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

thephotos. Just the mention of her name – Maddox – had been enough to get the young detective out of bed, and Winter began to guess what colour shirt he’d be wearing by the time he made it down to the Bridewell. Suttle by name, he thought. Suttle by nature.
    At the Bridewell Winter checked in with the Duty Sergeant and retired to one of the empty interview rooms with a cup of coffee. By the time Jimmy Suttle appeared, he was deep in the first of the statements they’d taken last night.
    Singer, one of the city’s higher-profile solicitors, had been winding up the likes of Willard and Cathy Lamb for years. He specialised in representing the city’s more successful criminals and had made a small fortune from a series of cleverly argued acquittals. It was common knowledge that he cut every judicial corner in the book to return his clients to a life of crime and with his success had come a belief that he was somehow immune from the attentions of the detectives he openly mocked in – and out of – court. Last night, to Winter’s deep satisfaction, that immunity had come to an end – and what made Singer’s arrest even sweeter was the prospect of celebrating this trophy pull with Cathy Lamb.
    Like most DIs she’d seen absolutely no sense in wasting precious time and effort in pursuit of the errant middle classes. These were people who had plenty of money and would never dream of house-breaking or thieving from vehicles to fund their recreational foibles. In that sense their drug use – though obviously illegal – was close to a victimless crime and at first she’d flatly refused to sanction Winter’s plans for the Old Portsmouth stake-out. Winter, though, had already acquired a client list from the Portsea girl who did Richardson’s cleaning, andmention of Singer’s name had won Cathy’s grudging approval of last night’s bust. News of the solicitor’s appearance before the Bridewell Custody Sergeant, to Winter’s certain knowledge, would be round the force in hours.
    Not that Singer was going down without a fight. In last night’s interview he’d admitted the possession of a couple of wraps of cocaine but denied using sexual services offered by Richardson at Flat 10, Camber Court. The latter, he’d pointed out, was not indictable under the Sexual Offences Act and in any case the visit he’d paid to Old Portsmouth had been purely social. Steve Richardson was an old friend and – as it happened – a bloody good cook. They’d enjoyed a meal together, had a drink or two, then he’d pushed off home.
    Asked to explain the cocaine, he said he’d bought it from a dealer whom he wasn’t prepared to name, but denied it was Richardson. Challenged with the credit card slip for eight hundred pounds retrieved from the stash Richardson kept on a hook in the kitchen, Singer said it was a personal debt. Richardson had bought a painting on his behalf and he was simply paying him back. As Suttle had pointed out last night, this fiction was strictly for the sake of his missus. A coke head in the marital bed she could probably deal with. Her husband blowing the housekeeping on some bint half her age, she probably couldn’t.
    Suttle had settled himself across the table in the interview room. The shirt, to Winter’s amusement, was salmon pink.
    ‘What about the other guy. The one in bed with Maddox. Monster, wasn’t he?’
    Winter could only agree. The punter’s name wasMaurice Wishart. Last night he’d given a Port Solent address, a third-floor apartment with marina views, and said he headed up a rapidly expanding company in the defence business. Visibly irritated by what had happened to his evening, he’d consented to a personal search. When nothing had surfaced in the way of narcotics, he’d laughed in Winter’s face and then tossed him his car keys and told him to help himself.
    His blue Jaguar had been parked in the courtyard below. Again, nothing. Back upstairs, Winter had found him on the sofa in the