Hope Road by John Barlow Read Free Book Online

him when every instinct told him to trust no one. They built the new showroom together, made it a success. Freddy Metcalfe, a cocky, big-hearted lad with a fucked-up criminal pedigree of his own to deal with. John’d do anything for Freddy. And if his instincts turn out to be wrong, everything he’s achieved over the last two years will have been for nothing.
    “Also,” she says, resisting the temptation to run her fingers through his hair, “this is the last time I can see you. Shouldn’t really be talking to you now.”
    “Right.”
    “You hear me?”
    He lights a fresh cigarette, throwing the one he’s only half-smoked into the gutter.
    Neither of them wants the conversation to end.
    “The girl in the car?” she says, almost to herself. “She was wearing
Opium
.”
    It had been one of his dad’s most popular lines, counterfeit
Opium
. The perfume is their private joke, a symbol of John’s break with the past, the act of paying full price for the real stuff a twisted homage to the defunct criminal dynasty of the Ray family.
    But John is hardly listening.
    “He’s got no family, you know,” he says. “Mum’s dead, dad disappeared when he was a baby. He’s got nowhere to go. Moved about a lot when he was growing up. No old school friends that I know of. He’ll be on his own somewhere, scared shitless. I better find him.”
    She nods.
    “Will you help me?”
    “I
can’t
, John,” she says, mouthing the words silently. “Jesus, I just can’t, I mean…”
    She stops, lets her cigarette drop to the ground and grinds it into the pavement until there are strands of tobacco in the cracks of the tarmac.
    “I’ll give you a ring later,” she says, still looking down at the ground. “I’ll see what I can find out. And
please
, don’t mention this to anybody.”
    She turns to go.
    Baron emerges from the station entrance, sees them, makes his way over.
    “DC Danson,” he says.
    “Steve.”
    She hesitates, doesn’t move.
    John is still leaning against the wall. It takes a couple of inches off him, bringing his eye line down level with Baron’s.
    “Mr Ray,” the Inspector says. “You’d be a lot more help to us if you were out and about look for your boy Freddy.”
    “Right onto it,” John says, and stomps off down the street, clouds of blue smoke billowing out behind him.
    They watch him go, heavy-framed but spritely, part Gérard Depardieu part storm-trooper, black jacket wide open, flapping in the wind. Where do you get that sort of presence, Baron asks himself? John Ray exudes an intense physical assuredness wherever he goes, something relaxed but also slightly dangerous. And he always looks as if he’s just walked out of a casino at seven in the morning.
    “You know you shouldn’t be…”
    “He texted me,” she says. “I was just filling him in on the rules. No more contact. He understands.”
    “It looks bad. Murder investigation and we’ve got a CID officer playing alibi for a major witness.”
    “I
know
.”
    John disappears around the end of the building. Still they look, as if he might reappear.
    “Very bad,” Baron says slowly, as if he’s waiting for something. “You really need to sort out this relationship, Den.”
    It’s none of Baron’s business, she tells herself. But she’s wrong. It’s police business now. John Ray is police business. And she’s right in the middle of it.
    “It’s casual,” she says, searching her pockets for cigarettes, knowing that there are none there. “With John, it’s not as if it’s…” she struggles for a word, “…permanent or anything.”
    “Really?”
    “You know all this, Steve. When his brother was shot, he wouldn’t see anybody. Counsellor, family liaison team, nothing. Only me. He was a mess.”
    Baron nods. He knows the story. Den brought John Ray back from the edge, and their relationship grew out of that, unexpected but somehow inevitable. She’s never tried to hide anything from her colleagues. That’d be