Authors: Phil Rickman
‘You’re lying. You can’t get up …’
Dear God, for a few minutes it had felt real good, putting it all together, talking it all out. You could forget … She moved a hand lightly over Bobby’s face, feeling the bumps of dried blood.
‘Those bastards,’ she sobbed. ‘They’re like some private secret police force.’
‘That’s what they are,’ he said. ‘They are a private police force run by an ex-senior policeman who knows exactly how far he can go.’
‘This is Britain!’
She felt him smile.
‘Doesn’t even have to be very secret any more. Several security companies are operating close to the edge. Riggs is quite bitter. He liked being a policeman.’
‘He hires out a Forcefield team to Seward?’
‘No, to Campbell. It’s probably a hand-picked unit consisting of those particular employees he knows are open to a sub-contract, under the table –
that’s
from Seward. Riggs also gets a rake-off. Or favours in kind, I don’t know.’
‘So, like the Forcefield guy Seward brought over to Mysleton …’
‘Seward
?’
‘It was Seward with the dead guy. He came himself, didn’t I say? I forgot what I told you and what I told Cindy. Bobby, why would he do that? Why would he come himself, with all that money?’
‘Because he loves it,’ Bobby said. ‘He needs that old thrill.’
‘Jesus. What an unbelievable monster.’
‘Or maybe just a sad old bugger,’ Bobby said wearily. ‘On reflection, though, I do think you carved up the wrong man.’
‘Did you see him? Did you see Seward?’
‘No. They just kicked me about a bit, tossed me in the back of a van, bag over the head, like you. I’d guess this came from Riggs, rather than Seward. He saw me … or somebody else saw me. Some of them will be disenchanted ex-coppers.’
‘Bobby, do you wanna try and stand up?’
‘I think I’ll just lie here for a while,’ Bobby said. ‘If that’s OK.’
Incredibly, Grayle slept.
Incredibly, she had a warm, fuzzy dream in which they were at home in the cottage in St Mary’s, with a big log fire, the flames reflected by the crystals and the paste gems in the poodle collar around the neck of Anubis, the tame Egyptian god of the dead.
And this metamorphosed into a lucid kind of dream – a dream of what she knew was a near-death experience. Not the awful kind
which Bobby had, but the traditional light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel kind. The one where you didn’t want to go back.
It was wonderful, and when she awoke she awoke into light.
‘Both of you,’ the Forcefield voice said. ‘Get away from each other. Stand up.’
THE RENOVATION OF OVERCROSS CASTLE WAS LIKE A HALF-FINISHED
portrait, Cindy thought, the central features blocked in and coloured, the rest little more than a scribble. On the first-floor landing, the paint faded off with the lighting, into greyness, shadows and dust-cloth ghosts.
Vera indicated to Cindy the alcove concealing Room Three, then pointed up at her stiff Victorian waitress’s cap and down towards the kitchens to signify she would be needed soon to serve dinner to the visiting nobs. From below, Cindy could hear the sounds of polite laughter, clinking glasses.
When Vera was gone, he moved quietly into the alcove – quietly because the door was ajar and there were voices from within.
A problem. He needed to see Persephone Callard alone.
But, in the end, he didn’t.
Standing in the shadow of the alcove, becoming still as a monolith, his breathing as light as a bird’s, he heard,
‘… even have to stay the night. I’ll have a car waiting. We’ll get you out of here before midnight, I swear.’
Kurt Campbell. In a state.
‘… can’t believe it,’ Miss Callard saying. ‘Can’t believe you or anybody could be so utterly, insanely …’
‘Look … yes … all right … call me naï—’
‘
Naïve?
It’s not the word, is it, Kurt?’
‘Greedy. Power-hungry. Hey, call me what you fucking like, I’m at
the stage I don’t really care. All I’m saying … if you finish this you’ll never hear from me again, you’ll never hear from Seward and you’ll never … be troubled by …’
‘Him?’
‘You can unload it. Now you know what it’s about, you can unload it just like …’
‘Oh, it’s so easy, Kurt, isn’t it?’
‘I’ll help you.’
‘Think I’ve rather had enough of your help. I just … the utter fucking
duplicity
…’
Kurt collecting himself into his voice, the mesmerist’s velvet purr.
‘Seffi, you can’t possibly imagine how quickly this happens. You meet on live, late-night telly, you’re both high on it, he says why don’t we go on to a club … and then another club and you’re with all these cool, dangerous people, and you’re pissed and you’re telling him your life story and your ambitions, and you think …’
‘What a great guy. Yah, I’ve been there, Kurt. I was there when I was seventeen.’
