Whisper For The Reaper, Jack Gatland [good books for high schoolers txt] 📗

‘You promise?’ Jess looked up at her father, eyes brimming with fearful tears. Declan nodded, holding her even tighter.

‘I promise,’ he said and, as he spoke, he felt his own bottled up emotions burst out. The anger at Kendis’s death, the devastation at losing her, the frustrations of the closure of Temple Inn, the uncertainty of Monroe, all of these fears and worries came forth in a stream and, as Jess cried into his chest, Declan wept silently into her shoulder.

And then the moment was over.

Smiling faintly, wiping an eye, he looked down at her.

‘Chinese or Pizza?’ he asked. Because tonight was going to be a father and daughter night. A night of fast food and cheesy film watching.

He could start hunting serial killers tomorrow.

4

The Thin Blue Line

Anjli had started her career at Mile End Command Unit, but she never expected to end it there. Walking back into the office, she was unsurprised to find the place half empty; there was always something happening around here, and there were always officers walking in or out, finishing up or starting on the next big problem that had landed on the doorstep.

The last time Anjli had worked here though, it had been DCI Ford who controlled the teams; now she was gone, drummed out of the force on conspiracy to fraud, attempted murder and a ton of other charges. She’d always been a degenerate gambler, in hock to a variety of criminal empires including The Twins, Johnny and Jackie Lucas, who ran the East End like it was their personal playground, and when everything came crashing down around her, primarily because of Declan Walsh before he even met Anjli, the powers-that-be in the Met had attacked this with a ‘clean sweep’ and ‘new broom’ mentality. Everyone had been assessed, and either moved up, moved on or moved out. The only reason that Anjli hadn’t been caught up in this was because she’d already left by that point, joining Alexander Monroe after she beat the living crap out of a wife beater with links to the Twins.

And now she was back here. Like she’d never left.

A middle-aged man, tall, lean and dark-skinned with his black hair parted on the right, while at the same time left to its own devices, leaned out of the door to his office.

‘Oh, you do work here,’ he muttered before popping back into his office. Anjli sighed. DCI Esposito was a good detective, and definitely the one to clean up the shit that had been left for him, but he was also a pain in the neck jobsworth. Walking to the office, she leaned in.

‘Sorry Guv, just meeting an old colleague for lunch, and then spent the afternoon patrolling my new area, getting a feel for it,’ she explained. Esposito didn’t look up from his computer screen.

‘Crime doesn’t take lunch breaks,’ he replied. ‘Crime waits for detectives to take lunch breaks and then strikes.’

‘Did anything happen while I was out?’ Anjli asked, looking back into the office. It didn’t seem like anything big was going on out there.

‘No, but it could have.’

Anjli grinned. ‘Maybe crime took a lunch break today then, Guv.’

Esposito looked up from the monitor. ‘Sass, DS Kapoor? I don’t know how things were when you were at Monroe’s kindergarten, but here we work professionally. We don’t go out on wild adventures, or play out hunches, regardless of the consequences.’

‘No, Guv.’

Esposito sighed. ‘Go down to Victoria Park,’ he ordered. ‘There’s been a spate of vandalism there. See if you can’t nip it in the bud.’

‘Surely that’s a uniform job?’ Anjli groaned inwardly at this the moment she spoke. She knew she’d said the wrong thing even before Esposito rose from the chair.

‘If you’d prefer to be in a uniform when you do it, Miss Kapoor, I’m sure that can be arranged,’ he snapped.

Anjli nodded.

‘Very good, sir, I’ll go right away, sir.’

Anjli left the office of DCI Esposito and without even stopping at her desk, she continued out of the office and out into the late Mile End afternoon. Feeling the sun on her face, she fought back the urge to scream. Most of her lunch with Billy had been complaints about this new secondment, and she’d spent the last couple of hours trying to find reasons not to return. She wanted nothing more than to leave, to return to Temple Inn and the insanity that she’d gotten used to.

But the more she thought about it, the more she realised things would never be the same again. And if she stayed at Mile End, she’d end up killing someone.

Maybe it was time to consider alternate careers.

For the last seven years, Alexander Monroe had lived in a small detached house in Bexleyheath. It wasn’t much, as police salaries were never that high, but he was alone in it, and had all the space that he needed. Besides, he spent more time in the office than at home, so in effect it was nothing more than a posh and more lived in hotel room; a place where Monroe would return only to eat, watch TV and sleep.

Although there hadn’t been a lot of sleeping recently. The nightmares saw to that.

It had been a week since DI Frost had tried to murder him. A week, more to the point, since DI White drugged him in Birmingham, and he’d been dragged to a manor house in the middle of nowhere and tied to a pillar, expecting to be executed by an insane gang lord. To be brutally honest about this, it hadn’t been the best of weeks. And the days that had followed hadn’t been kind either. He still suffered from migraines connected to the head wound he’d received at Temple Inn, and he hadn’t slept over three hours in a night since then either.

They had placed him on sick leave; signed off to ‘get better’, but he was very much aware that this was office talk