Read Online Dead Man's Grip by Peter James - Free Book Online

pocket and answered it.
    It was Glenn Branson, sounding in work mode. ‘Yo, chief. How is she?’
    ‘OK, thanks. She’ll be fine.’
    Cleo looked up at him and he stroked her forehead with his free hand. Then she suddenly winced.
    He covered the mouthpiece, alarmed. ‘You OK?’
    She nodded and smiled thinly. ‘Bump just kicked.’
    Glenn Branson said, ‘We’ve had a call from Inspector James Biggs, Traffic. A fatal at Portland Road. Sound like a hit and run. They’re requesting assistance from Major Crime Branch as it looks like death by dangerous driving or possibly manslaughter.’
    As the duty Senior Investigating Officer for the week, Roy Grace was in charge of any Major Crime inquiries that came in. This would be a good opportunity for Glenn, whom he considered his protégé, to show his abilities, he decided.
    ‘Are you free?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘OK, organize a Crime Scene Manager for them, then go down yourself and help the rats. See if they’ve got everything they need.’
    Rats were known to eat their own young and traffic officers had long been known as the
Black Rats
. This dated back to the time when all police cars were black and was because of their reputation for booking other police officers and even members of their own family. Some of them today wore a black rat badge with pride.
    ‘I’m on my way.’
    As Grace put his phone back in his pocket, Cleo took his hand.
    ‘I’m OK, darling. Go back to work,’ she said. ‘Really, I’m fine.’
    He turned and looked at her dubiously, then kissed her on the forehead. ‘I love you.’
    ‘I love you too,’ she said.
    ‘I don’t want to leave you here.’
    ‘You have to get out there and catch bad guys. I want them all locked up before Bump is born!’
    He smiled. She looked so frail, so vulnerable, lying in this bed. With their child inside her. Cleo’s life and the life of their unborn child hanging on a thread more slender than he wanted to think about. Cleo was such a strong and positive person. It was one of the thousands of qualities about her that he had fallen in love with. It seemed impossible that things could go wrong. That their child could be threatening her life. She would get through this. She would be fine. Somehow. Whatever it took.
    It was Cleo who had given him his life back after the years of hell following Sandy’s disappearance. Surely she could not be taken away from him?
    He stared at her face, her pale, soft complexion, her blue eyes, her exquisite snub nose, her long, graceful neck, her pursed-lip grin of defiance, and he knew, he absolutely
knew
, it was all going to be OK.
    ‘We’ll be fine, Bump and me!’ she said, squeezing his hand, as if reading his mind. ‘Just a few teething problems. Go back to your office and make the world a safer place for Bump and me!’
    He stayed for another hour, waiting to get a chance to speak privately to Mr Holbein, the consultant gynaecologist, but the man was not able to add much to what he had already said. It was going to be a case of taking things one day at a time from now on.
    After saying goodbye to Cleo and promising to return later in the day, he drove out of the hospital and down to Eastern Road. He should have turned left and headed around the outskirts of the city back to his office. But instead he turned right, towards Portland Road and the accident.
    Like many colleagues in the Major Crime Branch, murders fascinated him. He’d long become immune to the most grisly of crime scenes, but road fatalities were different. They almost always disturbed him – a tad too close to home. But what he needed right now was the solace of his mate, Glenn Branson. Not that the DS, who was going through a marriage break-up from hell, was exactly a comfort zone much of the time at the moment, but he had at least been in a cheerier mood this morning than Grace had seen him in for a while.
    What’s more, Grace had a plan to lift him from his gloom. He wanted Glenn to try for promotion