Free Father Confessor (J McNee series) by Russel D McLean Page A

were questions being raised concerning his arrest rate and the number of convictions that had fallen through in his name.
    Contestant number three was the senior of the group. At forty-one, Daniel Hayes was married, with two children. A career copper. With a career that had gone nowhere.
    Read:
    Malcontent.
    Cynic.
    Whatever.
    Somewhere along the line, his record had gone sour. But it was his bank account and lifestyle that became of interest to Discipline and Complaints. Hayes was living the life of a man whose career was going places, not stagnating among the rank and file.
    All three men were under covert investigation. Along with twelve other officers Lindsay’s contact had given him. But these were the three that Raymond Grant picked out.
    Our first lead. The loose threads we could tug on.
    We .
    Lindsay was troubled by that word, too. I could see it in his face. He’d barely tolerated working with me when I was on the force. Now that I was an outsider, the idea went against every instinct he had.
    And yet here we were.
    Like he said, he’d rather have me where he could keep an eye on me. And in a way I thought he might be right in that regard.
    ###
    “You’re not worried about your reputation?”
    “Like any prick in the station house liked me to begin with?”
    “Some people respect you.”
    Lindsay nodded, but I’m not sure he really agreed. It was just a way to get me to shut up. “And what I’m doing is –”
    “Investigating your own.”
    “Christsakes, what, you think the thin blue line really matters? That all boys in blue stick together no matter what? Discipline and Complaints are a necessary evil. Most bastards just like to moan about them because they’re a pain in the arse. Not because they break the bloody brotherhood.”
    Did he sound convinced of his own argument?
    I couldn’t be sure.
    Hard to think of Lindsay as a human being sometimes. I had my set ideas about him. Who he was. What he represented.
    I always approached my work thinking that the truth was never what my clients expected, that there was always more to people than what one person could see.
    Never really applied that yardstick to myself.
    I saw Lindsay as an obstacle. An enemy. A one-note, sweary bastard. A throwback to the Neanderthal copper from the bad old days.
    I knew he was a father. Didn’t matter to me, didn’t register, because somehow the kid didn’t feel real. As though in my heart I believed Lindsay had invented a family just to fit in with the rest of the human race. Yet I was watching him as he talked about investigating fellow coppers, and despite his constant mantra, that it was all part of the job , I could sense the conflict that manifested in the involuntary muscle twitches around his eyes and the way his breath caught momentarily at odd moments.
    And what I had begun to realise was this: He’d gone out of his way to help me. Where I might have thought all he would want to do was hinder.
    I said, “So tell me what we do.”
    “You,” he said, “you bloody well go home to that girlfriend of yours. Be a man about it, too, show her you’re not a complete prick.”
    I could hear something of the father in his voice, suddenly, the way he might speak to his young son. Beneath the bluster, all he wanted was for people to see the world as he did, because if we did, maybe we’d do the right thing.
    I realised he cared for Susan. Not in a romantic way. But I knew they’d worked together on more than a few investigations. Susan had always tried to convince me Lindsay wasn’t the bad guy I took him for.
    Maybe he really had been the good guy all along. Maybe I’d been looking for my heroes in all the wrong places. Or maybe I was just too tired to think straight.
    I stood up.
    He said, “Grant won’t talk to anyone about what you did. He’s too much of a cowardy cock.”
    I didn’t say a word.
    After all this time, thank-you would ring hollow between us.

TWELVE
    When I got back to the flat, Susan was