. Harris just glared at him, the pleasantries clearly gone. Pearce raised his eyebrows and shrugged before turning on his heel and heading towards the door. As he reached for the handle, Harris propped himself against his desk, arms folded.
‘When the time comes, and Sam Pope is killed, just know that you could have stopped it from happening.’
Pearce turned the handle and pulled open the door, turning back once more to lock eyes with the cocky politician.
‘With all due respect, when it comes to Sam Pope, there isn’t anything anyone can do. You’ll find that out soon enough.’
With that, Pearce stepped through the door, almost colliding with Burrows who had quietly approached. He apologised and headed to the exit, wanting to distance himself from the situation and return to the warmth of his house.
As Pearce stepped out onto the pavement, Harris stared from the window above. Anger pulsated through his body as the resilient detective headed towards Regent’s Park, the rain soaking him in seconds. Watching with fury, Harris wondered if it was the lack of respect for the task force or the man’s misguided loyalty to Pope which angered him most. Deep down, he knew it was neither.
It was the fact that the man didn’t buckle to him.
Needing his ego massaged, he wondered if bringing in DI Singh and berating her would make him feel better. She would surely be hurting after the extreme failure of her first day in charge of the task force. As he watched Pearce pass the gate and into the park, he heard the shuffling footsteps of Burrows behind him.
He sighed.
‘Sir, I trust that didn’t go as planned,’ Burrows said, pushing his spectacles up his hooked nose.
‘No. That man is a pain in the arse.’
Burrows stepped forward, joining his boss by the window and looking out over the city he had served for decades. Pearce was long gone, and the roads were slowly getting busier. A few news vans had appeared on the road, no doubt eager to speak to Harris about the apparent failure of his task force.
Burrows could sense the tension and spoke.
‘Sir, redoubling our efforts to catch Sam Pope has to be the number one priority.’ Harris turned and glared at him.
‘Don’t tell me how to do my job,’ Harris spat. ‘Get me DI Singh in here and get her here now.’
‘Very well, sir.’ Burrows nodded with respect. ‘Just remember, the longer Sam Pope is at large, the sooner some of your biggest backers will get nervous.’
Burrows marched out of the office to call Singh as Harris massaged his temples. Taking a seat, he thought about Burrows’ warning. His highly backed campaign was focused on stopping Pope.
It needed to deliver.
It had to.
With a deep sigh, he reached for his cup of tea, the stone-cold cup was just another in a series of kicks in the teeth that the morning had offered.
After spending the night in a tiny, concrete cell and an entire morning being treated like a pervert while being interviewed, Aaron Hill was finally released into the freezing afternoon. DI Singh had pulled no punches, labelling him a disgrace for attending the High Rise and asking him a number of personal questions to find the reason for his depravity.
The fact that she didn’t recall him from the day before had caused him to keep quiet.
Her focus was so hell bent on finding Sam Pope that she didn’t realise he was the desperate father looking for his daughter. Granted, he had been drunk at the time, but she dismissed his pleas then and he was sure she would have that morning.
Pulling the collar up on his coat, he fished his wallet from his pocket to check for cash, remembering his license being taken by Sam Pope. Judging by the anger of the fiery detective, Pope’s plan had worked and both of them had escaped the building alive and well. Aaron had been threatened with further action but didn’t care.
He needed to find his daughter.
Rushing home, he walked the seven miles in the bitter cold, trying his best to formulate a better plan. Getting drunk, buying a gun, and storming a known criminal hot spot wasn’t the best idea and it was a near miracle he hadn’t been killed.
The memory of the evening had flashed in small snippets through his hangover, the vision of being on his knees in front of a large, black man with a gun caused him to go deathly pale, lean over a wall, and empty his guts into a bush. He had come so close to death while his daughter was still missing.
He could have died, leaving her to a fate which he presumed would be worse than that.
Tears filled his eyes as he ran the final few streets, turned onto his road and approached his house.
He pushed open the gate, marched up the garden path and as he pushed his key into the door, he heard the sound of footsteps behind him.
In a blind panic he turned, swinging the
