Death to Order: Some Lives Cost More Than Others (The Batterton Police Series Book 2) by JJ Sullivan

Author:JJ Sullivan [Sullivan, JJ]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Mandrill Press
Published: 2022-02-01T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Before she left, Susanna called London. Of course she knew she wasn’t going to get an immediate answer, but only she could start the process. Who was this woman the Metropolitan Police had called on to ask what had happened to her boyfriend? She didn’t know how things worked inside the Met, what internal networks there were, but if that visit had been arranged at the behest of some wealthy, powerful person, there would be a record of it. The person she spoke to said they’d call her back. ‘But it’s unlikely to be tonight.’

‘Of course. I’ll give you my mobile number, so you can get me wherever I am.’

Then she rang Manchester police and asked a similar question. Someone had studied the CCTV recorded at Manchester Piccadilly railway station and then they’d spoken to the ticket seller to try to find out who had bought a ticket for a young woman travelling to London Euston on her own. That certainly was not something everyone involved would have forgotten. And then she went home.

Members of a major crimes investigation team don’t get many interrupted evenings to themselves while looking for a murderer. They get even fewer as the number of deaths rises. Susanna David knew how lucky she was to get home that evening before eight. She also knew how lucky she was that her partner, Detective Superintendent Chris McAvoy, had reached a level of seniority at which he was almost always able to keep normal office hours, that he loved to cook, and that he was good at it. She said, ‘If you had your time over, what would you choose? The police? Or the kitchen?’

‘If it was the same me making the choice, it would be the police again because I had no idea in my teens that I’d enjoy cooking so much. I wasn’t one of those kids who take over the job of feeding the family. But if I’d known then what I know now? I might well have got myself apprenticed to a chef. It’s even crossed my mind, when I retire, to open a restaurant. But I won’t – that’s the kind of dream that should never be put into practice.’

‘So what is it tonight?’

‘Tonight we have braised chicken with tarragon, chervil and sun-dried tomatoes.’

‘Sounds lovely.’

‘When people first started talking about sun-dried tomatoes, I thought it was just one more fashionable trend that would disappear before long. But it isn’t. There’s a concentrated, long-lasting body and taste that you don’t get any other way. I’ll be dishing up in about twenty minutes.’

‘That just gives me time for a quick shower.’

‘And to pour us each a glass of wine.’

‘I’ll do that before I take the shower.’

‘Good thinking.’

* * *

Nicola, too, was relishing an evening off, which in her case meant supper at her sister’s house. Sasha’s husband, Kevin, had a very high paid job in some obscure aspect of banking that Sasha professed not to understand. Whatever it was, it had taken him to

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