Free Strangers by Paul Finch Page A

snitches – but only the most trustworthy, so that means there’s no more than a handful of them. They won’t be able to hold all your hands all the time – and at some point you are going to be asked questions. It’ll happen less out there on the fringes of town, where everything’s a bit wild and woolly, than it would on the backstreets around Piccadilly and Whalley Range, but it’s going to happen and you’re going to have to be ready for it. Now you’ll all have protectors, you know that … but some crap you’ll just have to deal with. Any questions so far?’

    ‘Most punters would be surprised to learn there’s any kind of prostitution out on the road networks,’ one of the girls said. ‘People drive around all day and never see anything.’
    ‘That’s true,’ Slater replied. ‘We’re going to train you up on that as well. Because you start openly touting at some service stations and you’ll be locked up by Traffic before you can say “Cynthia Payne”. It’s the quieter spots the girls tend to work from: lay-bys, lorry parks, picnic areas – especially at night, when they’re deep in shadow. Again … sorry not to sweeten this for you, but it’s in those shadows where you’ll need to be. And it isn’t going to be nice.’
    They broke for coffee at around eleven, and were on their way down to the canteen when Slater sidled up alongside Lucy.
    ‘PC Clayburn, is it?’ he asked.
    Lucy waited to let the others pass. ‘That’s right, sir.’
    He stopped next to her. ‘You were the one involved in the Mandy Doyle incident?’
    Lucy’s heart sank, but there was never any option these days other than to admit her error and hope to brazen it out. ‘Right again, sir.’
    He regarded her with an odd kind of indifference, which she found more unnerving than she would if he’d been openly angry. ‘So … what?’ he said. ‘You just admit it like that? No excuses? No convoluted self-justification?’

    ‘None whatever, sir. I dropped a total bollock, and that’s why I’m here now … I’m trying to make up for it.’
    He readjusted the pile of paperwork under his arm. ‘I worked with Mandy Doyle on the Drugs Squad. We were partners for three years.’
    Lucy’s cheeks reddened. ‘I’m just glad she’s alive, sir.’
    ‘So am I.’ He yanked at his tie to loosen it even more. ‘She’s an idiot, by the way. Always was.’
    Lucy thought she’d misheard. ‘Sir?’
    ‘Mandy,’ he explained. ‘Spent her entire career trying to prove she’s as tough as the lads. Made up for her lack of imagination with a bolshiness that extended right across the board. Difficult enough when you were a similar rank. But if you were lower, you could expect to put up with a whirlwind of shit. But why am I telling you that, eh?’
    Lucy was temporarily lost for words. ‘I … didn’t know her that well.’
    He shrugged. ‘Lucky you. Or unlucky. She obviously had to blame someone once she went and got herself shot.’
    ‘Strictly speaking, sir, it was me who went and …’
    ‘Uh-uh.’ He shook his head. ‘I read all about it, PC Clayburn. You had a guy in custody on suspicion of raping and brutalising an old lady, yeah? But by his own admission, and as later excavation of the deposition site revealed, he’d also murdered two young women. That should have put him in a different category. That meant he was physically pretty adept, and yet your gaffer went and left you – five days into CID – on your own, handcuffed to him.’
    ‘There was a police driver …’
    ‘The driver’s irrelevant. He was in a separate compartment of the vehicle.’
    With Radio One playing , Lucy reminded herself.
    ‘He couldn’t necessarily have known what was going on in the back,’ Slater added. ‘Even if Haygarth hadn’t produced a gun, he might still have overpowered you.’

    ‘I was still a police officer, sir.’
    ‘Your loyalty to DI Doyle is touching, if a tad misplaced. She spent the next year saying