‘Yeah, well, when
I
was seventeen I was a sad kid at tech college doing a correspondence course on hypnotism at night and working bloody hard at it, so call it delayed adolescence, but … he was just taking me over!’
‘You’re a bloody hypnotist and he’s taking
you
over?’
‘Things just happening, Seffi, like by magic. Obstacles getting moved, difficult people no longer difficult. Contracts, money, meetings, parties – and that’s how you get drawn in, it’s like drugs. And then one day you realize some of the things he’s been doing for you are monumentally illegal – people getting bought, threatened, beaten up and …’
‘And what?’
‘And worse.’
An indrawing of breath by Miss Callard.
‘And it’s when you realize innocent people are getting … damaged to boost your career and get you into his pocket or to satisfy his warped sense of natural justice. Look, there’s a story in his book – he’s been very clever, he’s changed the names and the circumstances so it can’t be traced back, but it’s essentially true – and it’s
about a man he’s called Billy Spindler, a grass, who they fitted up for rape by actually
having a woman raped.
By Clarence Judge himself, I suspect. And he’s done worse than that. People … OK, people’ve died, innocent people, but that’s never how he sees it. If somebody gets hurt they usually deserve it because they’re not as innocent as they look, or they’re stupid … or they’re just there to serve a higher purpose, which is
Gary’s
purpose. He’s a psychopath, Seffi, remorse is an abstract concept to Gary. You’ve just got to help get him off my back before another innocent …’
Cindy thought,
Billy Spindler?
The name was set in ice, what it represented.
‘Kurt, if we do it, as planned, in a large public room, in front of the Mayor of bloody Malvern and Lord Ledbury and whoever, I’ll go with that. Squalid, back-room stuff, you can forget.’
‘You don’t know this guy, Seffi.’
‘I know
you,
and I know you’re full of shit.’
Billy Spindler,
Cindy thought.
The expendability of innocent but stupid people.
‘He’s lost it. It’s gone well beyond obsession. We have all kinds of rules now, set up because of signs and omens. Like it has to be tonight because this is the day when Crole and Abblow did what they did. And it has to be in exactly the same place. And there have to be the right number of people and there has to be …
please,
Seffi. You have to trust me.’
Behind Cindy there was a sudden fusilade of clipped, impatient footsteps. He took a breath, prepared to escape into the spectral netherland of dust sheets and abandoned paint cans.
Too late. He emerged from the alcove facing the woman identified to him as Francine Burnell-Brown, Kurt Campbell’s PA and graceful toehold in society. Looking furious; she’d been left on her own to entertain minor aristocracy, tedious dignitaries and the local press, while the famous Kurt bargained and wheedled and lied through his white, white smile.
‘Who the hell …?’
‘Sssh.’ Cindy brought a finger to his lips, assumed Imelda’s tone. ‘It’s a delicate moment. Give them a few minutes.’
‘What’s going
on
?’
‘Two minutes, my dear.’ Cindy took Francine by the shoulders
and pushed her firmly into the passage and then walked calmly down the stairs, through the entrance hall and out into the night.
What Maiden obviously hadn’t shared with Grayle was the implication of the Forcefield men operating quite openly, their faces now on show under the old fluorescent strip light in the passageway.
This
was the death sentence.
His stomach hurt when he walked. Also when he breathed. He saw the concern in Grayle’s eyes and was moved almost to tears. He’d discovered that he cried easily since his death. Not very policemanlike. Would disgust Norman Plod.
They stopped outside a fat oak door. ‘Hands, please,’ the Forcefield man smiled thinly, ‘boss.’
‘Oh, bugger.’ Maiden recognized slim, narrow-eyed, felt-pen moustached DC Ballantyne, stationed briefly at Elham about four years ago. Ballantyne handcuffed him, hands behind. They weren’t police issue cuffs, more like sex shop, but they worked.
‘It’s Matthew, isn’t it?’ Maiden said.
‘It’s sir to you, you fucker,’ said Ballantyne.
‘What’s the pay like,’ Maiden said, ‘sir?’
Ballantyne looked into his eyes. ‘Ever had your legs kicked from under you when you’re cuffed? Scary.’
Grayle was watching, concern for Maiden giving way to blank fear for them both, as she was cuffed, too. By the bearded guy who’d worked Maiden over behind the Portaloos. The cuffs looked like medieval manacles above Grayle’s small hands.
