The Grass Tattoo (#2 - The Craig Modern Thriller Series) by Catriona King Read Free Book Online

diary himself, a frequent sin that led to double–booking. Then she looked up at him pertly, her pretty, darkly-tanned smile holding a challenge. “Can I come in?”
    Craig sighed, mock-heavily. “I haven’t booked anything else, Nicky. But just give me five minutes to grab a coffee please, before you hit me with your ‘list’.” He said it fondly but his need for caffeine was urgent and genuine. It had been a very long hour since his last fix.
    Nicky had invented her ‘list’ of tasks years before, and now it was infamous. It hadn’t been Craig’s problem until he’d inherited her full time from Terry Harrison, but now it was, and it was still a small price to pay for getting the best P.A in the Docklands C.C.U.
    It detailed the tasks, dates and progress of every file that needed to be completed, every memo that hadn’t been actioned, and every letter that lingered unsigned. He knew that she was planning mini-versions for Annette and Liam, and he wanted a ringside seat when she told them.
    He dumped his briefcase by the floor-to-ceiling window that gave his office one of the best views in the building, and poured a coffee from his ever-hot percolator, allowing himself a brief look across Belfast’s winter Docklands. The new Titanic building was shining in the mid-afternoon light, its textured silver exterior rippling like the water beside it, reflecting the City’s maritime history. Further up-river he could see the redbrick Odyssey Arena, home to exhibitions and concerts, movies and clubs, gearing up for another good night. There was no shortage of entertainment in Belfast nowadays.
    The morning’s rain had morphed into a beautiful afternoon and it lit up Sailortown, the historic area that they worked in. Its narrow streets and old buildings nestled below the C.C.U.’s glass shard and he knew that if they could speak, three hundred years of stories, including his family’s own, would come flowing out. The seasonal feeling made him want to join the pre-Christmas social scene, and all at once he felt sad at the certainty that he’d be spending the evening alone again.
    His thoughts were broken by Nicky unsubtly dropping a file on his desk, and he turned away from the view and smiled at her, resigned to his fate. She sat down, crossed her festive red leggings, tucked into what could only be described as pixie boots, and handed him a warm copy of her latest list.
    Craig smiled quietly at her eclectic fashion sense. He’d given up being surprised by what women wore years before and had learned not to comment long before that. Lucia and his flamboyant Italian mother Mirella had trained him well, but Nicky’s style managed to raise even his eyebrows. She mixed old and new, Goth and punk and emerged with something like early Madonna. Well, whatever it was, it suited her, signposting her quirky personality even before she spoke.
    She lifted her pen ostentatiously and they started. The session turned out to be like many things in life, not half as bad as he’d dreaded. It was twenty minutes of ‘this is what needs to be done, and here’s how we can do it’ requiring only an occasional nod from him. And not for the first time he reflected that she should be running the whole police service - it would definitely be more efficient.
    Craig watched her as she talked, quickly and in a deep, loud voice that belied her thirty-seven years and slight build. Dockers and sailors had inhabited Docklands for hundreds of years, but he doubted if many of them had a louder voice than Nicky.
    She could feel his attention wandering and waved a naughty finger at him. “You’re not paying attention, sir. And we’ll never get through this unless you do. You don’t want me back tomorrow, now do you?”
    They both laughed. She’d always behaved like his mum, despite Craig being five years older, but it had got worse since her recent holiday in Venice. Now she behaved exactly like Mirella - she’d be listening to opera next.
    He