by Chris Simms
‘Anything else for the wash before I put this lot in?’ she asked.
‘No, thanks.’ He slumped down in his battered armchair and glanced across at his wife. She was barefoot, in baggy tracksuit bottoms with one of his old rugby shirts hanging down to her thighs. Blonde hair had been messily secured with a large brown clip on the top of her head. She lifted a pair of his black combat work trousers and checked the side pockets.
‘Why have you got this?’
‘Got what?’
She scrutinised the small piece of rectangular card. ‘Alicia Lloyd. Head of Operations. Why is her business card in your pocket?’
That’s what happened to it, Jon thought, groaning inwardly. ‘She kind of stuck it in there.’
Alice flipped it over in her hand. ‘Oh yeah? That’s a bit irregular, isn’t it?’
‘It was, actually.’
She looked at him properly. ‘Why did she do it, then?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘She wasn’t making a pass at you, was she?’
He wasn’t sure how to answer that.
‘Jon?’
He saw Alicia in his head; the offer of a bath and a brandy up in her hotel suite. She made a bit more of a pass, he thought. ‘She may have been. It was all a bit weird, to be honest.’
Alice left the card on the arm of the sofa to resume her sorting. But her lips were now tight and her fingers moved spikily.
Jon sighed. ‘You’re not upset, are you?’
She rested her hands in her lap. ‘Look at me.’ She plucked at her track suit bottoms, then caught sight of her toes and wiggled them. ‘Look at the state of my nails. Varnish flaking off them like ... like scales off a stranded fish.’
‘Stranded fish?’ He laughed. ‘Where did you get that from?’
‘You know what I mean. I bet Alicia Lloyd’s toes don’t look like dead trout.’
‘Dead trout?’
‘A high-powered businesswoman like her? No bloody chance. Probably gets them manicured every other week, the bitch.’
Still smiling, he shook his head. ‘I know she was entitled and arrogant and had all the charm of a dead fish. I know that much.’ He got to his feet, plucked the business card from the arm of the sofa, hooked open the door of the wood-burner and tossed it onto the glowing embers. ‘Ali, I’ll take the battered toenails and baggy clothes any day, believe me.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
She smiled before lifting a pair of his threadbare boxer shorts up. ‘Well, I won’t: look at the state of these! Get yourself down to Marks and Spencer’s, it’s like being married to Worzel Gummidge.’
‘Cheers, babe.’
‘My pleasure.’ She straightened out a tiny Thomas the Tank Engine sock. ‘Still can’t believe what Pinner did. What is it with people?’
He eased himself back into his seat, thinking of how his senior officer had left him dangling in the wind over entering the Town Hall alone. ‘It’s how he got to be a DCI. Plus, I think the mayor was sticking his oar in; I definitely wasn’t his cup of tea.’
‘Still no acknowledgement that you saved his granddaughter?’
‘Ali, there’ll never be an acknowledgement of that. And I didn’t save his daughter, did I?’
She untangled the legs of a pair of Holly’s tights. ‘He’s still a twat.’
‘It’s fine. Rick got in touch the other day.’
‘Rick Saville?’
‘The one and only. He knows what actually went on in the last few hours of the investigation.’
‘I bloody love Rick. What did he say?’
‘He’s in line for a promotion. They’re having a shuffle round, now DCI Parks is moving up the food chain. He said once things have settled over there to give him a ring.’
‘Moving back to the MIT? Your old stomping ground?’
‘Yup.’
‘Working with Rick again?’
‘Working under Rick, more like.’
Her eyes shone. ‘Jon! Imagine that: Rick as your boss and not some slimy prick. Would you go?’
‘I don’t know. I’d have to ask Iona – we’re kind of a team, as much as you can be with the silo system they operate in the CTU.’
‘But you’ve never really liked it there, have you?’
Jon considered the shiny new building, the latest equipment and generous amounts of civilian support. Then he considered half the people who worked there. ‘Not really.’
Alice went back to her sifting. ‘Rick. Trust him to come to your rescue.’
‘Greg Scott agreed to things, too. I spoke to Senior just before.’
‘Your idea for him to become the groundsman at Cheadle Ironsides?’
‘Well, part groundsman, part general odd-job man. But he’ll live in that little flat that’s joined to the clubhouse. I can’t see any scrotes trying to break in if they know someone’s actually living on site.’
‘That’s brilliant. Him and Senior will get along fine.’
‘Oh, yes.’ His mind went to the chat he’d had with Greg. They’d sat in the Burger King and he’d admitted that, for a while, he’d suspected the ex-soldier of being the Dark Angel.
‘Thing is, Greg,’ he’d mumbled. ‘Would I have been so quick to think it if, say, you’d been living in a nice house, driving a car, going to and from an office each day? I think you being homeless made me biased and that really guts me.’
Greg smiled sadly. ‘Hardly surprising. It was me with Wayne the night he was murdered.’
Jon hesitated a moment. ‘And this woman who was out begging; she said you used to two-up with Luke McClennan.’
Greg looked genuinely shocked. ‘Luke? About twice. Any young lads who’d been in the army, if they needed help, I’d give it. Any of them.’
You, Jon thought, are a Guardian Angel, not the Dark Angel.
‘Talking of young lads,’ Greg continued, ‘I rang my son the other day. Nine years, Jon, since we spoke. He’s not so young anymore.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Yeah, we’re going to meet. Not sure when. But at least we’re talking again.’ He paused a second. ‘I could never face it before. Not when, you know, I was living on the street. But now I’ll be in that flat.’
‘It’s great you rang him.’
‘Best thing of all, Jon.’ He raised a forefinger. ‘Doesn’t matter who’s in it, however big or small, never forget your family, mate. Never.’
Jon let his gaze drift in the direction of his wife. He thought about his two kids, fast asleep above him. Then he regarded his dog, stretched out on the floor. I am, he said to himself, so bloody lucky. He leaned back in his battered armchair and reached for the TV remote. ‘Shall we see what’s on the telly?’
She wrinkled her nose before sending him a wary glance. ‘Not if it’s one of your boring history documentaries.’
He feigned outrage. ‘Cheers, babe.’
‘My pleasure.’
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Enjoyed meeting DC Iona Khan? Read Scratch Deeper, the first book to feature her.
In this fast-moving thriller, Iona Khan – a young female detective with Manchester police – receives a tip-off about a coming terror attack.
With a major political conference about to take place, she must move quickly if multiple fatalities are to be prevented.
Normally, the city’s state-of-the-art CCTV network would be used to covertly monitor the bomb plotters’ movements. But in this case, the tactic proves futile: the gang have found a way to strike from beneath the ground …
‘Up there with the likes of Michael Connelly. It’s a must read.’ (Amazon R
eader Review)
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Look out for the rest of the Spicer series – coming soon to Amazon!
Killing the Beasts (Spicer series, book one)
Shifting Skin (Spicer series, book two)
Savage Moon (Spicer series, book three)
Hell’s Fire (Spicer series, book four)
The Edge (Spicer series, book five)
Cut Adrift (Spicer series, book six)
Sleeping Dogs (Spicer series, book seven)
Death Games (Spicer series, book eight)
Dark Angel (Spicer series, book nine)
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Dark Angel
Copyright © 2021 Chris Simms
This Kindle edition copyright © 2021 Chris Simms
The right of Chris Simms to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
About the author
Along with several nominations for the Crime Writers’ Association Daggers (for his novels and short stories) and the Theakston’s Crime Novel of the Year award, Chris was selected by Waterstone’s as one of their ‘25 Authors For The Future’. He continues to feverishly scribble away from a small hut in his garden.
Learn more about Chris at www.chrissimms.info.
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