Free Mercy Killing by Lisa Cutts Page B

information. He could call Gabrielle into his office and
ask her for her opinion of perverts, but even if for one minute she didn’t jump to the conclusion that her senior officer was trying to come on to her, she would hardly tell him if she had a
secret longing to annihilate everyone convicted of sexual offences. Nothing in life was ever that simple.
    This particular Saturday was likely to turn into a very long one. Harry gave a brief thought to the hours he worked and the strain it had put on his marriage over the years, something that for
so long he hadn’t considered to be a problem. His domestic instructions were now very clear: unless he fancied the idea of being divorced, he wasn’t to ‘hide at the sodding police
station’. Even he knew that the threats weren’t idle and that their marriage was on the rocks. He could either pay Mrs Powell more attention or she would leave him, obliterating
everything he had aimed for and built. He simply didn’t want to risk it.
    Not that he would ever tell anyone that. He made excuses that he was getting on a bit and didn’t have the staying power of his younger years. The truth was that he hated the idea of his
marriage going wrong and was petrified of being alone after being a husband with children around. He was sure that life had the potential to go the right way for him and he wasn’t going to
let a dead paedophile spoil things.
    Or so he thought.
    ‘Hi there, Harry,’ said a voice from the office doorway.
    He smiled before he looked up from his computer screen.
    ‘Don’t be too pleased to see me yet,’ said DCI Barbara Venice. ‘You don’t know why I’m here.’
    ‘Babs, I’m always pleased to see you. What can I do for you?’
    ‘Don’t call me Babs, for a start.’
    ‘I’ve been calling you that for decades.’
    ‘And I’ve been asking you not to, you cantankerous old bugger.’
    By now, the two old friends were sitting opposite each other, like grey-haired bookends, bitter at the world for the crap it had thrown their way, but still determined to do the best job they
could, despite the ever-growing difficulties that accompanied any investigation.
    ‘There was a time,’ said Harry, ‘when you and I would have cracked open a bottle of Scotch and sat talking bollocks.’
    ‘I don’t drink,’ she replied. ‘But go ahead with the talking bollocks. You’ve always done enough of that for two.’
    ‘As much as I’m loving the verbal sparring, Babs, what did you want?’
    ‘The murder we had on Friday possibly wasn’t a one-off.’
    Harry threw himself back in his chair, head tilted, eyes on the cracked and blistered ceiling paint, hands going up to his face. He rubbed at his stubble, something he always fought a losing
battle with. As a new recruit, he was berated for not shaving properly, so one morning, to his then sergeant’s astonishment, he brought his shaving gear to work with him and shaved in the
parade room in front of the entire shift. Three hours later the stubble was back and no one questioned his standards ever again.
    ‘Where and when?’ he said eventually.
    ‘Someone’s been looking into suspicious deaths in the last year,’ she said. ‘I’m amazed they linked these two so quickly, especially as the one I’m going to
tell you about happened several months ago in another force’s county.’
    ‘If there are other departments with so many staff on at a weekend, perhaps they can send me some. I’m scratching around here for an outside enquiry team. I’m only grateful
I’ve got Pierre coming back from his annual leave on Monday and a new DC, Hazel Hamilton, starting. Pierre I can vouch for, but she better be as good as her reputation. I’m up shit
creek here.’
    ‘From what I’ve learned so far,’ said the DCI, ignoring the comments, ‘it was a male, aged thirty-three years, found in the woods with a noose around his neck, hanging
from a tree.’
    ‘Not suicide then?’
    She paused, leaned back in her