Stone Cold, Stone Dead by Margaret Duffy

Author:Margaret Duffy [Margaret Duffy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2018-05-08T16:00:00+00:00

EIGHT

It took too long, in my view anyway, for back-up to arrive. By the time it did I had provided a tourniquet for the injured man’s leg, a rather good silk scarf that had been in my bag, and we had moved him to a nearby patch of grass where there was no covering of snow. I stood guard over him. The two in the bushes had recovered consciousness and were standing, groggy, with the other man who had been permitted to get to his feet before he suffered from hypothermia, all four shivering. No one appeared to want to risk trying to escape.

The Met officer, DS Milly Grant, who duly attended with an area car about five minutes after an ambulance, apologized, saying that no one more senior had been available. I think the protocol nuance involved with that remark escaped Patrick too. She told us that two witnesses to the drive-by shooting had called the police and another area car had responded to that, the crew seeing the vehicle involved which had been left at a bus stop. They were still taking statements.

‘Are those four the same men you encountered in Saint Edwina’s?’ Grant asked when we had given her an account of what had taken place and the suspects had been removed. More detailed reports would be given to Commander Greenway as soon as possible and Patrick had promised to copy them to her. There was not much else she could do right now as it was the NCA’s case and I was hoping that the NCA would now take Saint Edwina’s apart brick by brick.

‘No,’ Patrick replied.

After noting this down, she said, ‘Can I arrange for you to be taken anywhere?’

‘Just to where we’ve left our car would be helpful,’ Patrick answered, giving her a winning smile.

‘That was sexist,’ I whispered to him when we were walking back up to the road, a lift having been organized.

‘Sexist?’ he queried.

‘Smiling at her like that. You wouldn’t have done that if it had been a bloke.’

‘I might have done – if I’d fancied him too.’

Some people are impossible.

Greenway, who had been in yet another, and lengthy, meeting when we arrived, which meant we had to wait, didn’t appear to be about to dish out any plaudits and I’m sure Patrick wasn’t expecting any. This recently shot-at part-time author – or perhaps one-time now, I thought bloody-mindedly – would have appreciated a smile or even a hint that he was pleased with the news that we had seemingly made a connection with Saint Edwina’s and crime. No, nothing. Something had happened.

‘I issued a search warrant as soon as you phoned me,’ the commander said. ‘The Met’s still there but so far they’ve found nothing incriminating. Apparently someone’s going to ring me shortly. Someone else made the point, probably rightly, that just because a car driven by people who committed a criminal act was parked behind the place it doesn’t mean the mission itself is a den of iniquity.’

‘I’m sure they were from the same outfit,’ Patrick insisted.

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