A Bleeding of Innocents

by Jo Bannister

  She’d been here a week. Together they’d solved two cases involving six deaths – seven counting Mary Swann. In one way she’d hardly had time to think where she was, what she was doing, where it might lead, where she wanted it to lead. In another, all the years she hadn’t been working with Frank Shapiro seemed to have dissolved to nothing.

  She had a good job where she was. She had prospects. She wasn’t sure if DI at Castlemere amounted to progress. But already she knew she wanted it. She wanted to work in the real world again, not just with computer files and other police. She wanted the immediacy, the direct evidence of making a difference that came with hands-on detecting. She wanted to work with Shapiro. She could even get used to the idea of working with Donovan.

  ‘Frank, I don’t know. I can’t say, not off the top of my head like this. Can I think about it? See what room I have for manoeuvre?’

  For a moment Shapiro’s tired, amiable smile was framed in the car’s open door. ‘Of course. Take all the time you need. Talk to Brian. Talk to Headquarters. Then do what’s best for you.’ Then he straightened and turned, and she watched his back in Harris tweed trudge up Marion Clarke’s garden path.

  Copyright

  First published in 1993 by Macmillan

  This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com/bello

  ISBN 978-1-4472-3628-3 EPUB

  ISBN 978-1-4472-3627-6 POD

  Copyright © Jo Bannister, 1993

  The right of Jo Bannister to be identified as the

  author of this work has been asserted in accordance

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