‘Actually, this particular assignment’, Ballantyne lowered his voice, ‘is a farce. But the money …’ he winked ‘… the money’s great.’
The oak door opened and a man slipped out, closing it behind him. He wore an evening suit: white jacket, with one of those Sixties-style bow ties that fitted under the collar making an inverted V. It was almost an anticlimax to discover who he was.
Older than the pictures; they always were. More wizened, corruption lodged in every line that the camera lenses had blurred. Bags under the eyes, but the eyes were shrewd and bright and merry and cold as a mortuary.
‘Bobby Maiden!’ Both hands gripping Maiden’s shoulders. ‘Heard a lot about you, cock.’
‘From my old boss, that would be?’
‘You signed out a short while back, yeah? How long was it? Three minutes?’
‘Four.’
‘Fucking amazing.’ The eyes never blinked. ‘Where you get to, Bobby?’
‘Wherever it was, Gary, I was glad to get back.’
‘You must be an immature soul, my son. But no matter … you was there … you was over the fence. It’s the experience what counts, know wha’ mean?’ He turned away from Maiden. ‘And Grayle … Underwood.’
‘Hill,’ Grayle said. ‘Under
hill.
I believe we, uh … met.’
‘Nice of you to remember the occasion, Grayle. You also remember what I said to you that night?’
‘I guess.’
‘Don’t guess, darlin’,’ he said breezily. ‘Tell me.’
‘You are dead,’ Grayle said tonelessly.
‘Good girl.’ Gary Seward put out a hand, held Grayle’s chin gently between thumb and forefinger. She didn’t move her head, but Maiden saw her swallow. ‘Heat of the moment, sweetheart.’ Seward let go of Grayle’s chin. ‘Heat of the moment.’
Maiden saw former DC Ballantyne smirking in delight at this dear old underworld character from a lost era, as if this was cabaret. He wondered if Ballantyne knew what Seward had done to his colleague, Jeffrey Crewe. He wondered what Seward had told Riggs about the incident.
‘But having said that, Grayle, it’s incredible how things what comes out in the heat of the moment do turn out to be quite prophetic. I believe in all that stuff.’ Seward swivelled, spreading his hands. ‘I mean, let’s be frank about this, a short time from now, the two of you will have died three times between you.’
The fluorescent tube in the ceiling zizzed and popped along with the famous monotone laugh.
‘I mean, you know, how else is it supposed to end? What else can I do, the position you put me in? It’s your own fault, innit?’
Grayle looked at him, frozen-faced, her skin blue-white under the
strip light, her hair tangled on her shoulders. Maiden wondered desperately how he could get her out of this. Being nice to Seward didn’t seem an option.
‘I mean this is an omen, yeah? The two of you here: a young lady what was recently told she was dead and a geezer who
was
dead.’
‘Mmm,’ Maiden said, ‘that is really uncanny.’
‘What can I tell you? You’re gonna die. You
are
gonna die. We all die. Your time has been brought forward, that’s all. How I always look at it. Bringing forward the inevitable. That’s all it is.’
‘I never thought of that before,’ Maiden said tonelessly. ‘That’s amazingly profound.’
Gary Seward tucked a fast fist into Maiden’s undefended stomach.
‘That the spot, Bobby?’
Maiden retched, folded in agony.
‘You scumball!’
Grayle screamed. ‘You knew he was hurt!’
‘But I digress,’ Maiden heard Seward say, across the pain. ‘What I was about to say is, by the time you check out I hope we’ll all know more about the actual business of death and what follows. The reality. You ever meet Clarence Judge, Bobby?’ Seward bent to him. ‘Eh?’
Maiden shook his head.
‘We can fix that.’ He turned and pushed open the oak door, stepped back. ‘Go through, would you, please?’
Ballantyne and his colleague blocked the passage in each direction. Ballantyne signalled Maiden into the room.
Where Maiden saw what he expected to see. A richly carpeted area with a red sofa and five chairs around a table. A little bit of Cheltenham.
What he didn’t expect to see, in one of the chairs, was Ron Foxworth.
THE TABLE WAS OF CREAMY, POLISHED YEW, THE SEATING AROUND IT
an inelegant mixture: two straight-backed wooden dining chairs, three red brocaded Edwardian fireside chairs. In one of which sat Foxworth.
He barely glanced at Maiden. He still wore his old black anorak with the rally stripes. He looked slightly absurd in this opulently furnished cellar.
