Free The Day of the Jack Russell (Mystery Man) by Colin Bateman

it’s out of your hands anyway. If Robinson thinks you’re both involved, then he’s already tapping your phone, so he knows about the meet. He’ll have the whole place wired, or someone at the next table.’
    ‘Not if you’re at the next table.’
    ‘Me?’
    ‘You sit there with a coffee, you take your mobile phone out, you pretend to be playing a game, but actually you’re recording what we’re saying.’
    ‘That might work. See, we’re a great team.’
    I let that one pass.
    I looked at the clock. I would have to remember to take my medication at the right time and in the right order. It wouldn’t do to doze off or be hyper during the meet. I had to be focused, alert, my radar working perfectly. I needed to speak clearly and succinctly rather than mumble and drool. I had to tell Billy that I knew nothing about the murders and didn’t want to be involved in his case in any way. Our brief business relationship was over. I’d completed my task and he needed to settle his account and leave me in peace.

    Ten minutes before three, Alison arrived. I said, ‘I can’t talk to you now.’
    ‘Course you can,’ she said. She looked at Jeff. ‘Jeff, could you give us a minute?’
    Jeff looked to me.
    ‘He’s fine where he is. We’re closing up for a little while.’
    She looked from me to Jeff and back. ‘You never close up for a little while.’
    ‘Well we are. We have something to do.’
    Her eyes narrowed. ‘Did I see DI Robinson over earlier?’
    ‘Possibly.’
    ‘When I say “did I see”, what I actually mean is, I saw him clear as day.’
    ‘So.’
    ‘Bit of a shock.’
    ‘What is?’
    ‘Jimbo and RonnyCrabs. Looks like I might have been the last person to see them alive.’
    She was such a player . Of course she was the last person to see them. She killed them.
    ‘He says my DNA is all over the living room.’ She shook her head. ‘The nerve of the man. Of course it is! I just visited them! He thinks it’s still the good old bad old days, first fingerprint you find, you put them away for thirty years; trouble is, nobody else thinks that way, not the solicitors, not the judges, nobody but him. Didn’t he find yours too?’
    ‘Possibly.’
    ‘He tried that on me too, like he was Sherlock Holmes or something, trying to get me to rat you out. How come, he says, if you’re the only one who entered the house, how come your partner in crime . . . and he really said that . . . left his DNA there as well? And he gave me one of those looks like . . . ta-da! And it took me about ten seconds to work it out. I’m new to this game, but I’ll get better. I’m sure you had it in, like, three.’
    I nodded.
    ‘Once I said it,’ she continued, ‘that fairly shut him up. You should have seen his face drop. I think it’s quite sweet that my comics had your DNA on them. You must have been missing me and licked them.’
    Jeff snorted. ‘It’s the price stickers. Instead of paying for new ones, he’s using this job lot he’s had for years. Most of the stickiness is gone out of them, so he licks them down.’
    ‘It means I can afford idiots like you, Jeff.’
    Jeff made a face. Alison laughed. She was still a witch, but maybe she hadn’t tried to incriminate me. Or she had, in a different way, and I just hadn’t found out about it yet.
    I had to remain on my guard.
    ‘Anyway, now he’s off your back, I’ve something to show you.’ Alison pulled her handbag round from behind her and began to search through it. ‘It’s just . . . here . . .’
    ‘It’ll have to wait.’
    I was already at the door.
    ‘Jeff,’ I said, ‘lock up and follow me over. We’re late already.’
    As I hurried out, I caught, out of the corner of my eye, the briefest glimpse of what Alison was removing from her bag. A small black and white photograph with a blurry image on it.
    A scan.
    Or, as I preferred to think of it, entrapment.

13
    Billy Randall had chosen a seat at the window upstairs in Starbucks, a