No Comebacks by Frederick Forsyth

Author:Frederick Forsyth [Forsyth, Frederick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Fiction, Thrillers
ISBN: 9781101608760
Google: APFBJ9X7sjcC
Amazon: 0553276735
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 2012-12-28T05:00:00+00:00

USED IN EVIDENCE

'YOU ARE NOT OBLIGED to say anything, but anything you say mil be taken down and may be used in evidence,'

Part of the wording of the official caution used in the British and Irish police forces by the cautioning officer to the suspect.

The big police car slid to a halt by the kerb some fifty feet from where the cordon spanned the street to keep the bystanders back. The driver kept the engine running, the wipers flicking rhythmically across the screen to push away the insistent drizzle. From the rear seat Chief Superintendent William J. Hanley looked forward through the glass to the groups of watchers outside the cordon and the knots of irresolute officials beyond it.

'Stay here,' he told the driver, and prepared to get out. The driver was pleased; the inside of the car was snug and warm and, he reasoned, this was no morning to be walking up and down a slum street in the drifting rain. He nodded and cut the engine.

The precinct police chief slammed the door after him, hunched himself deeper into his dark blue overcoat, and walked purposefully towards the gap in the crowd barrier where a damp police officer watched over those who entered and left the cordoned area. Seeing Hanley he brought up a salute, stepped aside and let him pass through.

Big Bill Hanley had been twenty-seven years a policeman, starting by pounding the cobbled alleys of the Liberties and rising through the ranks to his present status. He had the build for it, over 6 feet and 1 inch of him and built like a truck. Thirty years before, he was rated the best lock forward that ever came out of Athlone County; in his green Irish jersey he had been part of the best rugby football team the country had ever produced, the team that Karl Mullen led to victory three years running in the Triple Crown and that wiped the floor with the English, the Welsh, the Scots and the French. That had not done his promotion chances any harm either, when he joined the force.

He liked the job; he got satisfaction from it, despite the poor pay and the long hours. But every job has its tasks that no one can enjoy, and this morning had brought one of them. An eviction.

For two years, the Dublin city council had been steadily demolishing the rash of tiny, back-to-back, one room up and one room down houses that formed the area known as the Gloucester Diamond.

Why it had ever been called that was a mystery. It had none of the wealth and privilege of the English royal house of Gloucester, nor any of the expensive brilliance of the diamond. Just an industrial slum lying behind the dockland zone on the north shore of the Liffey. Now most of it was flat, its dwellers rehoused in cubic council apartment blocks whose soul-numbing shapes could be seen half a mile away through the drizzle.

But it lay in the heart of Bill Hanley's precinct, so this morning's business was his responsibility, much as he hated it.

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