Page 32 of Mystic Justice
‘I know. I won’t let him get you again.’
‘I stay with Pigdog,’ he said firmly.
‘For as long as you like.’
He did a strut. ‘With Pringles?’
I laughed. ‘Sure. We still have a good half of the tube to get through.’
He gave another happy hop. I put my phone away and chatted with him until my yawns were coming more frequently than my words. ‘Bed,’ Loki said firmly. ‘Sleep.’
‘Yeah. I’m tired.’ And tomorrow would be another long day. We had a second body to dig into and I had to hope we’d catch a break. If we didn’t, I had a feeling we’d be looking at corpse number three very soon.
Chapter Sixteen
Detective Superintendent (DSU) Thackeray summoned me and Channing to the station for 9am sharp. Though that meant I’d only had a handful of hours sleep, I was feeling much better. Loki was still sleeping, so I left him on his perch with some ham and water for when he awoke, and I left the window ajar so he could come and join me when he fancied. However he did it, he never had any problem finding me.
I texted Krieg to let him know that Channing and I were starting the day at the station and I’d tell him when he could join us in the field.
Thackeray wanted Channing and I to join the others for parading on, so we pulled on our duty belts, secured our collapsible batons – the PR-60 – and checked our radios. Out of sheer stubbornness, I still carried my PNB. You never knew when tech would let you down but paper and pens rarely failed, and I always carried spare pens in case the ink ran out.
We joined the others for the briefing pack; it was being carried out by intelligence officers and the current focus was an increase in knife crime. Operation Sceptre, a national programmedesigned to reduce weapons-related crime, was being pushed hard that week. Amnesty bins had been placed around Chester as well as inside the police station. All locations were confirmed in the briefing and they were all in areas with excellent CCTV coverage.
For the next week anyone could throw their weapons into the amnesty bins, no questions asked. An increased police presence on the streets would be required in case any wiseacres decided to steal the bins rather than give up their weapons, so extra shifts were doled out.
No one complained. We were His Majesty’s servants and working-hours regulations didn’t apply to us; we worked the hours needed to keep the MOPs safe. That was the job we’d all signed up to do – even ifmyMOPs were centaurs, dryads and witches.
The briefing packs were always different; sometimes they highlighted local issues, other times they focused on areas of national concern like a terrorist incident or a threat that was being monitored.
To my surprise, Channing and I weren’t the only cross-over staff there: Inspector Elvira Garcia and Inspector Gordon Bland had been summoned, too. There were so few Inspectors that it was rare for us to work on the same patch at the same time and, with the exception of Liverpool, three of us together in one place was virtually unheard of.
After the briefing, Thackeray summoned us to his office. I took a moment to dart into the toilets to freshen up and my admin assistant, Laura, walked out of a stall as I walked in. Today she was wearing a white blouse with a maroon choker that matched her maroon pencil skirt and nails. When she offered me a tremulous smile, I immediately noted her red eyes. ‘You okay?’ I asked.
Laura gestured to her mousy brown hair loose around her face. Her bottom lip trembled. ‘I tried to do a French braid but I can’t get it right. I know it’s a stupid thing to get upset about.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s just … my mum never taught me how.’
‘You want me to do it?’ I offered.
She closed her eyes. ‘Would you?’
‘Sure. Crouch down a little.’
Laura was taller than me, so she scooted down and I set to work. ‘Did your mum teach you?’ she asked as I gathered strands of hair to weave together.
‘A bit, but I was terrible at pulling her hair when I tried to practise on her. She bought me one of those hairdressing mannequin’s heads so I could practise on someone who wasn’t her.’
Laura smiled. ‘Hard to imagine you being into hair.’
‘I was much younger then,’ I said vaguely. ‘I prefer to keep it short now.’ Long hair reminded me of being hauled back by my ponytail, being shoved into a van. ‘All done,’ I said as I tied up the plait with the bobble she offered.
‘Thanks so much.’
‘Any time. I might be able to dig up that hairdresser’s head, if you want. It’s probably still at Mum’s.’
‘I’d love that. Thank you.’
‘Sure. I’d better crack on. I’m due in Thackeray’s.’
‘Me too. I’ll see you in there.’
