Read Online Death on the Eleventh Hole by J. M. Gregson - Free Book Online Page B

significant villains. Rushton said, ‘You think she might have been killed by one of her drug contacts?’
    Malone shrugged. ‘You know the score. If she offended the wrong people, she might have been taken out by a contract killer. I’ll tell you what little I know, but you mustn’t make contact without consulting my super.’
    Rushton nodded. ‘Understood. I’ll pass that decision on to John Lambert.’ He realized that he was proud to name as his immediate superior someone everyone in the area knew.
    ‘That’s the way, Chris. Let the super take the decision!’ said Malone with a grin.
    ‘It’s what they’re paid for,’ said Rushton tartly. He told himself it was childish, but he knew he still wanted the boyfriend he had discovered to be their killer. ‘What makes you think this death may have a drugs connection?’
    Malone again gave that habitual check over his shoulder to make sure that he was not overheard. ‘I was in a pub by the docks last week. Nine days ago now: Monday the 30th of April.’ He watched Rushton note the details, then found he had to force himself to go on with the story: secrecy was a part of his being now. ‘Kate Wharton was in there. So was a supplier called Malcolm Flynn. He’s further up the chain than the girl was; he provided her with her supplies of coke, E and horse. Anyway, they had a row. I wasn’t near enough to hear the details, but it looked serious. Two of your blokes came into the pub; Kate Wharton took advantage of their arrival to get away. Flynn made a grab at her but missed, and he couldn’t follow her without exciting the interest of the plods, who’d seen the end of their argument.’
    ‘That’s it?’
    ‘That’s all there is. I didn’t see Kate Wharton again. I haven’t seen Flynn either, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t around.’
    ‘We’ll have a better idea of exactly when the girl died by tomorrow morning. But we already know it wasn’t on that Monday night. She was killed much later than that — around the end of the week.’
    Malone stood up. ‘If the drugs men chose to eliminate her, they’d take their time. In all probability, it wouldn’t be Flynn, unless he acted off his own bat. They’d use a contract killer.’
    That awful ‘they’: the barons behind the worst and most lucrative industry in the world; the men who had transformed a cheerful young Irish copper into this hunted, shabby creature who did battle with them. And into the kind of hero Chris Rushton knew he could never emulate. ‘Good to see you again, Danny,’ he said. And meant it.
    Danny Malone nodded and turned for the door of the temporary building, suddenly anxious, now that his news was delivered, for the anonymity of the dark underworld he inhabited.
    He did not shake hands with his old companion, nor look back at him from the door.
    ***
    ‘You were planning to go at sixty anyway. This is not really so different, is it, John?’
    John Lambert started with surprise at her words. Christine had been watching him through the kitchen window before she came out into the garden. He had stood for two long minutes with the secateurs in his hand, staring unseeingly over the top of the rose bed towards the sunset.
    He turned and smiled at her. ‘No, it’s not very different. But I suppose I was putting off my thinking about retirement until the last months before I was sixty. It’s just been thrust upon me before I was ready for it.’
    ‘And you’ve been told to go, rather than waiting for what you thought of as the natural time.’
    ‘Yes.’ As usual, he was surprised by her perception, though he should have expected it by now. ‘I feel I’ve been declared redundant, identified as surplus to requirements, instead of going in my own time.’
    ‘You shouldn’t feel that. I thought you said the CC said it was very much against his own wishes.’
    ‘Yes. And I believed him. It was a central directive, he said.’
    ‘So he had no choice.’
    ‘No. And it happens