Read Online A Need To Kill (DI Matt Barnes) by Michael Kerr - Free Book Online Page A

moved faster and faster.  Following a series of grunts and a strangled outcry, he finished up and stayed as still as a statue for almost half a minute, then withdrew and lay back on the bed, chest wheezing, due to both the exertion, and to lungs that were working at forty percent capacity, having suffered irreparable damage from thirty-five years of trying to filter the toxins inhaled by way of sixty cigarettes a day.
    “ I thought he was going to have a heart attack on the job,” Errol said.
    Pete grinned.  “Wishful thinking, Errol.  Although I can think of a thousand worse ways to go.”
    “ Did you notice if he was wearing a ring?” Errol said.  “I was too busy watching the action.”
    “ He was wearing nothing but a smile,” Pete replied.
    “ Are we gonna get a beer and popcorn and watch the lot, then?  Or give the boss a bell and let him see Marsha earning her daily bread?”
    “ I’ll give him the good news.  The punters in her address book will have a hard time denying their involvement, if they’ve been caught on candid camera.”
    After Pete switched off the video and put it back in the bag, they went into the bedroom and quickly found the space on a shelf in the wardrobe where the camera had been set up to capture all that took place on top of the duvet.  Only an inch gap between two of the mirror-faced doors would have been necessary to take the footage.
    Pete sat on the edge of the bed and punched up Matt’s number on his mobile phone.
    “ Yeah, Pete?”
    “ We got some great home movies to watch, boss.  The resolution of this stuff is unbelievable.  You can see the hairs on―”
    “ I get the picture.  Meet me back at base in a couple of hours and we’ll go through it.”
    Matt had been about to phone Airscape and set up an interview with Colin Westin, who was entered in Marsha’s address-come-appointment book as being due to see her on the night that she had died.  The call from Pete decided him to hold fire.  Westin would most likely be on video, and would without doubt be more approachable if he knew there was photographic evidence linking them.  Matt decided to have another coffee and maybe take it downstairs, where he could go outside and enjoy a smoke with it.  It crossed his mind that he might quit the coffin nails.  Only one of his team, Dave Brent, smoked. It was getting that he felt like a bloody criminal when he lit up.  There was a stigma attached to it now.  Maybe he only still indulged because it was an almost taboo practise.  There was a perverse pleasure in bucking the system.  Beth would read a lot into that.  She always looked for the thinking behind the reason for any action.  And maybe he was just pretty shallow.  He took it one day at a time as a rule, and didn’t worry too much about a future he would only see a limited amount of.  He wished Beth could loosen up a tad.  She spent too much time looking for problems that might or might not exist.  Best to negate them one at a time when they arose.
    The phone on the desk next to him rang, startling him out of thoughts that would no doubt have soured his mood for the rest of the day.
    “Barnes.”
    “ My office, now,”  Tom said with an urgency implying that all was not well; that the fan was on high speed, and about to be hit by a large amount of the brown stuff.
    “ I was about to step out for a smoke,” Matt said, testing the water.
    “ Don’t even think about it,” Tom came back, his words loaded with unspoken threat.
    Matt killed two birds with one stone.  Instead of taking the lift, he walked past it, out through the fire door into the stairwell.  Fired up a cigarette as he mounted the stairs.  His leg was complaining.  He ignored it, refused to limp, ground out the cigarette on a step and walked out into a corridor that had a higher grade of carpet than the one on his floor.
    “ Sit down and listen up,” Tom said as Matt strolled into his office.
    Matt dropped into a chair.