The Shadows of Justice by Simon Hall Read Free Book Online Page A

collected in the contrasting colours of her eyes.
    The Greater Wessex Police boards had been set up at the back of the room; a smart and authoritative blue, embossed with a pattern of the force’s badge. Two chairs were placed in front, facing each other.
    “That should do nicely for the interview,” Adam said.
    The clock on the wall made the time ten to seven. Nigel started setting up the camera, but Dan reached out a restraining hand.
    “Come on, we don’t have time to muck about,” Adam whined. “Everyone’s waiting for this interview.”
    “Not like this.”
    “What?”
    “Not with those boards.”
    “What’s wrong with them?”
    Dan picked up a glass of water and took a swig. “It’s no time to bother you with the theory of my job, but… by far the biggest message people take from an interview comes from what they see.”
    “Yeah, ok, but—”
    “If we use those police boards, what does it say to the kidnappers?”
    “For God’s sake,” Adam spluttered. “We’re about to interview a man whose daughter’s been abducted, who could be killed at any moment, and you’re worrying about—”
    “Adam!” Dan heard himself shout. “I know all that. Hell, I know it! I’m trying to help.”
    “And I’m telling you—”
    “I think he’s right.”
    The voice was quiet and calm, but it halted the fractious toddlers in a second. Katrina stood up and glided over to the boards.
    “This interview – it needs to be all about Annette. Not a hint of the police. We should be silent and shadows.”
    Dan took advantage of Adam’s prevailing state of chagrin to begin shifting the boards; Nigel helping. For a backdrop, they decided on the unnoticeable neutrality of a pot plant and a window.
    The time had crept on to five to seven. Dan sipped some more water, sat down and checked through his briefing on the lives of Roger and Annette Newman for one final time.
    ***
    Roger grew up on the Eddystone Estate on the northern edge of Plymouth; a place with very distinctive connotations.
    At the sight of those words, employers would consign job applications to the simplest of filing destinations. Pizza, Chinese and Indian takeaway drivers generally refused to deliver. The fire and ambulance services would call for a police escort if they had to visit, as often they did. And the unfortunate officers themselves would sigh, curse their fortune and don protective clothing.
    As estates go, the joke had it the Eddystone was as sunk as the Titanic.
    Unusually, Roger had been born to a couple that actually lived together. But normal service was quickly resumed as the relationship lasted for only the first six months of his childhood. His mother, though, had been determined the young boy should have a decent chance at life and lobbied to get him into a school a safe separation from the estate.
    She faced a familiar problem. The all-knowing state was having none of it. With the sympathy, understanding and helpfulness of the massed hierarchy of a faceless bureaucracy, her pleas were rebutted. Roger was allocated a place at Eddystone Comprehensive, an educational establishment the wags described as comprehensive only in one field – its awfulness.
    But the young Roger was favoured with a little luck. With the influence of his mother, and the emerging character of a man she described as her little scrapper , he managed to steer clear of gangs and the call of crime, aside from one dressing down for fighting. And that, legend told, was with an older and larger boy, who had been trying to steal money from one of Roger’s friends.
    But perhaps the greatest fortune was a teacher at the Eddystone, a man who recognised a kindred spirit in the youngster and who guided him onwards. Roger performed well in his exams. He went on to take A-levels and suddenly was in possession of something his life had known little of to that point: options, possibilities and maybe even the promised land of prospects.
    For what made up a touching CV, this