The Devil Among Us, Ramsay Sinclair [black books to read .txt] 📗

of a five o’clock shadow that I’d ran out of time to shave. Due to mistakenly missing my alarm this morning, I’d rolled into the office about an hour late whilst my clothes were crumpled and I was worse for wear.

“Sir,” DC Taylor acknowledged, taken aback by the sight of the dead-man-walking appearance I had today. “How are you feeling?” The sprightly constable was keen to find out.

“Er, fine?” I questioned. The way in which DC Taylor asked made me think I should be anything but.

“Right.” His eyes flickered towards my neck. “It’s just that--”

“They told you about the gala,” I groaned and had hoped to keep my pride intact. The rest of the team were sneakily watching us from behind their desks. “It’s fine. Nothing more than a cut.”

Rebecca overheard and decided to get involved, though not unkindly. “It wasn’t fine,” she tutted which reminded me of the way Abbey would do. She handed over a waiting mug. “I thought you might need this.”

Although the station’s tea had a tendency to be watery, I was grateful nonetheless.

“The guy was off his head on alcohol. Apparently, the superintendent isn’t at all happy with the way he treated you,” she shared as she secured some brunette hair tightly in her ponytail.

Tony passed by with his head buried in a folder of sorts. “Let’s hope he gets fired or something like that,” he commented dryly.

It was nice to hear they’d rallied around and were trying to protect my honour. I had half expected them to be making jokes at my expense by now. Cillian was too busy nodding along with whatever Rebecca was saying to truly understand what we were talking about.

“I’d offer to punch him but you guys have already revolted against that idea.”

“Yes,” I quickly interjected before he showed us any more fighting demonstrations of the sort.

DC Taylor shook his head at our interaction. “Whilst you were all at the gala, I had another look over the neighbours’ statements. They reported someone lurking around outside sarge’s house for a while. They said the lurking person was a Caucasian male, roughly five foot seven. From what they could see, he had brunette hair and was wearing all black clothing.”

“You found out some valuable information,” I said. The leeway he’d made was quite impressive.

“That’s not all.” He held a pointer finger up to silence us. “I’ve checked that with the people entering and exiting in the hospital, round about the time of Flynn’s death. I had a look back at the footage of that very week too and, as you can guess, there are quite a few brunette males walking around the hospital.”

Tony peered over to the photographs DC Taylor was pulling from his briefcase. “And?”

“And,” DC Taylor showed us the shiny, coloured pictures, “I zoomed in on the faces of the visitors that recurred all week and whittled them down to four.”

The photographs were all roughly the size of our palms and showcased some very similar-looking men. Some of them were pictured staring down, whilst two were shown staring directly ahead.

“What’s his name?” I nonchalantly pointed to the specific picture of a man I recognised from the CCTV tape I’d already destroyed.

DC Taylor shrugged, as did the rest of the team. “I don’t know, but I’ll look into it and see what we can find out about them. They’d have to sign in as visitors so I’m sure I could grab a hold of the hospital log book somehow,” he muttered and continued to analyse the photos.

“I’ll get in touch with the hospital now,” Rebecca suggested and had already stalked off to dial their number. “I need to speak with the Guv too.” She tapped upon the phone. “Did you see him on your way in, sir?”

“No, why?” I finished the final dreg of tea, feeling re-energised and revitalised all at once. I couldn’t survive without a caffeine kick. If the world ran out of tea and coffee, our department would be the first to fall apart without it.

Tony slammed closed the files with a snap. “He hasn’t shown up today. We were worried when neither of you showed up, we thought something was going on,” he explained and scratched his beard.

I still had DCI Reid’s wallet to hand over to him. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t shown up yet? Perhaps he’d gone in search of it and was worried that his bank cards had been stolen.

“Ah. I found his wallet on the floor, so I’m going to put it in his office for when he finally gets here. Anyone else need anything running over whilst I'm on my way over there?” I offered politely.

Tony apologetically grimaced and handed over a whole new stack of paper. “Sorry. They’ve accumulated over the weekend.”

“It’s fine,” I said through my teeth, struggling to hold them without dropping the papers everywhere. “Is that it?” I inwardly crossed my fingers, seeing as I could barely move my hands.

Cillian rummaged in his desk drawers in search of another object to add to the ever-growing pile. He placed an old sandwich on top. “I owed the Guv lunch from a while ago. I forgot I’d bought it.”

“No,” I refused to take it much to his disbelief. “That’s disgusting. Throw it away before we get rats and mould growing in here. I bet your desk is congealed on the inside, and for the sake of my health, I'm going now.” I scoffed fondly at the boyish constable who seemed mildly upset by my accusations.

Rebecca took pity on Cillian, much to our mutual surprise. “I’ll help you clear your desk out if you’d like? In case the health authorities give us a surprise visit and decide to shut us down.” She grinned whilst holding the phone to her ear and awaiting a reply from the hospital.

I left them to it but grinned secretively to myself. Could this be the beginnings of young love? It certainly was in Cillian’s wildest fantasies but I wasn’t necessarily sure about Rebecca’s. She was an