LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘Well, come on, darling. I ain’t got all night,’ Sofrides challenged her, seeing her hesitation. He moved up beside her, taking out the syringe and thrusting it into her hand. ‘Shoot up and get out, before I change my mind.’

      Glynis stared at the syringe in horrified fascination. Her face was a mixture of desperation, fear and bewilderment. She glanced up at Sofrides, her eyes almost pleading.

      His lips curled into a scornful sneer as he identified her problem. ‘You little silver-plated spoon-sniffers. You’ve never shot up before, have you?’

      Glynis could only nod.

      ‘Here, I’ll show you,’ Sofrides said. He clenched his fist, pumping his forearm up and down half a dozen times. He pointed to his slightly throbbing vein. ‘Just there, see? Just stick the needle in and push the plunger. That’s all there is to it.’

      Awkwardly, Glynis copied his movements, holding the syringe clumsily in a trembling hand, almost at arm’s length. Fumbling and shaky, she pushed the gleaming point of the needle towards her arm.

      Sofrides looked away, letting out a little snort of disgust. ‘Oh Christ! Go in the bloody bathroom and do it, will you?’

      Still unsure, Glynis slunk into the poky bathroom and closed the door behind her. Sofrides threw himself back on the bed, propped himself up with a pillow and lit a cigarette. He plumed smoke up at the ceiling, grinning. He felt very pleased with himself.

      The cigarette had burned down to a stub before he thought about the girl again. After crushing it out in the ashtray he pushed himself off the bed and strode to the bathroom door, rapping on it with the back of his hand. ‘What the hell are you doing in there?’ he demanded irritably. There was no answer.

      He tried the door handle. It was unlocked. Sofrides pushed the door open to find Glynis sitting stiffly on the toilet, her head lolling back against the pipe from the cistern. The empty hypodermic dangled loosely from her fingers at arm’s length. Her face was ghostly white, her eyes wide and staring and her body twitching convulsively and obscenely.

      Sofrides looked at her without sympathy. ‘Feel rough, huh? Don’t worry. A couple of minutes and you’ll be high as a kite.’ He reached down to seize her by the elbow, and hauled her roughly to her feet. The empty syringe dropped from her fingers, shattering on the tiled floor.

      ‘Come on, I want you out of here,’ Sofrides told the girl curtly, as he tried to drag her out of the bathroom.

      Glynis took a couple of shuffling steps and stopped, her legs sagging beneath her. She would have collapsed to the floor but for the dealer’s grip on her arm. He pushed her back against the bathroom wall, propping her up. There was the first trace of concern on his face as he noted her wildly rolling eyes, the tremors which rocked her body and the shallowness of her breathing. Even as he watched, Glynis seemed to be torn by a convulsion of pain which caused her body to jackknife and made her clutch at her abdomen with her free hand. She let out one long, shuddering groan and went limp, before sliding down the wall to sit on the floor like a puppet whose strings have just been cut.

      ‘Oh shit!’ Sofrides spat out in anger – but it was fear that registered on his face. He dropped to his knees, staring into the girl’s wide, but unseeing eyes. They were completely still now, and her body was totally motionless. Panic rising in him, Sofrides snatched up her wrist, feeling for the faintest hint of a pulse. There was nothing.

      Sofrides pushed himself to his feet and stood there shaking for a few seconds, his brain racing. He turned towards the telephone, thinking briefly about calling an ambulance but rejecting the idea almost immediately. The girl’s face was already puffy and showing signs of bruising where he had struck her. He remembered the bite marks he had put in the soft flesh of her breasts during their brief sexual encounter. With his criminal record, reporting the girl’s death was tantamount to placing himself on a manslaughter charge at the very least.

      He tried to think, as he paced round the small bedsitter several times, trying not to look at the girl’s lifeless form slumped just inside the bathroom door. He crossed to the room’s single window and stared out into the dark and deserted street.

      There was only one choice, he realized finally. Somehow, he had to get the girl’s body into his car without being seen. After that it would be easy. London had hundreds of backstreets and alleyways where the body of a drug addict, drunk or vagrant turned up every so often. With nothing to connect the girl to him, she would be just another statistic.

      His mind made up, as quietly as he could Sofrides began to drag Glynis’s body towards the door.

      Paul Carney tidied up the paperwork on his desk and switched off the Anglepoise lamp. Rising, he crossed to the door and switched off the main light, plunging his office into darkness. Locking the door, he strode across the deserted main office towards the outer reception area.

      The desk sergeant looked up at him, grinning, as he walked past. ‘Barbados for our hols this year, is it, Mr Carney? Or a world cruise, with all this overtime you’ve been putting in?’

      Carney smiled at the man wearily. ‘Oh yeah, at least,’ he muttered. ‘Goodnight, Sergeant.’

      The man nodded. ‘Goodnight, sir.’

      Carney walked out into the night air, taking a deep breath before heading for the rear car park. On reaching his Ford Sierra, he climbed in and drove slowly to the main gates. He was exhausted, yet in no hurry to get home. Or at least back to the Islington flat, Carney reminded himself, thinking about it. It had ceased to be a home when Linda had walked out, over six months earlier. She’d even taken the dog.

      The roads were almost deserted. Carney cruised past the rows of darkened office buildings for a couple of miles before turning off into the residential back-streets around Canonbury. He passed a small row of shops, some with their windows still lit or showing dim security lights in their rear storage areas.

      The grey Volvo took him by surprise, shooting out from a small side road only yards ahead of him. Carney stamped on the brakes instinctively, allowing the car to complete its left turn and accelerate away from him with a squeal of rubber on tarmac.

      Crazy bastard, Carney thought, reacting as a fellow road-user. Then the copper in him took over, asking the obvious question. What could be so damned urgent, at four-thirty in the morning? He stamped down on the accelerator, making it his business to find out.

      Carney caught up with the Volvo at the next set of traffic lights. He pulled across the vehicle’s front wing and leapt out of his own car. He wrenched the driver’s side door of the Volvo open.

      ‘All right, you bloody moron. What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’ he growled, before he had even seen who was sitting at the wheel. There was a long, thoughtful pause as he recognized the driver.

      ‘Well, well, well,’ Carney said slowly. ‘If it isn’t Tony the Greek. And what particular form of nastiness are you up to tonight, you little scumbag?’

      Sofrides looked up at him with a fearful expression, cursing the cruel vagaries of fate which had thrown Detective Sergeant Paul Carney across his path this night of all nights. They’d had run-ins before – almost every one of them to his cost.

      ‘I ain’t done nothing, honest, Mr Carney,’ Sofrides whined, desperately trying to bluff it out.

      Carney grinned cynically. ‘You don’t have to do anything, Tony. Just being in the vicinity constitutes major environmental pollution.’ He held the door back, jerking his head. ‘Out.’

      Reluctantly, Sofrides climbed out of the car, still protesting his innocence. ‘I’m clean, Mr Carney – honest.’

      Carney shook his head. ‘You wouldn’t be clean if you bathed in bleach and gargled with insecticide,’ he grunted. He paused, staring at the young man thoughtfully. There was something wrong, something out of character. Sofrides was not displaying his usual arrogance. He looked frightened, guilty.

      ‘What’s wrong with you tonight,

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