Deadlight by Graham Hurley Read Free Book Online

checklist of must-do reminders in his wallet – everything fromelimination strategies and lab submission protocols to poster circulation and funding codes – because rule one on homicide investigations was brutally clear: a single missed detail, a single slip on the rock-face, and you were looking at disaster.
    Faraday knew of SIOs and their deputies who’d let their concentration wander in the early stages of an inquiry only to realise – months later in court – that they’d surrendered the verdict to the defence team with the body still warm. Pressure like that, he supposed, was the charm of the job. Major inquiries put you to the ultimate investigative test, chucking up lead after lead, thousands of words on hundreds of forms, daring you to flag a pathway forward, daring you to eliminate a line of enquiry that just might – despite every indication to the contrary – be productive.
    What to make of Andy Corbett’s little hunch? In truth, Faraday didn’t know. The DC was new to Portsmouth. A couple of months on the CID strength at Kingston Crescent hardly qualified him for in-depth local knowledge, yet that wasn’t the point. What they were dealing with here, what they always dealt with, were the fathomless mysteries of human interaction. What made one man take against another? What turned impatience, or irritation, or anger into hatred? And what kind of special demons possessed a man to batter someone else to death?
    On the face of it, Ainsley Davidson was a strong lead and Faraday would be crazy not to pursue it. Prison was a pressure cooker and if Davidson’s belief in his innocence was genuine, then he’d have been putty in the hands of someone like Coughlin. There were individuals on this earth – mainly men – who got their kicks from situations they could control. Prison was an obvious example. Marriage, oddly enough, was another. Bang someone up, make them deeply unhappy, and your pleasures were there for the taking.
    But was that sufficient motivation to justify murder? Would you really spend seven miserable years in a six by ten cell and then risk the same nightmare all over again? Faraday rather doubted it, but knew that his own instincts were irrelevant. He’d come across men who’d killed on far less provocation than this. Indeed, the longer he did the job the more mundane the act of murder became. In books and movies, homicide still attracted an aura, an unsettling glamour, an apartness that spoke of something deeply special. In real life, it wasn’t like that at all. You lost your rag. You pulled the trigger or raised a fist or reached for the kitchen knife. And that – all too finally – was that.
    The Policy Book lay on his desk. This held the record of every decision the SIO made, hour after hour, as the inquiry developed. In days and maybe months to come it would be invaluable as a retrospective source, charting and justifying every tiny investigative shift, and bosses like Willard understood its value. In complex inquiries it was impossible not to make mistakes but this painstaking process of adding a rationale for every decision provided a comforting degree of protection. The Policy Book was the body armour that lay between the SIO and the small army of career assassins who lay in wait down the investigative road. Take care of the Policy Book, and the Policy Book would take care of you.
    Faraday uncapped his pen and began to write. He’d authorised Corbett and Yates to drive to London first thing and interview Ainsley Davidson. Corbett had his mother’s address from the prison file and an assurance from one of the screws that he’d probably be there. The address was in Balham, well known to Corbett from his previous life in the Met. Three years in the Streatham CID office, he’d assured Faraday, had taught him everything he needed to know about South London criminals.
    There was something in Corbett’s manner thatsounded an alarm with Faraday. It wasn’t simply the arrogance of