LITMIR.BIZ

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just wanted to say goodbye. That’s all.’

      The contours of his face softened a little. ‘Whatever you felt for Jason, you must’ve known it was a bad idea, with his wife and family there, with the press and all that shit.’

      Jason’s marriage had been a sham and most of the people there, including Kershaw, knew it. But there was no point arguing. ‘I told you, I didn’t think I’d be seen.’

      Kershaw narrowed his small, brown eyes and shook his head. ‘You just don’t bloody well care. That’s the problem.’

      He scraped back his chair a couple of feet away from the fire, which was burning well now, the flames leaping high up the chimney, and took out a dazzling white cotton handkerchief from his breast pocket and mopped his brow.

      ‘Are you alright?’ he asked, carefully refolding the handkerchief and tucking it back in his pocket.

      The question took her by surprise, as well as the note of concern in his voice. ‘About Jason, or the enquiry?’

      ‘I meant about Jason, but either will do.’

      ‘I’ll be OK. About Jason, that is.’

      He was looking at her searchingly and she saw confusion in his eyes. She ought to feel more, demonstrate more, but the perennial numbness was there. She couldn’t cry or grieve in the way he expected, although she felt a deep, gaping pit of guilt and she missed Jason more than she cared to think about.

      He leaned forwards towards her. ‘Are you having counselling?’

      ‘They gave me a number. But I don’t need it at the moment.’

      She could tell from his expression that she still wasn’t reacting the way he expected, but she wasn’t going to pretend. She didn’t need therapy. She had had enough of it to last her a lifetime, although Kershaw wasn’t to know. What was the point of examining and re-examining every detail, reliving each terrible moment, when all she wanted to do was to forget? Whatever the experts said, endless picking away at a wound prevented it from healing. There were better ways of dealing with grief and pain and guilt. She would manage on her own.

      ‘You sure about that?’

      ‘Really, I’ll be fine,’ she said firmly, hoping he would stop probing.

      He stared at her, then gave a curt nod in reply and sank back in his chair, eyes fixed gloomily on the fire.

      ‘Is there any news about the shooting?’ she asked after a moment. It was all that mattered.

      He picked a white thread off his suit trousers, examined it between his fingers, then dropped it onto the floor. ‘Nothing concrete yet. We found the weapon a few streets away. Ballistics have linked it to an on-going investigation in Hoxton with Eastern European connections. But that’s no surprise. We’ve had to release the girl who was with them in the flat. She doesn’t know anything. The chief suspect got clean away, along with two other men. We think they’re all part of the same Ukranian mob.’

      ‘What about Liam Betts?’

      ‘Nobody’s seen hide nor hair of him.’

      ‘He was never there.’

      He jerked his head around towards her. ‘Of course he bloody wasn’t. Your info was shit.’

      ‘It’s more than that. I think it was a set-up.’

      ‘Come again?’

      ‘Someone set me up. Someone deliberately planted the info that Betts was going to be at that house, knowing that I’d fall for it and walk into the middle of whatever was going on.’

      He frowned, as though it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. ‘Really? This what you’re going to say at the disciplinary hearing?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Unless you got proof, it’s not going to fly.’

      ‘I’ll get the proof.’

      He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t alter the fact that you went against orders trying to find Betts.’

      ‘But I’m sure Betts knows something about the Highbury shooting.’

      ‘And I told you to bloody well leave Betts alone.’ Kershaw’s voice carried across the room and a couple of people looked around.

      ‘That was to do with something completely different. As you know, I tried several times to get hold of you.’

      He glanced over at the bar, where a couple were having a heated discussion. His phone had been switched off for a quite a while. It wasn’t the first time that he had been unaccountably out of contact. The rumour was that he had a mistress, who he was seeing on a regular basis during office hours and after. If necessary, she would make sure it came out at the disciplinary hearing why she hadn’t been able to get hold of him. The Met had been her world for nearly fifteen years and she wasn’t going to let it go without a fight.

      ‘When I couldn’t find you,’ she said pointedly, ‘I asked Superintendent Johnson and he gave me the OK.’

      He looked back at her angrily. ‘He says he didn’t.’

      ‘He’s lying.’

      ‘Why would he do that?’

      ‘To cover his arse, like he always does.’

      ‘There’s nothing on record.’

      ‘There wasn’t time.’

      He took a small bottle of pills from his jacket pocket, swallowed a couple, and washed them down with the remains of the whisky, then he banged the glass down on the table in front of him.

      ‘You say Jason gave you the info, but you’ve no idea where he got it from, right?’

      ‘Yes, but I intend to find out. And whoever did it, needs to pay.’

      ‘You’ll do no such thing. You leave it alone. You’re in enough trouble as it is.’

      ‘So it doesn’t make any difference if I was set up? It certainly does to me.’

      He leaned forward towards her across the table. She could smell the whisky on his breath.

      ‘OK. Maybe someone wanted you to fuck up, or maybe they wanted to screw up the surveillance operation and they used you as bait, but it all sounds farfetched.’

      ‘Doesn’t mean it’s not possible.’

      ‘But you have no idea where the info came from, do you?’

      ‘No. Not yet.’

      ‘Look at it this way – the way the panel at your disciplinary hearing will look at it. You go off on a fool’s errand in search of an informant who’s officially off limits, who you’ve been told to leave alone—’

      ‘As I said, I tried several times to call you and I got clearance to go ahead …’

      He shook his head angrily. ‘You take with you a fellow officer, your subordinate, a married bloke, who—’

      ‘My relationship with Jason’s irrelevant.’

      He held up his huge hand. ‘Let me finish. I’m making no moral judgements here. Jason Scott was no saint, but you were his superior and it doesn’t help your PR. So, you take your sergeant with you and together you blunder into the midst of a major potential drugs bust. Two months’ worth of expensive surveillance down the toilet, chief suspect’s out the door and probably out of the country too, and your sergeant dead. And now I’ve got to take the flak from above.’

      ‘I wasn’t to know.’

      ‘Yes you bloody well were. As I said, you just don’t care. That’s your problem, and now it’s bloody well mine too.’ He glanced at his watch and stood up. ‘You have to put up your hand and take the blame.’ He stabbed the air with his index finger

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