Cutting Edge by John Harvey Read Free Book Online

Americans had been doing into passive inhalation of nicotine. God, he thought, if this goes on beyond twelve that’s likely as not another six months off my lifetime … or was it six minutes?
    Patel pushed his tongue up against the back of his teeth, trying to ease away the last remnants of Milky Way. You could sit for just so long watching cream-colored breezeblock without going into a trance. Meditation. Hadn’t he been toying for ages with the idea of taking it up? He could hear them in the canteen if ever they found out. Yeah, great, Diptak, what comes next? Swallowing fire? Sleeping on nails? Except that they never called him Diptak. Or much else. To his face, anyway. He picked up his camera as two men in blue overalls came out of the nearest building and almost immediately set it down again. The men settled themselves up against the wall, facing what sun there was, unpacked their sandwiches, unscrewed their flasks. Patel wondered how long he could go before opening the empty orange juice container under the seat to take a pee.
    “I think they must have got in through here.”
    “Yes,” murmured Divine, “most likely.”
    He stood at the window of what estate agents liked to call a utility room, looking out over a quarter-acre of lawns, fruit bushes, shrubs with unpronounceable Latin names and flowers fading down into wooden barrels. Beyond that, on a lower level, was a full-sized tennis court, complete with green wire surround and floodlights. He wondered where they kept the swimming pool. Probably down in the basement, along with the steam room and the jacuzzi.
    “You will do your best to catch them?”
    Daft cow, standing there in some sort of silk dressing gown, rings down her fingers enough to open a branch of Ratners and a bit of tangerine cloth round her head like she’s thinking about joining a very select order of nuns.
    “Yes,” said Divine, choking back the word “madam.” “We’ll do what we can. You’ll let us have a full list of what’s missing, of course?”
    The doorbell chimed four bars of Andrew Lloyd Webber.
    “Excuse me,” she turned smoothly away, “that must be the cleaning woman.”
    Oh, yes, thought Divine, coming in the front door too, must have had good references. He was glad he’d forgotten to wipe his feet on the way in.
    Lynn saw Kevin Naylor sitting on his own at the far side of the canteen and wasn’t sure whether to go and sit with him or not. Up until recently she would have had no hesitation, but lately Kevin had been short with her, abrupt and eager to keep his distance. She knew there were problems at home with Debbie, with the baby. There had been an evening when they might have talked about it, Kevin and herself, almost had. Tired, he had come back to her flat for coffee, but instead of talking he had fallen asleep. Waking, he had only hurried away, half-guilty. Lynn recalled from that evening her hand momentarily against Kevin’s upper arm. What had that been about? And asking him back—coffee? Come back for coffee? She thought about Karen Archer saying that to Fletcher after the Medics Ball, that or something like it. What had he understood by that?
    There had been a film they’d shown on the TV, a year or so before, between the adverts. A young woman moving around her flat, making sure the bedroom door was open, clear view of the bed; the camera on the man’s face then, suggesting what he was thinking, condoms, AIDS, wouldn’t you like to stay the night? Was that what Kevin had been afraid of? She doubted it. She took her cup of tea and pulled out the chair opposite him. If he didn’t want to talk to her, he could get up and move away.
    “How did it go at the hospital?” she asked.
    “It’s your wife, sir,” called someone as Resnick left his office.
    “What?”
    “Your wife.” A young DC leaned back from his desk, holding a receiver aloft.
    “Don’t be so bloody daft!”
    Resnick shouldered his way through the door and hurried down the