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Canongate Books - Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

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151 pages

English

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'You can't upset anyone looking into old bones.' DCI Bill Slider's out of favour in the force - for accusing a senior Met officer of covering up an underage sex ring. As a punishment, he's given a cold case to keep him busy: some old bones to rake through, found buried in a back garden, from a murder that happened two decades ago, and with most of the principal players already dead. Surely Bill Slider can't unearth anything new or shocking with these tired old bones?

Sujets

Gran Londres

Greater London

Grand Londres

London

Informations

Publié par	Canongate Books
Date de parution	01 août 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781786895080
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0240€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Cynthia Harrod-Eagles is the author of over 90 books, including the internationally acclaimed Bill Slider mysteries and her Morland Dynasty series, which has sold over 100,000 copies. cynthiaharrodeagles.com
Also by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
The Bill Slider Mysteries
Dear Departed Game Over Fell Purpose Body Line Kill My Darling Blood Never Dies Hard Going Star Fall One Under Shadow Play

First published in Great Britain, the USA and Canada in 2019 by Black Thorn, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This digital edition first published in 2019 by Black Thorn
First published in 2016 by Severn House Publishers Ltd, Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY
blackthornbooks.com
Copyright © Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, 2016
The moral right of the author has been asserted
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidentsare either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78689 490 8 eISBN 978 1 78689 508 0
CONTENTS

Chapter One: Party Politics

Chapter Two: Posh and Vexed

Chapter Three: The Anguish of the Marrow

Chapter Four: De Profundis

Chapter Five: How Beautiful Are the Feet

Chapter Six: Gripes and Wrath

Chapter Seven: Skin and Blister

Chapter Eight: Making the Red One Green

Chapter Nine: Downtown Addy

Chapter Ten: Occam’s Razor

Chapter Eleven: Reason as a Way of Life

Chapter Twelve: Death and Glory

Chapter Thirteen: Rocking the Cash Bar

Chapter Fourteen: Ingots We Trust

Chapter Fifteen: More Sinned Against Than Sinning

Chapter Sixteen: How Do You Solve a Problem Like Diarrhoea?

Chapter Seventeen: O Tempora o Maurice

Chapter Eighteen: Armed and Dangerous

Chapter Nineteen: Females of the Species

Chapter Twenty: Matchless

Chapter Twenty-One: Pedes Fictilis

Chapter Twenty-Two: Oh Spite! oh Hell!