But then the island of opulence itself looked absurd. All around, it was still a cellar. The walls had been patched up with cement. A strip light buzzed and flickered near the top of a wall. A dusty unlit bulb dangled from a brown Bakelite rose in the centre of the low, grey ceiling.
It was this hanging bulb, more than anything, which made it look less like a filmset than a display hurriedly flung together in a furniture warehouse.
‘He holds this very much against you, Bobby.’ Seward tilted his head to peer at Foxworth as though he was a child in a pram. ‘Don’t you, Ronny?’
Maiden saw that Foxworth was also handcuffed but with his hands in front. He saw a tall, expensive Chinese vase on a table pushed against the furthest wall. On either side of it, two oil heaters faintly smoking below a jacket on a hanger on a hook in the wall.
‘All this talk of the Festival of the Spirit, you really whetted Ron’s
appetite, Bobby. Thinkin’ about you and me and how we all fitted into the picture. Had to come over and check it out, didn’t you, Ronny?’ Seward smiled at Foxworth and then at Maiden. ‘It’s his obsessive personality.’
Ron Foxworth didn’t speak. Ballantyne directed Grayle and Maiden into the red chairs on either side of Ron.
‘Course Ron sticks out a bit. Not very New Age. Not like you, Bobby, by all accounts. Now, you tell me – what was I supposed to do? It’s one of those moments, one of those signs. Detective Superintendent Ronald Foxworth visits the Festival of the Spirit. Life’s too short to ignore it. You know you got to react quick or you miss it. So … soon as we established he was on his tod, we had him. Lifted him clean, banged him up.’
Ron cleared his throat, didn’t look up. Maiden thought he’d never seen a man look so destroyed.
‘Surprised?’ Gary Seward slid into a wooden chair, crossed his legs, did his one-tone laugh. ‘Very surprised indeed, wasn’t you, Ronald? I mean, it don’t happen, do it? A senior officer, a distinguished detective? Should have heard the bluster, Bobby.
You really done it this time, Seward.
Big, powerful detective, this. Spent half his life trying to pull Gary Seward. Now I’ve pulled him. Exquisite. But it goes deeper, don’t it, Ron?’
Foxworth looked up. His eyes were pale and bloodshot. He didn’t look at anybody, his focus point seemed to be in a haze about eighteen inches from his face. But, at some stage since he was lifted, Ron had learned about the consequences of failing to answer direct questions.
‘Gary thinks I was once uncivil to Clarence Judge.’
‘Masterly understatement, Ron. What happened was … there was a siege situation yeah? Late Seventies, Ron? Seventy-nine, eighty, around then. Clarence, I think he done a post office for pocket money or alimony, some minor cash-flow thing. Course, Ron looks at Clarence, sees Gary Seward, know wha’ mean? Obsessive. Goes in mob-handed, SAS-style. Absolute overreaction, utterly uncalled for. Poor Clarence thinks he’s for the jump, killed trying to escape, some’ing like that. Thinks he’s fighting for his life. Well you would, wouldn’t you?’
Ron rallied. ‘He had a copper’s ear between his teeth. DS Earnshaw. Took four men to tear his bloody face away. Had half the
ear in his mouth and if they hadn’t made him cough it up he’d have eaten it.’
Seward ignored him. ‘So, back at the station, what does Ron do but invite three of DS Earnshaw’s colleagues to pay their respects to Clarence in his cell.’
‘He was smashing up his cell,’ Ron said to his chest. ‘He was also in danger of injuring himself. Judge had no pain threshold.’
Seward half-turned, pointed the finger. ‘You, Ron, are a lying toerag. What are you?’
Maiden closed his eyes.
Don’t make him say it.
‘Nah,’ Seward said. ‘He knows what he is. He humiliated Clarence that day. He stood and watched while those pigs hurt my poor friend in all the places what didn’t show. But, worst of all, they hurt his pride, and that’s the severest thing you can do to a man like Clarence, and it cannot be tolerated long term. I says, leave it, Clarence, don’t do
nothing.
‘Cause he never had no finesse, see, the poor love. You leave it, I says. But one day I will see to Ron for you, I promise. And Gary Seward keeps his promises, and this is that day and Clarence is going to be here to see it. Matthew …?’
Ballantyne closed the oak door.
Oh God, Maiden thought.
