Detective Chief Inspector Bob Perks nursed half a shandy in Scruffy Murphy’s and sat wishing he was more interesting. He didn’t want to be a cliché, like all those coppers on the telly, with broken marriages and drink problems, he just fancied . . . livening his lot up a little. He’d given quirks a go, but the truth was, he just wasn’t cut out for them. He wasn’t religious, he didn’t have any strange hobbies (or normal ones, come to that) and with the exception of Michael Bublé (who he adored) he thought most music was rubbish.
He wasn’t like some coppers he could mention. Rats and ballroom dancing, for pity’s sake.
Bob Perks’s life was comfortable and ordered, if a little on the dull side.
An unemployed good-for-nothing from Woodplumpton and an over-imaginative grease monkey from Mereside were about to change things.
When his mobile phone rang, Perks froze. He kept meaning to change the Bublé ringtone (‘Everything’ – his signature song), but could never bring himself to, because Bublé was the business. He shrugged at the pinched faces of the lunchtime regulars as if to say, I’m not an idiot, I’m a high-ranking police officer, so get over it.
‘Sir?’ DS Dominic Baxter was trying to sound efficient, but Perks could hear laughter in the background.
‘Better be good, Dom. I’m having my lunch.’
‘There’s been a robbery at the station, sir.’
‘So? Let Robbery handle it. We’re watching Draper.’
‘That’s just it, sir. It was Draper that got robbed.’
Perks put down his drink. ‘I’m listening, DS Baxter . . . ’
‘Well, Draper was talking to some bloke in the toilets.’
‘Of course he was.’
‘He puts the case down and a second bloke grabs it and legs it out the bogs. This other bloke hurdles over the turnstile, whacks somebody in the face with the briefcase while he’s at it, and . . . ’ Baxter hesitated.
Perks took another sip of beer. At least things were livening up. ‘Sounds like our luck’s in, Dominic. Now we can have a look in the case without blowing the surveillance. Not that we don’t have a pretty good idea what’s in it.’
‘We haven’t got the case, sir. The bloke who nicked it got away.’
There was more laughter in the background. Perks hissed into the phone. ‘What about Draper? Lost him as well?’
‘No, sir, we know exactly where he is. Fact is he had a little accident . . . zipped up in a bit of a hurry. He’s in Victoria Hospital.’
‘Let me get this straight, Baxter. Draper is about to meet Wayne Cutler and hand over the briefcase. After a threemonth operation, we’re about to tie the Cutlers to George Panaides’s murder and you watch some tuppenny ha’penny tea leaf waltz off with the evidence while Draper’s eyeing up some bloke’s todger?’
‘That’s about the size of it.’
‘Are you trying to be funny, Baxter?’
‘We didn’t want to blow our cover, sir.’
Perks took a deep breath. He seriously needed that quirk. A decent amphetamine habit, say.
‘This bloke that Draper was trying to pick up, you did work out that he might have been in on the briefcase snatch?’
‘We didn’t actually work that out, no, sir.’
‘Right.’
‘He sort of melted away in the melee.’
‘Melee?’
‘It means a confused fight or a scuffle—’
‘I know what it means, Baxter.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And Cutler never showed?’
‘Oh yeah, he showed.’
‘That’s something. You get pictures?’
‘Well, no. Actually it was him who got whacked in the face with the briefcase.’
Better make that a crack habit, Perks decided. A serious one.
‘He’s on his way to the Vic as well,’ Baxter said. ‘Concussion and a suspected broken collar bone.’
Perks recognised the laughter in the background now. DC Stuart Knight. He’d have the jumped-up little tit for breakfast.
He stood and wedged the phone between ear and shoulder as he struggled to put on his coat.
‘Nobody move, I’m coming in. And tell Knight to start ironing his uniform.’
‘We’ve got Draper, sir!’
‘Got him, how exactly?’
‘Well, we know where he is, at least.’
Perks was gobsmacked at the note of triumph in the DS’s voice. ‘And what do you propose to hold him on, Baxter?
Indecent exposure?’
‘It’s a thought, sir.’
‘He was in a public toilet, you idiot.’
Perks’s growl rendered the entire saloon bar silent. He couldn’t be arsed with more apologetic shrugging because he had work to do. He had to find the poor bugger who’d stolen that briefcase before Wayne Cutler did.
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