Deadly Business by Quintin Jardine

Author:Quintin Jardine [Jardine, Quintin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, World Literature, Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, Mystery, Women Sleuths, Crime Fiction, Scotland
ISBN: 0755357086
Google: 3jmGIS9JxZEC
Amazon: B009P3N1KO
Goodreads: 16083396
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2013-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Eleven

I took Charlie down to Ben’s as soon as Liam had gone. An hour later I’d have been glad of his distracting presence, for it was pretty emotional when the Mossos people, a man and a woman, arrived with wee runaway Jonathan.

They parked their car outside the village and wore plain clothes when they walked him up to the door. They may have been under orders from Alex, but whether they were or not, I was grateful to them for their sensitivity. The square was Sunday busy and being hauled out of a police car in full view would have dissolved what was left of the kid’s self-esteem.

As it was, he was the picture of misery when I opened the front door to them, and he wrapped himself around me, tight as a small python. He was wearing what I can best describe as a long shirt, stretching down past his knees. The female officer explained that he had wet himself in the back of the truck and that his beach clothes were in his little bag, which he still carried slung over his shoulder. If he’d been planning to run away, I knew what I’d find in there when I looked: his favourite toy, a stuffed green dinosaur that he’s had from infancy, and a copy of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, in French.

When I asked her if she could give me the names and address of the couple who’d been his unwitting taxi drivers, she shot me a look full of alarm and shook her head. I explained that I only wanted to apologise to them, and to thank them for doing the right thing when they’d found the wee chap, but still she said that she couldn’t do that, or her bosses would hand her her head as a plaything. I didn’t press her further. I decided instead that if Philippe and Theresa knew them, as almost certainly they would, I would give them a five-hundred euro tab at Vaive to work their way through, and that’s a lot of chicken pigs.

Janet and Tom were waiting in the hall when I said goodbye to the cops and peeled wee Jonathan from round my legs. He looked at them fearfully, then saw what his sister was holding in her hand and burst into tears.

‘It’s all right,’ Tom told him, as he took the white chocolate Magnum from his sister. The kid gave him an awkward, cracked smile. We took him into the kitchen, where Conrad joined us, and I sat him at the table, while I tossed his damp and smelly beach clothes into the washing machine, along with my reprieved bikini and a couple of towels, all I had left to boost the load after my earlier burst of laundry mania.

He was halfway through his ice cream when I came back from the utility room. I let him finish before I asked the question that we all knew had to be put. ‘Why did you run away, son? You need to tell us, so we understand and can help you.

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