‘Let’s make ourselves comfortable.’ Seward bent down the side of his chair, came up nursing black metal. ‘We’re gonna get cosy. There will be no resistance, otherwise the inevitable gets brought forward, know wha’ mean?’
Shotgun. Sawn-off. Maiden estimated that if Seward let that thing off in here he could kill one of them, maim the others with a single shot.
‘Stand up, Miss Underwood.’
Seward ambled over, placed the twin barrels against Grayle’s temple.
‘Oh
God.’ Her voice was like a startled bird taking flight from a branch. Maiden began to breathe hard.
‘You too, Ron, Bobby. Up. Now, what we do, we close our eyes and we keep the fuckers closed.’
‘I can’t,’ Grayle said.
‘Oh, you can, darlin’. Just consider the alternatives.’
‘Oh God. Oh God.’
‘Thank you.’
Maiden stared into the blackness, telling himself that if Seward was going to execute them he wouldn’t use a sawn-off shotgun.
Would he?
A fumbling behind him. For a moment his hands were free. His heart leapt, his body tensed, he wanted to lash out, go for it.
‘Stay still, cock!’ Seward, hard-voiced. ‘No resistance.’
Maiden’s right hand hung by his side. His left was jerked up. Handcuffs snapped.
‘You can all open your eyes now,’ Seward said.
Maiden opened his into a grotto-like gloom. The strip light was off, the cellar was now feebly lit by the hanging bulb. Seward was hunched on the hard chair, he and the shotgun fused into the same bulky shadow.
‘And you can leave us now, lads,’ he said to Ballantyne and his mate. ‘Go and find Kurt. Tell him I want that toffee-nosed bitch down here asap.’
A tug on the left wrist told Maiden he was handcuffed to Ron Foxworth. He saw that Ron was handcuffed on the other side to Grayle.
Foxworth glared angrily at Maiden. ‘You know why else I came down here, you tosser?’ Like them being bound at the wrist had unblocked him. ‘Because a lad called Scott Ferris was telling us how a bloke with copper’s ID was asking after Justin Sharpe. Described you to a T.’
‘You had me in the frame for Justin?’
‘I had you in the frame for a lying bastard. Had you in the frame for pissing up my leg.’
‘Ron, I tried to call you …’
‘Stop bleedin’ whingeing, Ron,’ Seward said. ‘I never took to you, you know that? You was always such a miserable git.’
Maiden said, ‘Why the chain gang, Gary?’
‘It’s a circle, Bobby. Or it will be. Put your hands on the table, palms down, little fingers touching. It’s incomplete, but that’ll be rectified.’
‘It’s a seance,’ Grayle said softly. ‘He wants to hold a seance.’
‘Give the little girl a coconut,’ Seward said.
Cindy stopped at the edge of the parapet and looked back at the golden light in the tall, Gothic windows, and didn’t know how he
was going to get back into the house now. Little Grayle was in there alone. He had to find Bobby.
He hurried down into the festival site, lit up below him like a fairground, strings of coloured bulbs between the bare trees. The punters were thinning out, drifting away. Soon the stalls would close, the stallholders returning to their hotels and guesthouses in Great Malvern, some to their camper-vans on a site near the road.
There was an arc of applause from the main marquee, where a writer on alien abduction was concluding her lecture. Or was it the demonstration of pendulum dowsing?
While, inside Overcross Castle … two spiritualist gatherings: the mock seance in the banqueting hall, some actor-magician performing the stunts of Daniel Dunglas-Home, as he would tomorrow and the rest of the week for paying audiences. And, somewhere in the heart of the house, the secret ceremony over which Persephone Callard was being pressed to preside – to preserve foolish Kurt from the wrath of the vicious Seward. Poor Kurt, who lived in such fear of this man. Awakening one morning with the horrific realization that he was in partnership with a still-active dangerous criminal.
Crap.
Kurt was a liar. He was very deeply into this. He needed Persephone Callard here as much as Seward did but, because she would have knowledge of at least one murder, he would be obliged to build up Seward as the dangerously unbalanced instigator.
As he hurried through the lights, Cindy became aware of a few people staring at him, pointing. His blond wig was gone, his glasses were gone. And even New Age followers watched television.
By the time he reached
The Vision
stall, it was more than just a few people. He remembered the jokes with Vera about a tabloid reward.
‘It’ll all end in tears, you mark my words!’ a man yelled, and there was laughter. Images battered Cindy: the car siege in Malvern Link, the jeering, the taunts, the anger, Marcus slumped under a lamp post.
