Peter Robinson - Bad Boy

“Right,” he went on, as calmly as anything. “As I was saying. I found this letter in one of the drawers, and it turns out to be interesting, very interesting indeed.”

“What is it?” Tracy asked in a small voice. “Your name is Banks, right? Francesca Banks?”

“That’s right.”

“And your father is DCI Alan Banks of the North Yorkshire Police?”

“Yes. I mean-”

Jaff let the sheet of paper drop. “Your father’s a fucking cop, and you didn’t see fit to tell me?”

“It didn’t seem important. He’s not here, is he? What does it matter who he is, what he does?”

“What does it matter?” Jaff tapped the side of his head. “You lied to me, babe. Are you certain you’re not stupid? Because that’s not what I’m hearing from where I’m sitting.”

“There’s no need to be insulting. So, he’s a policeman. So what?”

“Not just a policeman. A DCI. That’s detective chief inspector.” He laughed. “I’ve been shagging a DCI’s daughter. I can’t believe it.”

“You don’t have to be so crude about it.”

“Make up your mind, babe. Are you an angel or a whore? On first impressions between the sheets, I’d definitely go for the latter, but you seem to talk a whole lot of rubbish about morals and duty, and me being insulting and crude. So just what exactly are you?”

“How would you notice what I do or don’t do between the sheets, as you so crudely put it? All you’re interested in is your own pleasure. I might as well be an inflatable doll for all you care.”

“You’ve got about as much enthusiasm as an inflatable doll. Isn’t that what it’s all about? Fucking? You take your pleasure where and when you can.”

“Oh, you’re a marvel, Jaff, you are. A philosopher, too.”

Jaff pointed at her. “Shut up, bitch. I’m warning you. I don’t like sarcasm.”

Tracy glared at him. “Anyway. what does it matter if my dad’s a DCI?” she repeated.

“It matters because when a copper’s involved they pull out all the stops, that’s why. They stick together. It matters because it makes everything ten times harder. You’re a copper’s daughter. There’s nothing he won’t do to get you back. Nothing. This is personal for him, and he’s got the whole bloody country’s police force on his side. Get it? We’re seriously outnumbered.”

“What do you mean, get me back? From where? From who? I can just walk out of here anytime I want, can’t I?”

“Get real. Things have changed. As you said, we’re in this together, and nobody’s going off anywhere without the other until it all gets sorted.”

Tracy felt a chill and a tightening in her chest. So it was true: in his eyes, she was a prisoner now, a hostage. Or a burden. “I told you. He’s on holiday. He won’t be back till Monday. How could he come looking for us? He’s got no idea what’s going on.”

“But he soon will have when he gets back. Or he’ll hear about what’s happened from his mates and come back early. He could be on his way now.”

“No, he won’t be. He doesn’t care about me that much.”

“Just shut up and let me think.”

“Look,” said Tracy, as calmly as she could manage. “Why don’t I just go? Really. I’ll go back to Leeds right now, as if none of this ever happened. I can get a bus to Eastvale from the village. You can drive on down to London in Vic’s car, get your passport and finances sorted and disappear. It’ll be all over and done with before my dad gets back from holiday. He needn’t know a thing.” The words sounded hollow and desperate to her even as she spoke them.

“Now it’s you who must think I’m stupid,” said Jaff. “Why?”

“Do you think I’m going to let you just walk out of here and tell the cops everything you know?”

“I won’t tell them anything. I don’t even know anything. Remember? You haven’t told me anything.”

“You know about the coke, the money and the gun. That’s enough.”

“But you’ll be even worse off with me as a traveling companion. You can hardly take me with you, can you? I’ll only slow you down. Just let me walk away now, Jaff. Please.”

Then Tracy saw the look on his face and froze.

“Well,” Jaff said. “It seems to me that gives me just two options. Either I don’t let you out of my sight for a second from now on, or…”

And Tracy went cold to the marrow of her bones when she realized exactly what the second option was.

THIS IS NAOMI WORTHING,” SAID DETECTIVE SUPERINTENDENT Gervaise to the Serious Crimes team assembled in the boardroom late that afternoon. “She’s come up from Birmingham to tell us all about the gun we sent down. Many thanks for the quick work, Naomi.”

Naomi smiled at Gervaise. “Not a problem,” she said. “We got a lucky break.” She was a plump middle-aged woman with graying hair and a benevolent manner, hardly what Annie would have expected in a ballistics expert. She seemed more like Miss Marple than a member of the CSI cast. Her audience was small-only Gervaise, Annie, Winsome, Harry Potter and Geraldine Masterson, who was new to Major Crimes and dead keen to make a good impression.

“I’m not going to bore you with all the technical details,” Naomi began, “but basically we’re dealing with a 9-mm Smith and Wesson automatic, or, more correctly, semiautomatic. This particular model dates from the mid-eighties. It has a four-inch barrel, a sixteen round capacity, and it weighs just under two pounds unloaded. Any questions so far?”

“Isn’t Smith and Wesson an American company?” asked Annie.

“Yes. The pistol in question was manufactured in the USA,” replied Naomi. “Which perhaps makes it a little rarer around these parts than a Czech or a Russian model. I mean, you wouldn’t find one for sale in the local pub. And, of course, a Smith and Wesson would cost you a lot more money.”

“Are they readily available over here?”

“On and off. Though they’re certainly not as common at street level as the Eastern European models I mentioned. Look, if I can perhaps make a guess at where you’re going with this, Detective…?”

“Cabbot. DI Annie Cabbot.”

“Yes, well, I wouldn’t let the fact that this pistol is American in origin influence your search for its owner and user. The odds are that it has been floating around the UK since the nineties, if not before. It’s a very popular, simple and practical piece of equipment, and ammunition for it isn’t hard to come by.”

“Did you say ‘user,’ Naomi?” Gervaise asked.

Naomi turned to her. “Yes. That’s what I was about to get to. The reason I came up here, rather than simply filing a written report. Not that a trip to Eastvale isn’t always a pleasant prospect.”

“Do tell,” said Gervaise.

Naomi helped herself to coffee, added milk and sugar and opened her file folder. “There were two rounds missing from the magazine. Bullets and casings. That’s often the case with automatics, as you probably know. They eject the casing after firing. A clever criminal picks up his spent casings and disposes of them, but sometimes people are careless, or in a hurry, and leave them lying around.”

“Any idea when the shots were fired?” Annie asked.

Naomi shook her head. “We can’t ascertain when they were fired by examining the pistol,” she said. “Only that they were fired from that magazine.”

“But perhaps even from a different gun?”

“It’s possible, I suppose, but unlikely. Unfortunately, as I said, we don’t have the spent casings, so we can’t check them against the firing pin to make sure. Unless someone’s trying to pull a very elaborate trick, though, I would say there’s no reason to doubt that the bullets were fired from this pistol.”