The Moor (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #11)(22)

What did she know?

They began to look at Charlie with fresh eyes. Their leader, the man they trusted, was under suspicion from more than one quarter and they started to wonder if there was a grain of truth in it.

While they watched him, O’Neill went about his business the same as before. He felt their eyes boring into the side of his face, like hot irons searing into his skull.

And while they thought of him, he thought of Esme.

Esme.

What Samantha had done enraged him, the betrayal slicing like a knife. What had prompted her to forget all she’d ever learned, to flout every rule, and seek out the pigs?

What did she know?





CHAPTER 12


“Are you hungry?”

In the large, open-plan office belonging to the men and women of CID, Lowerson looked up from his desk for long enough to shake his head at Yates.

“Nah, I wolfed down a cheese sandwich earlier,” he said, distractedly. “You go ahead.”

“Um, okay. I was thinking about having a drink after work, since it’s…Monday,” she finished, lamely. “Want to join me?”

“I’m doing Dry June,” he replied. “No alcohol for the whole month, I’m afraid.”

She pulled a face and wondered why she liked this man. He was an uptight, conservative, vegetarian teetotaller, who wore shiny suits and too much hair gel. She also strongly suspected he whitened his teeth on the regular.

Nothing like Ryan, who probably laughed in the face of hair gel.

He was married, as Samantha had so charmingly reminded her, and therefore strictly ‘Out of Bounds’. Not that he’d ever look twice at another woman; a fact that became glaringly obvious when one was introduced to his lovely wife.

She studied Jack over the top of her desktop monitor.

He might be all those things, but Jack was also kind, loyal, intelligent—and she admired his aptitude for the job. He was universally liked by small animals and children, and they were the most discerning of all.

“I thought it was Dry January?” she said.

“Yeah, I forgot—so I’m doing it in June, instead.”

Melanie Yates rolled her eyes. At times like these, she wished she had a sister or even a mother she could talk to; some kindly person to offer helpful snippets of advice and a friendly ear while she vented her frustration.

As if the Universe had heard her plea, MacKenzie walked into the room.

“Catch anything big?” she asked, sliding into one of the desk chairs beside them.

Not yet, Yates thought.

“Working on it now,” she murmured.

“Yeah, we caught one this morning,” Lowerson chimed in, oblivious to any subtext. “White male, maybe mid-forties or thereabouts, looks like a gangland kill. We’ve transferred the body over to the pathologist and Faulkner’s team are analysing the samples now, so we can check if he’s already on our system.”

“No identifying markers?” MacKenzie surmised.

“None,” Lowerson said. “His face was completely caved in and they took all of his clothing, too.”

“Sounds like a professional hit,” MacKenzie remarked.

“Yeah. We’ll keep digging and hope for a stroke of luck. You’re the SIO on this one, so just let us know how you want to play things.”

MacKenzie considered the young man sitting in front of her. Jack Lowerson had been through more during his time with Northumbria CID than many of his more senior colleagues, and he had the scars to prove it. Still, he couldn’t command his own investigations until he was promoted up the ladder, something that relied upon being able to demonstrate what the pencil-pushers liked to call, ‘real life examples’, which he couldn’t do unless his commanding officer gave him enough freedom to acquire them. Years ago, when she was finding it hard to break through the barriers, Ryan had gone out of his way to provide her with the opportunities that enabled her to be promoted.

Now, it was time she thought about doing the same.

“How about it, Jack? The rules won’t allow you to be appointed as the Senior Investigating Officer in a murder investigation, but how about Acting SIO? All of the other seniors are busy, including myself, so it seems a reasonable use of resources,” she said. “Report to me at the end of each day and I’ll stay on hand, if you need to run anything past me.”

Lowerson sat up straight in his chair.

“I’m not ready,” he said automatically.

“You’ve been ready for a while,” she argued. “It’s time for the next step, wouldn’t you say?”

Lowerson looked towards Yates, as if for divine intervention.

“Don’t look at me,” she laughed, holding both hands up. “I think you’d do a great job. Just don’t expect me to call you ‘Guv’, any time soon.”

His face fell.

“How about ‘boss’?”

“Keep dreaming.”

MacKenzie leaned back in her chair, watching the pair of them with an indulgent, almost maternal expression. She glanced at the white, standard-issue plastic clock on the wall, which told her it was just after four o’clock, past the end of their shift.

“Why don’t you two go and celebrate the temporary promotion?” she suggested, with a sly wink for Yates. “That’s reason enough to fall off the wagon for an hour or two, wouldn’t you say?”