Free The Shadows of Justice by Simon Hall Page B

with a grey plastic box. Dan opened it and loaded the video cassette into one of the players.
    “A beta tape?” Katrina queried.
    “It’s one of the great ironies of TV. Back in the ’80s, when there was the format war, VHS won the mass market, but the television industry chose beta. We thought it was better quality and more reliable.”
    Dan skimmed through the stories. There were floods, government cutbacks, health warnings about the dangers of sunbathing, county shows.
    And now a group of small yellow birds in a tree, all singing.
    Sre , sre , sre .
    Dan paused the tape. “That’s it. The noise from the ransom call.”
    Adam stared at the screen. “Well whoopty-doo,” he grunted. “I can’t say how overwhelmed I am at this dramatic breakthrough. A boy scout bird spotter’s badge to us.”
    “Adam, for fuck’s sake, shut up!” Dan snapped. “I’ve had a bellyful of your whining.”
    “Don’t you dare tell me to—”
    “Don’t either of you ever use language like that in here,” Brenda intervened, with surprising steel. “Now look at the report nicely, or you can leave.”
    Katrina reached between the petulant pugilists and set the tape playing. Her shoulder brushed Dan’s. It felt firm and toned. He could smell the freshness of her perfume.
    The screen flickered with a countdown and a familiar voice began a commentary:
    “Once common, cirl buntings are now sadly rare. Loss of their habitat and changes in farming methods are being blamed. But the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has begun a project to try to increase numbers. They’re recruiting landowners to help, by managing areas in a bunting-friendly way. It’s not such a big job as you might think. Cirl buntings are now confined to only a small part of South Devon, around the village of East Prawle.”
    Dan turned, readying a triumphant look from the very summit of his stock of I told you so expressions. Victory in The Battle of the Little Yellow Birds was his and it was time to parade it.
    But Adam was already on his mobile and heading for the door.
    ***
    Once more, the guardian of the gate into Charles Cross stood wide open. Just inside, by the armed response cars, the officers were again checking their guns. But where before it had been routine, a drill – rehearsed a hundred times or more – this was the call to arms.
    It was in the eyes, focused and sharp. It was in the movements, calm, practiced and precise.
    And there was no banter. This was reality, not rehearsal. This was their time.
    Cops jogged from the police station’s back doors. One carried a weight of body armour, his head hidden behind the mass of reinforced plastic. A woman bent low with the burden of a small, metal battering ram. Another snapped open boxes and pulled out snub-nosed taser stun guns. Helmets, gas canisters, a loud hailer joined the armaments.
    A line of police vans stood, their back doors open, waiting.
A sergeant convulsed back and forth, shouting instructions. A spin of blue lights cascaded around the compound.
    A group of officers were bent over a patrol car, a map spread across its bonnet. From the windows of the police station, faces stared out. A modern day army was readying for battle.
    Claire jogged from the back doors and picked her way over. From the urgency, the impetus of this unflappable investigator, it was clear there would be significance in her words.
    Dan thought of Roger Newman and Annette. Another interview with the businessman, but this time carried out in the past tense. Tears and regrets in place of hope.
    He could see the spectre with Adam and Katrina, too. The way they waited, the fear of what they were about to hear. But instead, silent dread was replaced by relief, like rainfall in the desert.
    “Sir,” Claire told Adam, “I think we’ve got a lead on the kidnappers.”

Chapter Eleven
    He was still there. Silent and unmoving, but she could sense him.
    A black shape in the tarry darkness of this eternal