Free Flawed by Jo Bannister Page A

get?’
    ‘Friends at court,’ said the Inspector judiciously.
    ‘It's not enough.’ She was so scared Voss could hear her rings rattling on the table-top. But instinct told her this was the best chance she'd have to hold out for a better deal. ‘I want to walk.’
    Alix Hyde laughed out loud, a musical tone like a bell. ‘Susan! You know I can't do that. I could get you Cowes Week on the Chief Constable's yacht before I could get you free and clear. You were caught with a suitcase full of crack cocaine! You hadn't even bothered disguising it.’
    ‘There didn't seem any point,’ mumbled Weekes. ‘I knew if they opened it I was up shit creek. It seemed better to stuff it full and never have to do it again.’
    ‘You mean, this was your first time?’
    ‘Yes.’ The woman looked up with hope-haunted eyes. ‘Themoney was just too good. I thought, Just once. People do this all the time and get away with it. I can get away with it just once.’ She gave a minimal shrug. ‘You know the rest.’
    Hyde shook her head decisively. ‘Sorry, Susan, I'm not buying it. That business of filling the case – that wasn't the action of a virgin. She'd have put little packets into her underwear and little packets into her wash-bag, and spent hours squeezing tiny little quantities into her toothpaste tube. And it would all have been wasted effort because you're right, the moment you were challenged you were lost. Whatever you were carrying, however well you'd hidden it, they'd find it and then you'd be past all help.’
    She pursed her lips. ‘Except mine. I can help you, Susan, and I'm probably the only one who can. Because there's something I want even more than I want you behind bars, and luckily enough – and you'll never know
how
lucky you've been, this isn't an offer I'd be making in any other circumstances – you're in a position to help me get it.’
    So far as Voss could judge, Hyde had made the perfect pitch. Brisk, matter-of-fact and determined, she'd given Weekes the impression that all the cards were now face-up on the table. That there was a deal to be made, but only one and only once. Either she took it or she let it go. Nothing in the DI's voice or manner held out any hope that the pot could be sweetened so there was no incentive for Weekes to spin this out. At the same time, Hyde appeared to be sure of her authority to make a deal stick. It was this or nothing, now or never. Whatever Weekes could get for her information, now was the time to take it.
    ‘So what
can
you do for me?’
    Alix Hyde smiled, not unkindly. ‘I can pretend to believe you when you say you've never done this before. That you were stupid and greedy, not a professional drug-runner. That's probably worth about four years to you. Two hundred weeks. One thousand, four hundred days. Three hundred and…’
    ‘All right!’ exclaimed Susan Weekes quickly, desperate to stop the parcelling up and throwing away of large chunks of her life. ‘All right. I'll tell you what I can.’
    ‘You'll tell me everything you know,’ Hyde corrected her, ‘or we've nothing more to talk about.’
    ‘All right! That's what I meant. All right.’
    ‘She's good,’ said Charlie Voss, leaning on the bar of The Belted Galloway later that night. ‘She got what she wanted, she got it pretty well immediately, and she didn't even…’ He stopped dead, waiting for the smoke-blackened roof-beams to fall on him.
    Deacon looked up slowly from his pint of shandy. Apart from a bottle of wine with a sit-down meal, this was as close as he got to serious drinking. And Voss knew, and the publican knew, and that was all, so if the secret got out he'd know exactly where to start his inquiries. ‘Didn't what, Charlie?’ His voice was the soft purr of a tiger tucking in its napkin.
    Like Susan Weekes the moment someone in a Customs uniform beckoned her, Voss knew exactly what the future held for him. He might as well open the suitcase right away and put his hands up. Only