Alice Teale is Missing by Howard Linskey

Author:Howard Linskey [Linskey, Howard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2019-11-14T00:00:00+00:00

27

When Beth’s phone rang late that evening, she expected it to be Black with another query about the case but, instead, she heard the reassuringly familiar tones of Peter Kennedy.

‘I did some asking around about DS Black.’

‘That was good of you.’ Familiarity with the man had made Beth a little calmer than she had been about working with Lucas Black, but she didn’t want Peter to feel as if his efforts had been wasted.

‘No problem and, don’t worry, I didn’t make it obvious. I just mentioned I had a friend who had joined his team. Believe me, that was enough.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘People weren’t shy about voicing their opinions on DS Black.’

Beth sat up. ‘What did they say about him?’

‘That he was a loner and difficult, moody and uncooperative.’

Was that all? ‘That does seem to sum him up, Peter, but I’m getting used to him.’

‘Lucas Black is not a popular man,’ Kennedy continued. ‘No one likes working with the guy, and they say he has a right temper. They don’t trust him, Beth.’ He paused, then.

That was bad enough, but why did she get the impression Kennedy hadn’t finished yet? If there was something else, she wanted him to spit it out, but it was his story to tell.

‘And then there was the shooting.’

Oh, yes, the shooting.

‘Did he tell you about that?’ asked Kennedy.

‘I haven’t asked,’ she admitted. ‘And it’s not something he’s likely to volunteer as a topic of conversation.’

‘You’ve read about it, though?’ He meant online. ‘How he claimed he thought the man was armed?’

‘Yes.’

‘The guy was carrying something that looked like a sawn-off shotgun. It was part of his statement,’ Kennedy told her, ‘but the victim was actually carrying a chair leg.’

‘A chair leg?’ she repeated. How could anyone mistake that for a weapon?

‘Black claimed he thought the man’s family was in danger so he shot the guy. I spoke to someone who was there that night. He said Black was like a robot. It was just bang. No hesitation. Right in the chest. He took that guy down so fast it was like an execution,’ said Kennedy, and hearing it described like that made it far more real somehow. ‘Then, afterwards, he never said a word about it. He was offered counselling but turned it down and just got on with his job like he didn’t give a damn about that bloke.’

‘Christ,’ she hissed. She was working with a man who felt nothing, even when he had killed someone.

Perhaps Peter thought he had gone too far, because he seemed to backtrack. ‘Obviously, I wasn’t there. It’s just what they told me. Things like that must affect people in different ways, but it sounded pretty hardcore. He was in the army, though, wasn’t he? Maybe he had killed before.’

Beth assumed Kennedy was saying this to explain Black’s nonchalant approach to ending someone else’s life. She didn’t find any comfort in the idea that Black might have killed someone else.

Of all the people to end up working my first real case with, I end up with the cold-blooded killer.

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