Bright Spark by Gavin Smith Read Free Book Online

but
apparently I’m alright. 
    “One
brief lock in later, Keith staggers home to see Dale’s house on fire. Give him
his due, he tries to get in but can’t and gets himself instant sunburn. He was
most disappointed to learn of Dale’s absence from the household.”
    A
cool breeze swept through the car, a taste of rain and wet grass, a memory of
hope. Above their heads, the black night was diffusing into blue dawn, the
horizon rimmed with ochre and pink that would learn to blaze in white and
gold.    
    “Start
the car. I think better when you’re driving.”
    Slowey
brought the car back to hacking and spluttering life and reversed out of the
cul-de-sac. Harkness found he was looking into his own eyes, and didn’t care
for the spectacle: bloodshot eyes barely open, skin a livid red with black
loops and smears where he’d wiped away sweat, crescents of stubble where his
eyebrows should be. He gripped the rear view mirror, tried to turn it back
towards Slowey and found it floating free in his hand.
    “Don’t
worry about it,” said Slowey. “I’ve got two others. Don’t use it much anyway.” 
    “So.
Murphy,” said Harkness, flicking the cigarette stub from his fingers to flicker
through the air and bounce and roll along the tarmac where its trapped heat
would slowly fade and wink out.  He turned the rear view mirror over in his
hands, looking for a way to reattach it and seeing only shapes that didn’t seem
to fit together.
    “Burning
down his own home with the kids still there? When he still lives there himself?
Don’t know. He was pissed up and he hasn’t turned up. Yes, we need to lay hands
on him.”
    “And
the mysterious stranger from the Friars Vaults?” Harkness reattached the mirror
with a satisfying clunk, then noticed it was facing oncoming traffic.
    “A
personal grudge against Murphy? Don’t suppose we can ignore that possibility.
Look, I’ll sort the mirror out later. At least it’s attached again. Please
stop.”
    Harkness
released the mirror, thinking that if Slowey were to mow someone down, they
would at least be distracted in their terminal seconds by their own bewildered
face looking back at them.
    “Right,
here’s the plan.” Harkness slapped his palms together, making Slowey jump and
veer across the centre line. “Drop me off at the ranch. I’m going to apprise
the top brass and waste time on the computer when I should be out pounding the
streets. You are going to knock up the landlord of the Friars Vaults and find
me a mysterious stranger.”  

CHAPTER TWO
     
     
    Divisional
Headquarters on Beaumont Fee won an architectural award once. The evidence
still lingered, a framed certificate nailed to a wall in a caretaker’s cupboard
somewhere, its ink as faded as the decade it represented.
    The
vision must have burned brightly once. Entrenched in a steep slope midway
between the wharf and the hilltop medieval quarter, the station’s back door was
on the third floor and its basement garage on street level. Perhaps the
architect wanted to imitate the mighty legionary fortress of Lindum Coloniae,
now buried under office blocks and supermarkets. Yet the station’s mighty
blocks, arranged in tiers around a central keep, failed to cow the barbarian
hordes of drunks, thieves and miscreants.
    Perhaps
the architecturally literate might concede that the pre-cast concrete with its
roughened edging and pebble-dash dared to fuse the contemporary and the
timeless. To Harkness, it was every bit as timeless and elegant as a paisley
kipper tie with a brown nylon suit. Such abominations had been in vogue within
the working lives of some of his colleagues; but the changes of style they most
rued were of a far more practical nature.
    Up
until the mid-eighties, a recalcitrant suspect could have been left in the
cells over the weekend; he would learn to cooperate without disrupting a
detective’s social life. If he were fitted up now and again, so be it; it was
just recompense for the things