No Sweet Sorrow by Denzil Meyrick

Author:Denzil Meyrick [Meyrick, Denzil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Polygon

33

DS Brian Scott was smoking at the side of the hotel, listening to traffic on his Airwave radio as the search on the hillside above went on. The moon was obscured behind a cloud. Where there was light – a thin grey line from the west – it rippled across the choppy sea, leaving the other half entirely dark, almost as though it wasn’t there at all.

He saw the silhouette of a huge oil tanker on the horizon, and wondered briefly where it was headed. It sailed into the ribbon of moonlight but was soon lost in the enveloping darkness of shadow and the night.

Scott wasn’t a deep thinker like his old friend Jim Daley; that was the road to misery, as far as he was concerned. Yet the image of the tanker on the partially revealed ocean made him think. He couldn’t fathom the reason – maybe it was his age. But he’d found himself thinking about death recently. He remembered his father and mother, their lives draining away in front of his eyes. He thought of Ella, his children, and was almost instantly transported into the nagging prison of worry. His family was one of the few things that engendered angst in Brian Scott. He’d seen real evil, up close and personal, and he was prepared to do anything to save those precious to him from similar encounters.

The oil tanker was a memory now, faded out of view and from his consciousness: out of sight, out of mind. He remembered that had been one of his father’s favourite expressions. It certainly applied to the old boy’s family when he was down the pub on a Friday spending much of his meagre wage. But Brian Scott had no business criticising his father or anyone else who over-indulged in alcohol. He’d done plenty of that himself.

Maybe it was something about this case – or cases. A head in a box, a mutilated student, a mad former detective, and now a missing person. They might be connected, but for the life of him he couldn’t work out how.

The crack of tyres on the gravel car park brought him back to the present. He nipped out the cigarette and walked over to Daley’s car.

Daley got out of the car and turned to Scott. ‘Where’s the father, Bri?’

‘You’ll no’ believe this, Jimmy. He’s off to his bed.’

‘Bed? Where?’

‘In the hotel. He just breezed in, tore a strip off me, demanded to speak to you, and when I wisnae looking went upstairs.’

‘What’s he like – as a person, I mean?’

‘Posh, brash – a prick, basically. It’s a wonder he’s no’ a senior polis officer.’

‘I get it.’

‘Teddy Farringdon, his name. Who’s called Teddy these days?’

‘Yeah, right enough. But it takes all sorts, Bri.’

‘Something funny, though, big man.’

‘Tell me.’

‘He was all, you’ll do this, and yous better do that, until I mentioned the boy Brandt.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He just clammed up. Went white as a sheet, so he did. It’s as if he hadn’t heard. But

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.