Free Criminally Insane by Conrad Jones Page B

I have your number programmed into my phone and your name comes up on the screen when you call. Your phone does the same thing, too.” She sounded angry.
    “Yes, sorry. Are you okay?” Alec stuttered. His mind went blank when he had to call home to make excuses. He could never find the words to tell her how he felt. When he said sorry, it didn’t sound like it was enough.
    “I’m fine.”
    “You don’t sound fine.”
    “Is there a reason for the call, Alec?”
    “I was just saying hello.”
    “Hello, Alec.”
    “You sound pissed off.”
    “Don’t swear, Alec. It doesn’t suit you.”
    “Sorry.”
    “When are you taking a day off?”
    “I’m not sure. This is a nasty one, darling. We don’t know what we’re dealing with yet, but there is a child involved.” The line stayed silent but he could hear her breathing. He felt sick with guilt whenever this happened. “I’ll try and get half a day when we have the forensic results back.”
    The phone clicked and she hung up.
    “That went well, Alec. Well done.” He said aloud as he walked into his office. He had at least one murder to investigate and then he had promised that he would take some holiday and take Gail away. They needed some time alone together. He couldn’t remember the last holiday abroad they had had. Then he did, and it made him cringe. They had gone to Gambia for a fortnight and Gail had hated the place as soon as she had landed there. The poverty was overpowering and they hadn’t been able to walk up the street in their resort without being accosted by a mob of limbless beggars. Alec had got a call from headquarters two days into the holiday when the bodies of two men had been discovered in an abandoned car near the city centre. They had cut the holiday short since Alec had had to fly home and Gail had refused to stay in Gambia alone. She hadn’t spoken to him for a week afterwards. Maybe they could go somewhere nearer to home this time, he thought.

Chapter Eight
Leon Tanner
    Leon pushed open the front door of a shop called ‘Crazy Computers’. Situated next to a Chinese chippy and a sunbed salon, it stood on a bend in the road opposite a carwash. The road led to the docklands at the mouth of the Mersey. Most of the small butchers, bakers and post offices were long gone. The supermarket chains had slowly strangled their profit margins until it was impossible to continue trading. There were a few new businesses trying to establish themselves: Polish food stores and Turkish barbers were dotted about every half a mile or so.
    Leon looked at the frontage from inside. The glass was thick with grease and there was a display of keyboards in the window covered in a thick layer of dust. The shop had never sold a single computer in the five years it had been there. It was a front for the brothel above it. A staircase led up to the first floor. The hundreds of punters who trudged up them every week in search of sex had left the beige carpet soiled with their footprints. Leon had a soft spot for the building. Although it was a run-down dilapidated whorehouse, it was the first one that he had opened and it represented the start of his business enterprises. The first woman he had pimped out was his younger sister. She was slow and had had a string of boyfriends before she was sixteen. Leon had thought that if she was going to be a slut, then she might as well make him some money at the same time.
    He had pimped her out to his friends and their associates. Heroin had been her best friend and as long as he had kept her stoned, she had gone along with it. She was a looker and word had soon spread that she was on sale. It hadn’t been long before he had taken on another local girl who had been struggling against a heroin addiction and needed the money urgently. Leon had decided that he could supply her with both, and so his empire had started to grow. Within twelve months, he had paid cash for five lockups across the city and he had peddled sex and