Broken Lines Read Online Free Page A

painting the Forth Bridge: you’d barely finished when it was time to start again. For another, although you could always find something to criticize about the way Donovan did his job he did it well. He put himself out, he got results, in all the important ways he was a good policeman. Whenever Shapiro was dragging him over the coals, which he did at regular intervals, half-way through he started feeling foolish because what he was complaining about didn’t matter as much as the things Donovan got right.
    â€˜How’s the head now?’ he asked.
    â€˜Fine,’ said Donovan. ‘I’ll be in to work tomorrow.’
    It was Monday evening, they were talking in the saloon of Donovan’s boat on the Castlemere Canal. In January only a handful of boats remained on the water and only one other was occupied so Broad Wharf seemed like a ghost town. Shapiro had left his car on Brick Lane and cut through on the footpath. It always made him nervous, leaving his car so close to The Jubilee. The half-dozen streets of black Victorian brick made a sort of walled city which much of Castlemere’s criminal fraternity, the Dickens clan among them, called home. In fact, the car was quite safe. The nice thing about old-fashioned criminals, as distinct from the yuppie kind who used mobile phones and joined golf clubs, was that they had a sort of respect for the enemy. They called him Mr Shapiro. They even called Donovan Mr Donovan.
    â€˜There’s no rush,’ said Shapiro. ‘Apart from Mikey the ungodly are still on their holidays.’
    â€˜Just the same.’ Donovan only took today off because the doctor insisted. He hated being sidelined. He seemed to think crime would grind to a halt if he wasn’t there.
    Shapiro nodded and struggled to his feet. Donovan favoured low furniture because of Tara’s low ceilings, but Shapiro had reached an age and a shape which called for a nice upright chair with stout arms. ‘Good enough. I just thought I’d stick my head in, see how you were.’
    Donovan uncoiled from the low sofa like a snake rising; behind him, shadow-silent, rose the dark shape of the dog.
    Shapiro said, ‘Lost any fingers yet?’
    Donovan gave his saturnine grin. ‘Him? He’s a pussycat.’
    â€˜Sure he is,’ agreed Shapiro. ‘Till one morning you’re late with his breakfast.’ He smiled into his chest. ‘Never mind, those big white gloves cover a multitude of sins.’
    Donovan didn’t understand. ‘Big white gloves?’
    â€˜The ones for directing the traffic.’
    Detective Inspector Liz Graham was in charge of the investigation, and a baffling case it was too. One minute the room had been full of valuables, a flick of the curtain later they were all gone. The open boxes full of diamonds and rubies, the stacks of gold ingots, the strings of pearls: all vanished as if by magic.
    At least she had a suspect: a thirteen-year-old wearing a cut-down Lurex evening dress and a pink velvet turban. She herself was wearing a plastic helmet held under her chin by a length of elastic. ‘Ali Baba,’ she intoned solemnly, ‘I’m arresting you for the theft of the Wazir’s treasure. You do not have to say anything, but I must caution you that if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court …’ One thing about Castle High School pantomimes: they were good on detail.
    Another thing about them was that, by and large, the adults involved enjoyed them more than the children. More into pop groups than Middle Eastern myths, they went along with the nonsense amiably enough because it amused their parents and teachers and was a high point of the Christmas holidays for younger siblings. For themselves, they’d just as soon have been in Philadelphia.
    After the children had been packed off home, those unencumbered by sprogs with bedtimes gathered round some bottles of wine and some