Free A Taste for Malice by Michael J. Malone

that.
    Hello. Only me. How about you bin that miserable fucker and let me take care of you and the baby.
    I pick the phone from the cradle. A few months from now and another man will be bringing up my child. I take a deep breath; acknowledge the churn in my stomach. My thumb hovers over the buttons.
    I pull a note from my wallet, read a number and punch it into my phone. I get through without question. There are still times when using the job title gets you preferential treatment.
    ‘Ms Gibson, I have a question for you.’
    ‘DI McBain, it is a pleasure to hear from you, but can’t it wait until our next appointment?’
    ‘No. This is official I’m afraid and doesn’t concern my situation. But it will only take a few minutes of your time.’
    I hear pages rustle. ‘Okay. You have two minutes.’
    ‘It’s about power, Ms Gibson.’ I outline the situation of Mr & Mrs Craig’s son. The abuse he suffered culminating in the fake rescue, if that was indeed what it was.
    ‘What are you looking for DI McBain?’
    ‘Please, call me Ray. All this formal stuff wears me out.’
    ‘Okay, Ray . What do you want from me?’
    ‘Be still my beating heart.’
    Silence pours into my ear. There is nothing to give me the heads up as to whether she is enjoying my attempts at flirting or if she is scathing of them. The silence continues for another couple of seconds.
    ‘An indication of the character we are dealing with,’ I admit a flirting failure. For now.
    ‘Don’t you have a profiler linked to your department?’
    ‘Only happens in the movies.’ And where we have the money. And in official investigations. ‘Speaking of which there’s an interesting film on at the Glasgow Film Theatre …’
    ‘Let’s not go any further with that.’ Her tone is firm, but not entirely unfriendly. ‘You could be right, Ray. Abuse is always about power. In this situation you have to ask yourself a couple of questions. Was this a genuine accident? Was the woman interrupted and diverted from her original plan of murder and then made it look like an accident? Or was this always her plan, to harm the boy and stop just short of murder?’
    ‘That was three questions. What is it with you women and numbers?’
    ‘I thought it was men who had that problem?’
    ‘With numbers we have no problem…first date, second date, etcetera. It’s measurements we struggle with. Six inches, twelve inches.’
    ‘DI McBain, you are outrageous,’ I can hear a smile in her voice.
    ‘Say we go with the latter explanation. Our sicko always planned to stop just short of killing the boy.’
    ‘That would suggest someone who toys with her power. She revels in it. She has ultimate control in that situation. Let him die or not. She enjoys this, Ray. If that is the real scenario you have a dangerous and manipulative woman to find before she allows herself that final, delicious show of her will. And Ray, if I can offer you one piece of advice?’
    ‘Sure.’
    Her voice is full of concern. ‘I almost hesitate to say this, Ray. I don’t want to tell you how to do your job. But please don’t call this woman a sicko. That reduces her to nothing more than a horrible caricature. Nothing more than a label.
    ‘She is more … much, much more than that.’

Chapter 9
    Jim’s clothes were neatly folded in three black bin bags on the front path when he came home from work the day Angela decided the marriage was over.
    ‘Don’t I at least deserve an explanation?’ he remembers asking.
    Angela’s expression was chipped from granite. ‘You can say goodbye to your son and then the next time we speak will be through lawyers.’ He looked in the front window to see Ben doing a kangaroo impression from one end of the settee to the other. He hadn’t yet picked up any tension.
    ‘Angela, you’ve got to tell me what I’ve done,’ he grabbed her arm.
    She looked at her arm and then into his eyes. He let go.
    ‘What’s happened, Angela. What went wrong?’
    ‘I’m