Blood And Honey by Graham Hurley Read Free Book Online Page A

that went with ten-mile runs and sensible drinking. Over the last couple of months, much to his alarm, Winter had got to know him well.
    ‘How’s it going?’ Jessop was catching up with Winter’s notes. ‘Still getting the headaches?’
    ‘Yeah.’ Winter nodded.
    ‘Any better?’
    ‘Worse.’ Winter’s fingers tracked a path across the tops of his eyebrows. ‘Here to here. A couple of times last week I thought I was going blind.’
    ‘
Blind?
’ Jessop at last looked up. ‘What do we mean by blind?’
    His use of the word ‘we’ irritated Winter intensely. It was bad enough explaining his troubles to someone half his age, worse when this eager young puppytreated him like a retard. He began to describe the last episode. He’d surfaced at seven with a pounding head, thrown up most of his breakfast within minutes, and spent most of a difficult morning trying to keep the rest down. Chasing teenage hooligans round the wastelands of Somerstown was challenging on a normal day. Trying to nail them through a rising curtain of brightly coloured bubbles was close to hallucinogenic.
    He did his best to describe the sensation. Jessop looked blank.
    ‘Bubbles? I’m not with you.’
    ‘Round jobs. You look hard at something – the pavement, the road, whatever – and all you get are these bubbles. They’re everywhere. They float up. Ever watched a goldfish in a tank? That’s me.’
    ‘And pain, you say?’
    ‘Yeah. Above the eyes, behind the eyes, all over.’
    ‘Can we be more specific?’
    ‘I just was. I take the tablets. I don’t cane the Scotch any more. I’ve even eased up on the telly. But it just gets worse.’ He leaned forward in the chair. ‘There’s another thing, too. I’ve got a memory problem. I keep forgetting things, the simplest things. In my game that can be tricky, believe me. You think it might be early Alzheimer’s?’
    ‘How old are you?’ Jessop’s eyes returned to the notes.
    ‘Forty-five.’
    ‘Then I very much doubt it.’ Jessop uncapped a fountain pen and scribbled himself a note. Then he reached for the PC keyboard and began to scroll through a list of names. Just the effort of concentration was enough to trigger the familiar drumbeat behind Winter’s eyes but he did his best to keep track. Jessopdouble-clicked on a Mr Frazer. A new window appeared. Frazer was a neurological consultant.
    ‘You’ll have to join a queue, I’m afraid. How much notice do you need for an appointment?’
    Winter thought of the logjam of jobs awaiting him back at the squad office. Lately, one or two of Cathy Lamb’s more ambitious operations had flushed out some of the city’s hard-core lunatics, especially in the drugs biz. Each of these stake-outs generated hours and hours of paperwork, and getting time off under this kind of pressure wouldn’t be easy, but the thought of what might lie beyond the bubbles was beginning to frighten him. Better to risk the wrath of his DI, he thought, than end up on the wrong end of a Labrador and a stick.
    ‘Couple of days,’ Winter grunted. ‘Just give me a bell.’
    Back outside the surgery, armed with a new prescription, Winter popped the last of his painkillers and crossed the road to his Subaru. At half eleven he’d agreed to meet Suttle at the Bridewell. They needed an hour or so with each of the young slappers from last night’s bust, formal interviews that could normally wait until Monday, but one of them was off skiing on Sunday night and had volunteered to come in early. He’d told Suttle on the phone that there was no need for him to attend – neither girl would be facing charges – but Suttle wasn’t having it. After the bust at Camber Court he’d suddenly developed a powerful interest in Operation
Plover
. Copping out of the interviews, he’d insisted, just wasn’t an option.
    Driving back into the city, Winter felt the tablets beginning to ease the pressure behind his eyes. The girl they’d be meeting this morning was the girl in