Read Online Kind of Cruel by Sophie Hannah - Free Book Online Page A

the finish. He was going to find out who had murdered Katharine Allen and why, within a few hours if he was lucky. It felt good to be speeding towards that knowledge – towards anything, if he was honest. He hadn’t realised until today how much his own slowness had depressed him. He’d spent most of his life hesitating, imagining that he needed to win some kind of theoretical argument before acting. It seemed obvious to him now that a wiser strategy was to do almost anything, quickly. The wrong action leading to the wrong result was a swifter route to where you wanted to end up than no action and no result. Fast-forward motion was all that mattered.
    There had been none in the Katharine Allen investigation for nearly a month. Now, thanks to Simon, there would be. Impatience hummed in his veins, a force field of restlessness that wasn’t too far removed from extreme boredom, the kind that starts to fizz and explode around the edges, that would do anything rather than remain within its confines. Simon had no idea if his transformation into somebody more reckless than himself was permanent; Charlie had called it insanity, trying to talk him out of it. Running along the corridor to the CID room, Simon pictured himself strolling back in the opposite direction with a satisfied smile on his face once this was all over and done with. Normally when he ran, the speed of his body was balanced by a mind that hung back, tried to predict reactions and consequences.
    Where had that mind gone? Had thinking too much worn it out?
    He knew what he’d find in the CID room, and he found it: a dark, dank, mouldering atmosphere, devoid of hope, that made the well-lit second-floor office, with its contemporary furnishings, feel more like an airless stone-walled dungeon several miles underground. DI Giles Proust, who stood by the window with his back to the room, unwilling to look as if he might be waiting for anybody, could bring the subterranean dungeon vibe to any space that contained him simply by being in a bad mood.
    Every dungeon needs chains, and Simon could see the invisible ones wrapped around DS Sam Kombothekra and DC Colin Sellers as they sat tensely at the conference table on one side of the room. Both of them gave Simon a look as he walked in – the same look, though Sam and Sellers were as different as it was possible for two men to be, a look that said, What the fuck are you playing at, making him incandescent in advance? Everyone knew the score: if you had something to tell the Snowman, something he didn’t already know and might not like – and, since he didn’t like anything, this was the broadest of categories – you approached him tentatively, stammering your willingness to reveal all immediately and take his inevitable abuse as your deserved punishment for not having told him the crucial information sooner, before you knew it yourself. What you didn’t do was ring him as he was leaving work and already half an hour late for his supper, order him to stay put for an urgent meeting and refuse to say any more than that over the phone, as if you were the boss and he the underling.
    That was the score. Simon knew it as well as Sam and Sellers did. He wanted to laugh at the stupidity of anyone who had imagined he’d put up with it indefinitely. He stood in the doorway, staring at Proust’s rigid back. Real snowmen melted; not Proust. He generated his own ice from within.
    No one said anything. Sam sighed. Eventually Sellers said, ‘Waterhouse is here, sir.’
    ‘He knows I’m here.’ A challenge. Proust would ignore it.
    ‘Shall I try Gibbs on his mobile, see where he’s got to?’ Sellers asked.
    ‘DC Gibbs won’t be joining us,’ said Proust, still facing the window. For a second, Simon wondered if the inspector was about to hijack his meeting. Could Proust know already? How?
    ‘Who would like to guess what Waterhouse has done with Gibbs? Has he promoted him to Chief Constable, do we think? Fired him?’
    Simon