Chapter Twenty-Three: A World More Full of Weeping
To Tony, without whom very little would ever get done. With thanks and love.
ONE
Party Politics
T here comes a point in the life of a balloon when it has lost so much air that its taut, festive body becomes sagging, wrinkled and - well, frankly, sad. DCI Ron Carver s retirement party had reached that stage.
Slider cast an experienced look round the upstairs room of the White Horse and saw that the inevitable end was not far away. The young marrieds were eyeing their watches and wondering how soon they could leave. The young unmarrieds were eyeing each other and wondering how soon they could leave. The divorced and miserable were trying with increasing desperation to neck the equivalent of the gross national product of Belgium. A few career bunnies were holding the centre of the room and talking hard about Home Office initiatives and crime statistics. And a few old lags, Carver s bosom buddies, were making a lot of noise in the corner where Carver himself was getting determinedly bladdered.
Carver was a miserable bastard, who had raised resentment to an art form, and his leaving do was appropriately cheerless. The Osman Room - named with no apparent irony after some dreary character in a popular soap - had clearly been decorated by someone with terminal depression. There was a table with food - mini pork pies, scotch eggs, and the sort of sausage rolls that bend. There was drink - party kegs of beer, and a few grudging bottles of Australian shar donay for the wimmin : female police officers, and a boot-faced civilian clerk who had already done eight years hard as DS Benny Cook s mistress, with no hope of parole.
There was even a cake, a vast flat rectangle covered in rubbery fondant icing, decorated with Carver s name and two dates, as though it were his tombstone. Inside, Slider knew from sad experience, the cake would be a desiccated industrial sponge , sandwiched with a red substance in which even the most detailed DNA test would fail to find anything related to the raspberry.
It wasn t just that Carver was retiring. Because of the cuts every borough was having to make, his departure was being made the excuse to disband his firm. It was the end of an era, as someone was bound to say - as Borough Commander Dave Carpenter did actually say in a short, all-purpose speech delivered when he popped in . No one had expected him to find the time in his busy schedule. Slider couldn t decide whether it was a tribute to Carver s long service, or relief that he was going.
Carver belonged to the old-fashioned, Gene Hunt school of policing. Whatever it took to get chummy sent down, do it - just try not to leave marks. He d had many brushes with the internal complaints system, but thanks to his golf and Masonic connections he d always been snatched from the brink by some patron among the brass. But the times they were a-changing. When Slider and Carver had joined the Job, everyone, from the commissioner downwards, began the same way, out of Hendon and onto the beat to learn policing from the bottom up. It created a brotherhood. Now the brass parachuted in from the universities with degrees in sociology, and spreadsheets instead of blood in their veins. One could not imagine the likes of Commander Carpenter pulling Carver s chestnuts out of the fire. Carver had known when Carpenter s predecessor, Commander Wetherspoon (one of his greatest fans) got kicked upstairs that his time was running out.
You should grab the chance and go as well, he had told Slider at the beginning of the party, when he was still comparatively sober (his breath smelt of whisky, but he d started early with a bottle in his room). Don t be a mug. Get out while you ve still got some life in you.
And what are you going to do, Ron? Slider had asked.
Me? I m retiring, full stop. More time for golf and the missus, he d declared smugly.
Most of Slider s firm had left the party now, and there was a definite feeling of winding down. He d only stayed this long to see his own people safely off, and because Joanna was working, so home was not the irresistible attraction it might otherwise have been. But enough was enough. He drained the last of his flat beer and looked round for somewhere to deposit the plastic cup; and suddenly Carver was by his side.
You going? he demanded. Either he was swaying slightly or a tube train was passing under the building.
Just off, Ron. Lovely do. I wish you all the very best, Slider said.
Carver had reached the sad and frank stage of inebriation. It s a rotten party, he said, slurring slightly. End of a rotten career.
Oh, don t say that.
What ve they done to the Job, eh? Answer me that. Real coppers shat upon from a great height. Load o bloody ponces in the top jobs, never walked a beat in their lives. And now there s not even going to be any beat.
It was the latest pronouncement from on high: coppers were better employed in front of computers. Walking the beat never solved a crime. There would be no more of it. No more local bobby. No more evenin all. No more size twelves pounding the pavement.
It s the end of an era, Slider said, with more sincerity than Carpenter had managed.
You and me, we re old school. We know what s what. These bloody ponces, like Carp-Carpenter He stared at Slider, and veered off on a new tack. You should have got out while you had the chance. They ll be after your head now. You must have been bloody daft to go after Millichip. He won t forget it.
It wasn t just him. There are others.
He s the one that matters. Get him, you ve got the lot. They gotta protect him. What were you thinking? He was gonna hold his hands up just like that? Operation Neptune, my arse! My dimpled bloody arse! He s not going down, chum, you are. He s an assistant commissioner. You must have been off your chump, accusing him. And you got no evidence, that s what gets me, he went on peevishly. Nothing. One witness - a crackhead tart, say anything for a price. What made you think the CPS would wear it? You re fricking bonkers! But she won t testify - you mark my words. The fix has gone in.
Slider felt a slight chill down the back. Carver had contacts. What have you heard? he asked.
Carver didn t answer. His mind had wandered off, and he was surveying Slider with an expression usually reserved for things found on the bottom of a shoe. I never liked you, Slider, he pronounced.
And I never liked you, too, Ron, Slider answered warmly. It didn t matter what he said now - Carver wasn t listening.
You know what your trouble is? You never had any loyalty. It s us and them. Coppers and slags. That s it, in the Job. We stand together. But no, you thought you were better than the rest of us. Had all these fancy ideas about integ- He belched. -rity. Where s the bloody integrity letting some slag get off on a technicality? Rule number one, he said, poking a forefinger into Slider s chest. You never. Shop. One. Of. Your. Own.
The finger hurt. Slider gently redirected it. I ll try to remember that.
Going after Millichip, Carver said with a disgusted shake of the head. He may be brass, but he s one of us, when kick comes to shove. But that s you all over. No bloody loyalty. He swayed. Another abrupt change of tack. How s the wife? She not here tonight?
She s working, Slider said. She s doing a West End show.
Carver goggled at him in astonishment, trying to focus eyes and thought. Irene s in a musical ?
Joanna, Slider said patiently. I split up with Irene years ago.
I liked Irene, said Carver. Nice girl. Smart dresser. Not like my old cow. You know what I hate most in the world? In the