your job is to look for possible lines of inquiry. If you find any you will need leg men, and you will have them, but given the nature of the situation and the fact that it’s possible it may lead to links between a police officer and organised crime, they have to be specialised. Therefore, anything you do trigger will be handled by Special Branch.’
That came out of the blue. I’d assumed that we were looking for backhanders changing hands, nothing deeper than that. It raised a question in my mind and I put it out there. ‘Chief, have you had specific information about this?’
‘Yes, I have, but that’s all I’m going to tell you. Even at my level I have informants who need to be protected. So,’ he continued ‘the Branch: I’ve just made a change there. The officer who was in charge is being moved back to divisional CID duties. Her replacement is Detective Inspector George Regan, and he’ll be your first line of contact should the need arise.’
He looked at me. ‘I don’t think you’ve worked with him, David, but you probably know his back story.’ I did; I nodded.
‘Okay, I suggest that you get along there and introduce yourselves before you leave the building. I’ve briefed him on the Varley situation, so he’s expecting you. Good guy, George. You’ll appreciate that SB operates in its own way, and please remember that. Brief him on anything you turn up then leave him to get on with it. And don’t take the hump when you find that he shares everything with me; that’s his job.’
He rose to his feet, signalling that the briefing was over. Our marching orders were clear; if it’s there get a result, and one that is, given the circumstances, unquestionable.
‘The rest of the material, and there are boxes of it, will be waiting for you at St Leonards,’ he said. ‘I want you to work out of there. Sometimes I think I should do that myself; less of a post-modern shit heap than this place. Or maybe I should work from home; maybe that would be best for everyone.’
Detective Sergeant Jack McGurk
‘How are we with missing persons?’ the boss called, from the doorway of the glass box that she called an office.
‘They’re all still missing, Becky,’ I told her. ‘I had four possibilities from the national trawl that I did this morning, but they’ve all dropped off. Four families contacted and asked if their loved one was circumcised and had perfect teeth, and all four were negatives. It took time, though; the wife of John Ancram, of Middlesbrough, didn’t know what circumcision meant, far less what it looked like, but she did say that his teeth were very good. When the local cops went to his dentist, they discovered that she’d neglected to mention that he kept them in a jar. They told me that they don’t want to find John now, for his own sake. The partner of Michael Winterton, of Bourton, was so surprised when he was told he might have been found that the officers who visited him got suspicious. As soon as they started to question the guy, he broke down and now they’re digging up the back garden. As for the other two. .’
‘Complete pricks?’ Sauce chipped in.
‘You got it.’
‘Ha bloody ha,’ the DI grumbled. ‘Do you two schoolboys have anything positive to tell me?’
She was getting testy, and young Haddock had the sense not to wind her up any further. ‘I’m working on the pathologist’s suggestion that he might not be British,’ he volunteered. ‘I’m looking at immigration, talking to the Border Agency. They’re suggesting that we focus on failed asylum seekers; so far they’ve sent me photographs of males in the age group we’re after, all of them currently missing from detention centres. None of them was a match, but they haven’t finished. Now they’re trawling through people waiting to be sent back who aren’t in detention, to see if any of them aren’t where they should be.’
‘What’s the thinking behind that?’ I asked him.
Sauce looked at me as if I was thick. ‘Let’s say a family goes underground,’ he replied, ‘and one of them dies.’
‘Possible,’ I conceded, then put a hand to my ear.
He looked at me, puzzled. ‘What are you listening out for?’
‘The cackle of wild geese,’ I told him. ‘A well-nourished young man with perfect dentition and an athletic build: I don’t like to stereotype people, mate, and I know we look after visitors to our country very well, but does that sound like an asylum seeker of any description to you?’
‘He doesn’t sound like a runaway steel erector from Middlesbrough either,’ Sauce retorted, but I knew that I’d made my point.
So did Becky. ‘I know, guys,’ she said. ‘It’s a human needle in a haystack, but you know what they say, once you eliminate all other possibilities, what you’re left with is. .’
Sauce and I looked at each other and grinned. ‘Fuck all!’ we cried, in unison.
Our DI is a patient woman, with a sense of humour, but she’s not at all keen on being leaned on by the head of CID. ‘Look,’ she began, until the phone rang and let us off the hook.
Sarah Grace
The lab results had just come back when the call came in, not through the hospital switchboard but on my cellphone. The screen told me that it was Bob’s number in Gullane, but I didn’t expect it to be him. The witch? Surely not her either.
I hit the green key. ‘Mum,’ James Andrew began, ‘can I have a mobile?’
I had to grin at his tone, that of a boy who knew he was pushing his luck, but who hoped nonetheless. ‘Have you asked your father?’ I said.
‘Yes. He says not yet.’
‘Then don’t play us off against each other, Jazz. Does Mark have one yet? He’s older than you and I don’t recall seeing him with one.’
‘No, he hasn’t,’ he admitted, grudgingly. He paused, then added, ‘But if he does get one, then I want one too.’
‘I’ll discuss it with your dad, okay? What’s brought this on anyway?’ I asked.
‘I had to come back to the house to call you,’ he replied. ‘I was on my way to the beach; if I had a mobile I wouldn’t have had to come home.’
‘Then the sooner you tell me what it’s about,’ I pointed out, ‘the sooner you can get back on down there.’
‘It’s the computer. I was on it last, and I forgot to switch it off. Mark says it shouldn’t be left on or somebody could hack into it. Can you do it?’
Sharp kid, that Mark. The boys have their own computer at my house and another at Bob’s. At some point in time they might have a laptop each, but it can stay as it is for now, as it allows parental supervision. That’s one of the things that my former husband and I still agree on.
‘Yes, I will,’ I promised. ‘Now get on back outside.’
‘Thanks, Mum.’
I frowned a little, as I heard him hang up. Eight years old, and yet he sounded just like his dad on the phone, give or take a few octaves; the same accent, the same intonation, and even a hint of the same authority in his voice. I took a strong hit of nostalgia.
There were some things I liked about my ex. Hell, face it, woman, there still are, and that voice of his is one of them, that and his presence; charisma is an over-used word but Bob has it, no question, and so, when you see him among his peer group, has James Andrew.
When Bob made his ‘we’ve fallen out of love’, speech, I went along with it, even though it wasn’t entirely true on my part. If I had told him so, it might have sounded like I was pleading with him, and that is one thing I have