‘Please! Leave me alone!’ he yelled helplessly.
Bobby, Bobby, where are you?
Flinging himself into the tent, where he stood gasping, appalled at his loss of control. But he couldn’t cope with this now. Let them all tear each other to pieces in the race to the phone, to be the first to finger the fugitive Cindy Mars-Lewis and claim their blood money.
‘Well, well,’ a woman said dryly. ‘I thought it was, all along.’
‘What are you doing here?’
It was the woman from the next tent, the etheric masseuse, Lorna something.
‘Lorna Crane.’ She was standing, hands on trim hips, under the photos of High Knoll, spotlit now. ‘And what I am doing here, Mr Cindy Mars-Lewis, is helping you out. I’ve sold a hundred and three copies of
The Vision,
between clients. Also seven subscriptions. And taken the addresses of two women who would like to correspond privately with Marcus Bacton. One left a photo of herself. Taken fifteen years ago, if I’m any judge. Money’s in a cashbox under my treatment couch, it’s all quite safe.’
‘Thank you,’ Cindy said, bemused. ‘It’s very good of you. We must … pay you.’
‘Nah,’ Lorna said. She shouted at the small crowd gathering outside. ‘Piss off, eh? He’ll be out later.’ She grinned. ‘Must be amazing, having fans, being adored.’
‘I fear you misunderstand. They want to tear me apart. The bogeyman, I am now. Baron Samedi. Kali the Destroyer.’
‘What
are
you on about?’ Lorna took from the sleeve of her multihued jumper a sizeable spliff and a book of matches. She got the spliff going, inhaled joyously, offered it to Cindy, who declined. ‘Don’t need this stuff, I suppose, when you’re a shaman. That all true, Cindy? The Celtic shaman bit?’
‘I never have denied an interest,’ Cindy said cautiously. ‘Excuse me just a moment.’ He pushed into the tiny rear compartment, where Grayle had left the small case containing her dress for the seance. Flipped open the case. The clothing was still there, neatly folded. Cindy went cold.
‘She hasn’t been back. She hasn’t been
back.
’
Lorna stood and eyed him blearily through the smoke.
‘That guy, the photographer,
he
came back.’
‘When?’
‘I dunno. Two, three hours ago. I haven’t got a watch. Maybe longer. Yeah, it was light. He come in and had a cuppa, then some guy was shouting for him and he pissed off.’
‘And you haven’t seen him since? What about the girl?’
‘Nah. Nobody else. I tell you, though, his aura looked like shit.’
‘Bobby?’
‘I told him to go and sleep it off and not talk to anybody.’
‘Lorna, have you
any
idea where he—?’
Cindy froze over the case. A man had entered the tent behind Lorna.
Blue-black uniform, with silver epaulettes. Cap with black, shiny peak.
He said, ‘In here, Gavin. We got her.’
Suddenly it was real eerie.
The bulb was low wattage, you could look hard at it, see its filament, how spidery and frail it was. Like in the early days of electricity, when technology was a small glow in a big fog. When spiritualism was born.
And Seward, all light and shadow in his evening suit, looked out of that era, too. She was recalling him now from the TV talkshow in the States.
Dave! How are ya mate? ‘Ere … brought yer some’ing
…
Get these dahn yer … jellied eels. You’ll never go back to pizza again, mate.
Leaning back in his chair now, the shotgun on his knee. He couldn’t let that thing off in here; the honoured guests would hear it booming like an earth tremor under their feet.
Sure. And think it was just another sound-effect, courtesy of Mr Daniel Dunglas-Home and the first age of spiritualism.
Oh Jesus.
Oh Jesus, I never gave you too much respect, you were never enough fun and I only prayed to you when I was in real deep shit, but please, please …
Her wrist, cuffed to the fat, hairy wrist of the big detective, Foxworth, was beginning to ache. Only way she could move it would be to pull his hand down onto her lap. Maybe not.
How long? How long were they gonna sit here, the four of them? Waiting for the
toffee-nosed bitch.
Just pray she never came. Pray she called the cops instead.
Bobby said casually, ‘So who did kill Justin Sharpe, Gary?’
Foxworth’s shoulder jerked, dragging the handcuffs, hurting Grayle.
‘Oh,
that
prat,’ Seward said. ‘Well, he deserved it, didn’t he? He was a pain in the arse. Little big man. Bloody nuisance.’
Bobby said, ‘He gave you Grayle’s name?’
‘Did he? Yeah, could be we had it from him.’