Love to Death by Patti Battison

Author:Patti Battison
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Robert Hale
Published: 2012-03-31T00:00:00+00:00

‘He’s gone? What do you mean, he’s bloody gone?’

‘He was given a caution and released at about eleven o’clock this morning, sir.’

Paul Wells hurled his car keys on to his desk with such force that they bounced off and slid towards the dusty corners of CID with all the grace of a pebble skimming the surface of a placid lake.

He’d arrived back at the office to find Nick and Mia huddled at their desks when they should have been downstairs wringing the truth out of Roy Barlow. And Nick was left to stutter out an explanation because Mia had suddenly found that her in-tray was stacked with papers needing her immediate attention.

Jack promptly retrieved the keys; then he poured Wells a coffee and scuttled back to his desk, glad for once that it stood in the furthest corner.

‘Which stupid bastard let him go?’ Wells spluttered.

‘A new bloke,’ said Nick. ‘They’ve had a busy morning. You’d signed him in as drunk and disorderly and by the time they needed his cell Barlow was sober so this new bloke let him go. He was playing it by the book, sir.’

‘I suppose,’ said Wells, sinking into his chair with an irritable sigh. He’d slipped up there. He should have made it plain that Barlow was to be interrogated when the booze had worn off. God bless all new recruits – the tossers. ‘So what have you two been doing to fill the time?’

Nick handed Wells a dog-eared buff folder. ‘That’s the file from when Rachel Mandley went missing, sir. And as we’re now more or less sure the dead girl’s Cathy Cousins we’ve been on to uniformed for all the info they got from her parents.’

Wells took a sip of coffee, his eyes fixed on Mia. ‘You’re quiet,’ he said.

‘Just clearing my tray, sir. Giving myself a clear run.’

‘Pity you weren’t so conscientious this morning. If you hadn’t buggered about so long with Sheila Reeves you’d have been back well before Barlow went walkies.’

Mia was quick to relate that morning’s events, embellishing the parts that highlighted her talents and playing down those that showed her in a bad light. And by the end she was trembling with suppressed rage. Why was she having to explain herself in such a way? She was a good detective; confident, too, as a rule. But Wells was making her feel like a rookie on her first day in the job.

‘We would have been back sooner,’ she said, refusing to be cowed, ‘only when we heard the shout coming from the crime scene we thought you’d want us to get the gen.’

‘True enough,’ said Wells. ‘And our dead girl is Cathy Cousins by the way.’ He turned to Jack. ‘Where’s that report, mate?’ Jack handed him a file and Wells spread its contents across his desk. ‘John Lloyd reckons the knife that killed Cathy had a very sharp, thin blade, no shorter than six inches.’

‘Not the sort of knife your average thug would carry about,’ said Nick. ‘Too bulky.

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