LOST SOULS - Neil White

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you for murder.’

      Sam was shocked. He could tell from the look in Laura McGanity’s eyes that she was too. That was good. It meant that Egan had acted off the cuff. It meant that there wasn’t any evidence against King yet. The custody clock would tick away, and it would put pressure on the police. This was a high-profile arrest, and Dermot Egan had made it without any evidence.

      If they had done nothing, Egan could have watched Luke at leisure, covertly. Now he had shown his hand, moved too quickly.

      Luke looked the calmest of all of them, almost serene.

      Sam stood to one side as Egan cautioned Luke, giving him the usual ‘right to remain silent’ bull. You can say nothing, but if you do, the prosecution will use it against you. Didn’t seem like much of a right to Sam.

      As Luke was led away, Sam looked down at his hands. Killer’s hands. Then he looked at Luke’s face.

      Luke was smiling.

      I moved away from the door of the police station. Laura had kept her back to me, but I could tell that Luke King had been arrested.

      And I knew that Laura was dealing with the murder investigation. I smiled to myself. Now that Jimmy King’s son had been arrested, the story had just got better.

      As I walked back towards the court, I saw Terry McKay again. He was sitting on the court steps, receiving a green bottle from one of the others swaying near him. He barely looked up as I stood over him.

      ‘Where does King live?’ I asked.

      His eyes focused on me slowly. He shut one eye as if the sun had blinded him, but it was almost certainly the sherry that had made his pupils sluggish.

      ‘Who wants to know?’

      I grinned at him. ‘I do.’

      He looked me up and down, and then laughed to himself. His friends stepped back and looked at me strangely, as if I was from another world. And I suppose I was in a way. They lived their lives in a haze as they stumbled from one bottle to the next, never really taking part in society. They regarded me as an intruder, a reminder of the life they had stopped living when the drink took full hold.

      He waved me away and lifted the bottle to his mouth.

      I thought our dialogue had ended, and I had turned to walk away, when he slurred at me, ‘Some big fucking house past Whitwell. On the road to fucking nowhere.’

      I reached into my pocket and floated a twenty down. I had a sense that we might speak again, so it seemed like dialogue in the bank.

      ‘Get drunk on some decent stuff,’ I said. ‘No more of that shit.’

      Terry didn’t look at me. Neither did any of his friends. They were looking at the note, and it was as if all they could see was their next bottle floating towards the pavement.

       Chapter Twelve

      ‘How did Egan handle the interview?’

      Laura turned to look at Pete. It was the first thing he had said since they’d left the station.

      They were heading out to Luke King’s house, where he lived with his parents in a palatial new-build many miles from Blackley They were heading north and were driving along single-track country lanes, over pack-horse bridges, twisting between long hedgerows, the fields dotted by trees and painted in that brighter green which seemed so much more like summer, broken only by the white dots of sheep.

      ‘Egan was like I expected,’ said Laura.

      Pete laughed. ‘Like an arsehole then.’

      Laura looked out of the window and smiled. ‘Your words, not mine.’

      ‘Any hissy fits from the defence?’

      Laura thought back to the interview. It had been like a long fight, starting from when Egan tried to get the defence lawyer to sit in a corner, well away from his client. From then on the defence hadn’t co-operated. It was a tricky balance, Laura knew that, the need to throw the defence off-kilter, to try and get a confession, but without turning it into bullying. If it went too far, the confession could be kept away from the jury. Murderers had walked free because of that.

      ‘One or two,’ she said. ‘Maybe when Egan gets one of his confessions thrown out of court, he’ll do things differently.’

      Laura turned to look out of the side window. She had taken a gamble in coming up to the King house. The interview with Luke King had ended when a superintendent interrupted and asked to discuss tactics with Egan. Laura had guessed from Egan’s face that someone with influence had placed a call, that the tactics were more about getting King out than keeping him in.

      For all the things about Egan she didn’t like, Laura thought he was right to be suspicious about Luke King. And arresting him would get DNA samples from him, from his hair, his fingernails. Anything else was best to look for while he was still locked up. This was a murder investigation, and Jess Goldie deserved more than favours called in from the golf-club bar. Maybe the inside of the car had blood smeared on the steering wheel or on the seat, or his clothes contained traces of her blood or hair.

      Laura had needed Egan’s consent to search the house, and he was the only inspector she was prepared to ask. He had nodded quickly, hoping that she would find something to justify his decision to make the arrest. Laura had been ready to go on her own, but she sensed that it would be a no-loser for Pete: he would either play a part in Egan’s downfall or he would find something useful. Either way, he would get to raise a glass.

      ‘How was Egan with you?’ Pete asked, back to his favourite subject.

      ‘Familiar,’ she said, but she sensed that Pete guessed it anyway.

      ‘That’d be about right,’ he replied, still staring straight ahead. ‘He tries it on with everyone, especially new meat like you.’

      ‘You know how to make a girl feel special,’ she said jokingly, but Pete didn’t laugh.

      Laura watched him for a while as he just stared straight ahead. ‘What’s the thing between you two?’ she asked.

      Pete didn’t react at first, and Laura started to wonder whether he had heard her, but then he sighed and replied, ‘We started as cops at the same time. I ended up on the Support Unit before he did, so by the time he arrived I’d learned a few tricks of the trade.’

      Laura raised her eyebrows at that. She knew about the Support Unit. In jumpsuits and boots, they patrolled Saturday nights, looking to split up fights. Or maybe prolong them. The ‘distraction strike’ was their favourite technique, where an officer under threat could strike the attacker hard, the distraction of the pain making time for an arrest. Best delivered as a hard punch to the nose, it suited those who liked a ruck. As Laura looked at Pete, she guessed that he had fitted in well in the Support Unit.

      ‘Did you have the van door rule?’ she asked.

      He tilted his head, and then started to smile. ‘So they had it in London too?’

      Laura looked forward again. ‘I’ve heard of it.’ And she had seen it in action, the rule that if the back doors of the van had to open, the cops didn’t leave the scene until someone was in the van with them, for the handcuffed ride back to the station with plenty of hard braking. The spread of CCTV had stopped much of the fun for the Support Unit, but until they put cameras in the vans, most people would still arrive at the station on the van floor, the victim of one too many emergency stops.

      ‘What did Egan do that upset you so much?’

      ‘He didn’t like our methods, so he reported them, and then backed a prisoner up on a complaint.’ Pete glanced at Laura. ‘Maybe he was right, I don’t know, but why didn’t he tell us first?’

      ‘What

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