Murder... Now and Then by Jill McGown Read Free Book Online Page B

been home; he would have been pottering about until the small hours doing nothing in particular. But right now, bed seemed a very good place to be. Though not, perhaps, his own.
    WPC Judy Russell’s eyes caught his, and he almost blushed. Perhaps she could read minds; he wouldn’t be surprised at anything that went on behind that liquid brown gaze. She had been in the job for almost two years; she was good. Good CID material – he ought to get her on to a detective course now that her probationary period was almost up. But that wasn’t the extent of his interest in her; she knew that, and responded to it despite herself. Whatever it was, it had been there since the day they’d met, and it was still there.
    He had asked her out for the evening a few weeks after she had arrived; he had never done anything like that before, and had been as nervous as a kitten all evening, expecting Barbara to jump out at him from behind lampposts. In the end, he had told her he was married, and she had told him that there was nothing doing. He hadn’t tried again, but he had thought about it. Often.
    She was taking a turn at watching the street; she looked cold, as she sipped coffee from a flask. She offered it to him, and he shook his head, his eyes glancing down at her black-stockinged legs and regulation shoes. Great levellers, uniforms. In civvies, Judy Russell’s legs were something to write—
    â€˜Punter,’ Judy said, into the radio, ditching her coffee, as a car turned into the street.
    They all tensed up; all the people who waited out of sight on the balcony, the four in the unmarked van parked off the road, and the two who displayed their wares on the road. But the car drove past at a normal speed; and went on its way.
    â€˜A waste of good coffee,’ observed Lloyd, as he stood everyone down.
    She smiled. ‘It wasn’t good.’
    â€˜That’s why I didn’t have any.’
    More girls had come to join the first two; each had her own space, violation of which led to the odd-scuffle, but nothing too noisy. Eventually, the cars were coming thick and slow, their drivers weighing up what was on offer. Lloyd watched until he had seen enough to state for certain that business was being transacted.
    â€˜Russell, Horton, left stairs,’ said Lloyd. ‘ Maidley and Simpson right. When I say go, go. Don’t forget the drivers are committing an offence too. Names and addresses. Put the fear of God into them.’
    â€˜Don’t worry,’ said Judy.
    One of the cars drove off with its prize, but the other girls were still negotiating. ‘Go,’ said Lloyd quietly, into the radio, and looked through the binoculars to watch the operation. It was quick, it was efficient. The car drivers who tried to get away were unable to do so by the unmarked van which was suddenly blocking the road one way, and the very obvious police van which had swung in from the other end, its doors open ready to receive the girls. One girl got away, outrunning Horton, who was sorely in need of fitness training. The others were rounded up neatly and efficiently. The men were warned that they might receive a summons, the girls arrested, cautioned, and taken to the van, some unwillingly, in which event they had to be manhandled in.
    This was a street-cleaning exercise; the girls would be fined, the punters possibly summonsed in vague terms that wouldn’t mean too much to their wives. With luck, the operation might rescue some under-age kid from a life on the streets, but probably not. They would drift up West, and get into the clutches of the real villains that the Vice Squad tried to mop up. By that time, it would probably be too late. For the moment the whole thing was simply a public nuisance, and the spot raids which would take place over the next eighteen months nothing but a sop to the public, and a lot of cold legwork and time consuming paperwork.
    God, he was getting depressed. And he