Gun Street Girl 4 by Adrian McKinty

Author:Adrian McKinty [McKinty, Adrian]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781633880016
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2015-02-05T08:00:00+00:00

17: INTERROGATING DEIRDRE FERRIS

We asked the receptionist at Conservative Central Office to call us a taxi which we took to Paddington, where we caught the Oxford train. There was no point staying in England now.

When we pulled into Oxford station I told Lawson to pack our stuff, pay the bill, get a receipt, get two bus tickets to Birmingham International airport, and meet me at the Eagle and Child.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Don’t forget the receipt. Sergeant Dalglish is a stickler for receipts.”

“I won’t. Sir?”

“Yes?”

“You don’t suspect Osbourne, do you?”

“No. But you never know, do you? We’ll make sure we call him and follow up with him on that alibi.”

“Yes, sir. Uhm, sir?”

“Yes?”

“What are you going to do while I’m packing?”

“I’m going to go back to Oxford CID and raise just a little bit of holy hell.”

Back through the streets of Oxford again.

The same girls on bikes, the same boys rowing on the river, the same red sandstone . . . but a more sinister aspect to it all now. The Round Table Club. The AGC. This is where the elite cemented their connections, this is where deals got done, this is where you got inducted into the secret world of men with money and power. Through the looking glass indeed.

Oxford Police HQ. Piped music. Natural light. Georgian windows uncovered by grilles. Flowers on the incident desk. This was a station without armor, a station that anyone could just walk right into. The same thought: these bloody peelers didn’t know how lucky they were.

What did they know about policing in a crisis zone? What did they know about fucking anything?

I went upstairs to the CID offices.

The big back room overlooking Christchurch Meadow.

The big back room overlooking one of the most beautiful places in all of Europe. Yellow wood, aurulent leaves, Jersey cows . . .

The CID officers were gawping at me.

I asked for a meeting with Superintendent Smith, Chief Inspector Boyson, Constable Atkins. I played it low key, dropped my voice half an octave and got it low and growly like those slab-faced goons who come to your door late on foggy December nights asking whether you want to “contribute something for the prisoners.”

I told them what Habsburg had told me. Let it sink in. Let it bloody sink.

They had committed serious professional wrongdoing and they bloody knew it. I could end their careers if I wanted to. Even if that would entail grassing up a fellow peeler.

White faces. Panic. Yeah, that’s right, you underestimated the Paddy cop. Either that or you overestimated Gottfried Habsburg’s ability to keep his mouth shut. Either way: serious fucking mistake. Career-ending mistake. Front page of the fucking Daily Mirror mistake.

“You don’t understand, Duffy. There was nothing in it for us; we just wanted to protect an innocent young man. It was nothing untoward. No one told us to do it or paid us or—”

“If that’s true you’re even stupider than you look.”

“Please, Inspector Duffy, you can see our side of it, can’t you?”

“Falsifying reports. Concealing information

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