Read Online Cold Kill by David Lawrence - Free Book Online

shoulders. He said, ‘You’re right. I feel like shit. I’m really ill.’
    Stella flapped a hand at him. ‘Get out of here, Andy, for Christ’s sake; you’re a fucking germ factory.’
    Mike Sorley glanced through the interview transcripts, stopping briefly to read more carefully the passages that Stella had highlighted.
    He said, ‘He’s taking the piss.’
    â€˜I know. Still think he did it?’
    â€˜He had information not contained in any press release. I like him for it, yes.’
    â€˜Okay, well, we’ve had him for fourteen hours. He’s due another rest period. It looks like I’ll be asking you for an extension. And a search warrant: we’ve got his address.’
    â€˜There was a time,’ Sorley said dolefully, ‘when a confession would do it for you. The guy owned up: that was that; a couple of hours in court, then straight to the gallows. Case solved, on to the next.’
    â€˜The good old days,’ Stella observed.
    â€˜One less on the streets.’
    â€˜And if he didn’t do it?’
    Sorley shrugged. ‘They’ve all done something.’

8
    Between the street and the treble-racked, four-sided arrangement of high-rise blocks that made up the Harefield Estate was a no man’s land that Stella thought of as the demilitarized zone. The DMZ. It was a little waste land littered with waste objects that spoke of wasted lives: gutted cars; white goods leaking their CFCs; soft furnishings soaking up the weather; a ground-cover of fast-food cartons and used syringes and condoms and cola cans that had doubled as crack pipes. The tower blocks were arranged round a circular space known locally as the bull ring. When Stella had lived there, her mother would send her down eighteen storeys to the convenience store for groceries and a quarter of vodka. Nowadays, the shopfronts in the bull ring were boarded and graffitied, save for a KFC and a liquor store. You could still get the vodka.
    For some, Harefield was simply a place to live: they got by as best they could by hearing nothing, seeing nothing and saying less. They behaved as if they were under martial law; under curfew. For others, the place was a vast business-incentive scheme. The businesses in question included dealing drugs, dealing flesh, dealing cards. There were specialist outlets for passports and visas. Armourers were finding business so hot they were waging a price war. The dealers were on the landings, the whores were on a rota system, and the spirit of free enterprise, like the spirit of Christmas, was in the air, bringing the scent of money.
    Two vehicles stopped in the bull ring: the first a car carrying Stella, Pete Harriman and Jack Cuddon, who was doubling for Andy Greegan, the second a people carrier bringing a forensics team. Some spare uniforms would be along later to secure the flat. Stella got out and felt a little lurch of alarm, as if the ground had dipped beneath her. The bull ring was where Nike Man had died – Stella backed up against a car, a second man closing in, and a hot reflux of fear rising in her gullet. The wheel-nut crank had been in the well between the seats, and she had swung it without picking her target. A couple of inches higher and her man might have survived; and couple of inches lower, and he’d have shrugged it off for sure.
    She looked up and saw faces on the high walkways, the estate’s foot-soldiers in their uniform of estate chic: baggies, hoodies, beanies. They stood unmoving, watching, confident on home ground. Cops came to the estate often, but they would be Drugs Squad or Vice Squad or the SO19 gun team: and mostly they would be expected. The Harefield Estate operators understood that good business practice involved a little industrial espionage. A pay-off here in exchange for a phone call there and, overnight, product would be shifted. Product and livestock. These cops weren’t here to raid. The soldiers