Read Online The Wild Heart by David Menon - Free Book Online Page A

was indeed alive and living under the identity of one Ian Taylor. Since he’d found out he’d been wound up about what to do about it. It was like someone had stepped over his own grave.  
         ‘ Yes’ said Jimmy ‘ Take a seat’. He closed the file he’d been reading ‘ Welcome back, Graham. How was the week?’
         ‘ Well there've been no further incidents, sir'.
         ‘ I know what all the reports say, Graham. I want to know how you and the family are. How’s your wife doing? The kids? ’.
         ‘ Sir, I appreciate the concern but I’d prefer to just get back to work. The week off has served its purpose’.
         Jimmy regarded his D.I carefully. ‘ And do you think you’ve had enough time?’ asked Jimmy
         ‘ Oh, yes’ said Graham.
         ‘ Because I can easily organise some more’
         ‘ No, sir. That won’t be necessary’.
         ‘ Right’ said Jimmy ‘ If you say so, D.I Armstrong’.
         ‘ I do, but thanks for the concern’.
         ‘ Is everything alright between you and me, Armstrong? That was the other reason I gave you the time off after all’.
         ‘ Sir, you’re the DCI and I’m the senior DI. I’m comfortable with that’.
         Like hell you are, thought Jimmy. 
         ‘ So if there’s nothing else, sir?’
         ‘ There is as a matter of fact, Graham. All the latest intelligence sweeps keep coming up with one name. Duncan Laurence. But when we checked him out it seems he was killed in a car crash on the Antrim Road on … ‘  he reached for the file he’d been reading and opened it once again ‘ … October 25th, 1992 and was buried a week later. He was only eighteen years old. His mother tends his grave every week’. He looked up from the file ‘ So is the name familiar to you?’
         Graham swallowed hard. ‘ No, sir. It’s not’.
         ‘ So you wouldn’t know why the name of a dead man keeps coming up now and why it seems he’s known by the loyalist paramilitary fraternity as the Judas?’
         ‘ No, sir. I wouldn’t’
     
         P.C Stuart Wheeler had been with the Greater Manchester force for the best part of six years. He was popular with his colleagues because he kept his head down and got on with the job of policing without any fuss or fanfare and without displaying any of the tactics of those who wanted to be ‘known’. His senior colleagues also rated him and he was preparing to go for his sergeant’s exam. He had his eye on a sergeant’s position that was coming up at the Didsbury cop shop. The Islington of South Manchester would suit him fine as he gained experience in preparation for his next move up the ladder.
         In the meantime he was a beat officer, covering the Ordsall district of Salford. He’d been asked to go up to the Chapel Street end and from the bridge on Victoria Bridge Street he looked down at the river that formed that stretch of the border between the two cities of Salford and Manchester. It was absolutely filthy. He’d just been to Paris for a weekend with his girlfriend Tracy and there they’d built an artificial beach running along the river Seine which he thought was a really cool idea. He and Tracy had spent a very pleasant afternoon soaking up the rays over a bottle of Claret accompanied by a bagette and a lump of very smelly but very delicious cheese. Poor Tracy, he thought. She tried her best to please him and most of the time she did. It’s just that he didn’t think she was ‘the one’. His head said she ticked all the right boxes but his heart was another matter altogether. They’d had a great weekend in Paris but for him there was something missing and he really should do the decent thing and let her go so that she could find herself someone else.
         He walked down the street with Manchester cathedral behind him and passed the old tax office on the left which was now a Premier Lodge hotel. At