Black Quarry Farm by Iain Cameron

Author:Iain Cameron [Cameron, Iain]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-09-29T16:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-TWO

Henderson walked into the Detectives’ Room. He felt a strange sensation for a Monday morning, both energised and knackered at the same time. Over the weekend, he’d seen Claire twice. The previous night, they’d gone to a bar in Kemptown. They ended up back at his place with a Chinese takeaway, Claire’s fine house overlooking Hove Park otherwise occupied hosting a film night for the not-yet-introduced Daisy and her friends.

The reason he felt knackered was they had made love twice, once in the kitchen, the smell of fried rice and sweet and sour sauce filling the air, and later on in his more fragrant bedroom. He hoped Claire felt better than he did this morning, as she was scheduled to insert a new heart valve into the chest of a forty-two-year-old woman at ten.

Claire was a fascinating woman. Not only highly intelligent with incredible focus and skill, as evidenced by the work she did, but now he was getting to know her, witty and well-read too. It would be a joy to peruse her large CD and book collection in the library which she had created when the house was remodelled, but the Daisy hurdle was one he had to overcome first.

Claire hadn’t been out with many men since breaking up with Daisy’s father, but those who did appear from time to time got short-shrift from the feisty teenager. According to Claire, no one could replace Eric, as they were very close. If the relationship with Claire continued as Henderson hoped, although he wasn’t taking anything for granted given the problems his job often created with partners, he would make it clear he wasn’t there to take over from Daisy’s father. He was an add-on rather than a bolt-on replacement.

The team were gathered in a corner when he entered the Detectives’ Room. He instructed Walters to summarise the previous day’s meeting with Simon Radcliffe, while he drank a long coffee infused with two shots of a morning reviver instead of his usual one.

‘You’re right,’ Henderson said when Walters had finished, ‘if Radcliffe hadn’t come under the wing of John Carlisle, the Lancashire businessman Radcliffe cites as his mentor, he would have become a gangster like his friends. It’s not so far-fetched when you consider studies done in America and Australia found that many senior executives of top companies display the same psychopathic tendencies as the criminals we put behind bars.’

‘I knew you had to be a nutcase to become an MP,’ Harry Wallop said, ‘but I never thought it would apply to the heads of big companies.’

‘You don’t have to be crazy to work here,’ Lisa Newman said, ‘but it helps.’

‘Okay, let’s move on. Vicky, how did it go with Oliver Lee? Is the strimmer thief banged-up in the Custody Suite?’

‘No,’ she said smiling. ‘He isn’t. He’s admitted taking the chainsaw and the strimmer, but said, and produced a receipt to prove it, the chainsaw belonged to him. He’d lent it to John Beech, but it had never been returned.’

‘I’ve got the same sort of neighbours,’ Wallop said.

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