Free We Are Death by Douglas Lindsay

wouldn’t get another job. That he’d be humiliating himself by even trying. They surely expected him to understand and play the game. And yet, it was not his practice to walk away from anything. If they wanted to get rid of him, then he should make them actually do it. At the very least, milk them for gardening leave as long as possible.
    But that wasn’t his way either.
    He looked at his watch. Plenty of work to do, for once, but he decided to take the rest of the walk round the path and back up over the top road, rather than turning back. He could afford to be a little later than normal.
    *
    D ylan’s door was closed as usual. For the first time in several days, Jericho was not looking forward to stepping into the air conditioning. It wasn’t going to be too cold for him, he just didn’t need the relief it had been giving.
    Told on his arrival that she wanted to see him, he had reverted to type and, on the way to her office, collected himself a coffee to hide behind if needed.
    At some stage during his walk over the fields, he had come to the conclusion that he was definitely getting the worst of this. He wasn’t one to complain or care about being disrespected, but this attitude from Dylan, this new affability, wasn’t it just because she was getting what she’d wanted for so long? Jericho would be leaving.
    He knocked, opened the door and entered. There was a woman sitting opposite Dylan. Short auburn hair, this year’s glasses, slim, a grey suit, three-inch heels. There was a small blue suitcase placed against the wall near the door.
    Jericho took it all in, made the instant judgement that this would be someone from another police organisation come to take over the investigation, then stepped forward, closing the door behind him.
    ‘Robert, come in,’ said Dylan. ‘This is Detective Inspector Badstuber of the Swiss police. She heard about our murder yesterday and wanted to take a look.’
    ‘You’re investigating the Connolly murder?’ asked Jericho, bypassing the small-talk and getting straight to business.
    ‘That is correct.’
    She stood and they shook hands. Jericho stepped back, taking a sip of coffee. There was a slightly awkward moment, as though Dylan and Badstuber expected Jericho to say something. He looked between them, then finally gave in to the peculiar pressure of the relentless gaze of two women.
    ‘We’re losing the case?’ he asked. ‘Is it going to become some sort of international effort?’
    ‘Not at all,’ said Dylan. ‘Quite the contrary, in fact. I’ve just been discussing it with the Inspector. Possibly the best way forward would be for you two to take it up and work together. Not sure if that will play out, but while you take the Inspector to see the corpse and murder site, I’ll make some calls. It might be a fruitful way for you to spend your last few weeks here, Robert, rather than slowly rotting into your chair.’
    She smiled. Jericho had one of those dark moments of wanting to decapitate her with a painfully slow, blunt instrument, before displaying her head on a spike outside police headquarters in Bristol as a warning to other senior officers.
    ‘Sgt Haynes isn’t in?’ she asked. ‘I thought someone said he was here earlier.’
    ‘Had to go up to London,’ said Jericho.
    Dylan seemed to lean forward slightly in her seat.
    ‘May I ask why?’
    Jericho held her gaze for a moment. Here we go, he thought. It always comes to it. There wasn’t really much you could do without it coming to the attention of your boss.
    ‘An insurance case. I authorised it.’
    She pursed her lips, not at all convinced.
    ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Maybe, later, you could let me see the file.’
    ‘Of course.’
    As she said it, she realised that the words were probably futile. Jericho would either vacillate long enough that she’d forget, or else he would let her see some other case report that really would have required Haynes to go to London.
    He looked back and forth