Free Dark Circles by Derek Fee Page A

Superintendent Spence, that Wilson was on the premises.
    Wilson pushed in the door of the squad room.
    ‘Morning, Boss,’ Eric Taylor looked up from his desk. ‘How did the Police College go? The female members of the class wet themselves, as usual.’
    ‘No, I’ve ascended into the old fart club. Time flies, or hadn’t that fact got through to you.’
    ‘You’re a cynic, Boss,’ Taylor said.
    ‘Where are the rest of them?’ He nodded at the empty desks.
    ‘The DS and Harry have gone to Grant’s house. Peter was working late last night. He called in to say that he’d be late.’
    Wilson could have kicked himself. He should have called Moira. He needed to see the scene himself.
    ‘A wee piece of news from Peter that’ll interest you,’ Taylor said. ‘Jock McDevitt’s back in town, he’s returned to the Chronicle , on the crime beat.’
    ‘That should stir things up a bit. Jock’s not known for abiding by the niceties.’
    Wilson’s office was at the end of the room. It was cordoned off from the rest of the room by a glass partition into which a glass door had been inserted. He looked around the small space. Maybe it was just a little too early for the pipe and slippers. This is the place that his dead wife referred to as ‘the womb’. He realised that he seldom thought of Susan these days. It was the same with his father. He had adored his father, but the memories fade. You think about the departed only when they force themselves into your memory through something they said, or regularly did. Like the word ‘womb’, it was used so often that he associated it with his departed wife. But the dead were dead, and he would leave them like that. Grandparents, father, wife, they no longer existed except in his memory, and then only fleetingly. He looked at the computer on his desk. It was time to wrestle with the contents of his inbox. He switched on his computer, and waited as the machine warmed up. Then, reluctantly, he pointed the curser at the email icon, and pushed the left-hand button on the mouse. The screen instantly filled with a continuous stream of unread emails. So this was the technology that was going to make humans redundant. He looked at the bottom of the screen – ‘123 unread emails’ stared back at him. Given his normal rate of dealing with emails, he reckoned it would take him a week to get rid of that lot. There was only one solution. He selected all the unread emails and pushed the delete key. He was working on the premise that any urgent unanswered emails would be followed up on. The rest were nonessential. Wilson had just finished his cleaning operation when his phone rang.
    ‘I heard you were in the house.’ Chief Superintendent Donald Spence’s voice was friendly but businesslike. ‘My office, five minutes.’
    Wilson knocked on CSU Spence’s office door exactly five minutes later. Spence was Wilson’s boss and sole supporter for the past five years. The two men stood shoulder to shoulder in all of Wilson’s trials with the hierarchy of the PSNI.
    ‘You look buggered,’ Spence said, as soon as Wilson entered his office. ‘I’d offer you the hair of the dog but it’s too early in the day. What’s the problem?’
    Wilson took the seat directly across from his superior. ‘Nothing for you to concern yourself with.’
    ‘That’s what they pay me for, to help people solve their problems. When you get to my exalted level—that is if you ever get to my exalted level—you’ll find that aside from lots of administration, there’s no real work to do. So I have to stick my nose into everybody’s business.’
    Spence’s secretary entered carrying a tray containing two coffee cups, a milk jug and a sugar bowl.
    ‘I hope they’re strong,’ Spence said as she deposited the tray on his desk.
    ‘The usual,’ she said and departed.
    Spence passed a cup to Wilson. ‘I suggest that you take it black.’
    Wilson took the cup and sipped the dark liquid. It was at least ten