James Craig - The Enemy Within

Dom held up a hand. ‘Okay, okay. But for all that, you obviously don’t mind sleeping with the enemy.’

Grinning, she crawled back onto the bed. ‘I don’t think of it as sleeping with the enemy,’ she purred, slipping a hand under the covers.

‘No?’ He felt himself stiffen slightly.

‘No,’ she smiled. ‘You’re a worker, aren’t you?’

‘I suppose so,’ he gasped.

‘There you go.’ Her grin grew wider as she ran a thumbnail slowly along his shaft. ‘I see this less as sleeping with the enemy and more as building a broad-based alliance. . one man at a time.’

The door flew open with a bang. ‘Rise and shine you silly sod; it’s time to get up.’

‘I was awake.’ Rolling smartly off the bed, Carlyle got to his feet.

Stepping inside the cell, Charlie Ross handed the young constable a small metal mug, two-thirds filled with steaming black coffee.

‘Thanks.’

The sergeant inspected the mess that was his face and grunted. ‘What happened to the other guy?’

‘No idea,’ Carlyle replied, omitting to mention that he hadn’t managed to lay a finger on his attacker. He took a cautious sip of the coffee. It tasted disgusting but at least it was hot. Under the circumstances, that was more than good enough. ‘The bastard crept up behind me and smashed me in the face with a beer bottle.’

The look on Ross’s face may have been an expression of sympathy or of disgust; it was impossible to tell.

‘And then I got arrested!’ Carlyle whined. ‘Some stupid plod nicked me while I was bloody unconscious!’

‘Fucking idiot,’ the sergeant growled. ‘You’re lucky that Inspector Holt found out you were in here. Otherwise, you could have been up in front of the beak this morning before I’d even heard about it. That would have been your police career over before it had even started.’

‘Mm.’ Savouring his wretched coffee, Carlyle felt strangely ambivalent at the thought of a return to civilian life in double-quick time.

Frowning, Ross gazed at the dirty grey light struggling to make it through the cell window. ‘I don’t suppose you know where your partner in crime Mr Silver might be?’

Carlyle stared at his stockinged feet. ‘No.’

Ross gave him a hard stare. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes,’ Carlyle nodded, ‘dead sure.’

Charlie Ross took a half-step forward, like he was preparing to give the youngster a sharp clip round the ear. ‘Don’t fuck with me, laddie,’ he growled.

‘Honestly.’ Finding his Adidas Rod Lavers under the bed, Carlyle sat down, placed the coffee cup carefully on the floor and slipped them on. ‘He disappeared somewhere. I got ambushed by that wanker when I went looking for him.’

‘It looks like it was quite a mismatch,’ Ross chuckled.

‘He surprised me,’ Carlyle protested.

‘You’re a policeman, apparently,’ Ross observed loftily. ‘The idea is that you’re always too alert to let people sneak up on you. Even when you’re off duty. Especially when you’re off duty.’

‘What about the bloke that hit me?’ Carlyle asked, relieved that at least the sergeant didn’t seem that bothered about the fact that Dom and he had been AWOL at the time. ‘Did he get nicked too?’

‘Nope.’ Ross shook his head. ‘He was clearly far too clever to get caught. . unlike you.’

‘Ha!’

‘You’d better hope that you don’t bump into him again.’ Ross turned towards the door. ‘Finish your coffee. We need to get out of here. It might surprise you to know that I’ve got better things to do than babysit you all day.’

‘Yes, sergeant,’ Carlyle said meekly. Getting back to his feet, he watched as the fat duty sergeant from the night before slipped past the open door. A few moments later came the familiar sound of a key in a lock. He turned to face Ross. ‘Thanks for coming to bail me out, sergeant. I really appreciate it.’

‘Okay,’ Ross replied, seeming almost embarrassed by the expression of gratitude. ‘C’mon. Let’s go and see if we can find your mate.’

‘Okay.’ Stepping towards the door, Carlyle was stopped in his tracks by a piercing shriek.

What the-

Almost immediately, his thoughts were drowned out by the sound of an alarm going off.

The duty sergeant scampered back towards the front desk, bouncing along the wall as if his hair was on fire. ‘Call a bloody ambulance,’ he shouted to no one in particular, ‘quick!’

Pushing Carlyle out of the way, Ross slipped through the door and headed towards the noise of the alarm bell. Following him into the corridor, Carlyle saw the sergeant stop by an open cell, three doors down.

‘Fuck!’

Reluctantly, Carlyle went to take a look.

Ross stepped aside, to afford him a better view. ‘That’s the kid that killed Beatrice Slater.’

The kid that was accused of killing her, Carlyle thought. He looked at Ian Williamson’s feet dangling maybe an inch or so above the pool of urine that had spread across the floor.

Breathe.

Squeamish at the best of times, the young constable focused on retaining the contents of his stomach. Clamping his jaw shut, he slowly inhaled — one, two, three — and exhaled — one, two, three. The last thing he wanted to do was puke in front of the hard-as-nails superior.

The alarm suddenly shut off. There was the sound of shouting from down the corridor but no one came towards them. Once his guts were under control, Carlyle turned to face the sergeant. ‘Can you really kill yourself like that?’

‘Och aye, son.’ Ross gestured at the body hanging limply from the bars on the window by a length of torn bed sheet. ‘It takes a while, mind.’

‘Mm.’

‘Yes, indeed. It takes something like thirty seconds to a minute before you lose consciousness, five minutes ’til you’re brain dead, twenty before the heart stops beating.’

Despite the morning chill, Carlyle felt a bead of sweat trickle down his spine. He gestured back down the corridor. ‘Shouldn’t they have been checking on him?’

Charlie Ross shot him a sharp look that said, What kind of a stupid fucking question is that? ‘In the old days,’ he mused, ‘when we had the death penalty, they would let them drop, so that it was a case of breaking their neck. Strangulation is not really a nice way to go.’

‘No.’

‘But then again,’ Ross chuckled, ‘what is?’

They were shaken from their thoughts by the sound of an ambulance in the distance. ‘Shouldn’t we get him down?’ Carlyle asked as the siren came closer.

‘Fuck, no,’ said Ross, pushing him away from the door. ‘What we should do is get the fuck out of here, right now.’

How long would it be until it was her lying there on the slab? Five years? Ten? Now that she was getting older, Millicent Olyphant hated hospitals even more than ever the morgue especially. The cold made her shiver. The smell made her want to gag. It took all her willpower to remain in the room.

‘Okay, let’s get on with it.’ Gritting her teeth, the lawyer watched as the balding young man in the white coat pulled back the sheet. Looking up, the morgue technician gave her an enquiring look.

‘That’s him,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s Ian Williamson.’

Standing by her side, Inspector Rob Holt looked at his shoes. They needed a good polish. He would attend to that as soon as he got out of here. He tried — and failed — to invoke the smell of polish in his nostrils.

Impatient for him to say something, Millicent cleared her throat. ‘Are we done, inspector?’

‘Yes, indeed,’ Holt nodded. ‘Thank you for that. Ian’s parents are on their way, but at least you’ve saved them the ordeal of having to make a formal identification of the body.’