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as Regis gave her a quick look. Damn. The truth was, she missed having Marcus Donleavy in charge. She both liked and trusted him – as opposed to the man from the Met, whom she simply couldn’t get a handle on. She’d have to be careful not to let her loyalties show though. Not that she was worried Mike Regis would shaft her. Still. Office politics was like dynamite. It needed to be handled carefully. ‘Long day,’ she excused herself briefly.
    ‘Fancy a drink?’ he asked quickly.
    ‘Sorry, not tonight. Still got a lot to do.’ She briefly told him about the raid – all cops liked to hear a success story – and by the time she’d finished, noticed that Frank Ross was coming back up the stairs. Odd, she’d have thought he would be well on his way by now. He practically supported his local boozer single-handedly. ‘Another time, maybe?’ She turned back to Regis, trying not to sound too eager. Or too pathetic.
    Mike shrugged. ‘Sure, why not.’
    Hillary watched him go and sighed. She wasn’t sure why she was so attracted to him. He was nearing fifty and had thinning dark hair but very attractive green eyes. Perhaps it was because he thought the same way she did, and she liked the way he was at ease in his own skin. But then again perhaps she was fooling herself. After slapping him down in no uncertain terms just a few months ago, he’d probably already found someone else.
     
    Frank Ross waited until Raleigh’s secretary had gone, then slipped quietly into the super’s outer office. He went straight to the coat rack and squatted down. Shit. No sign of it. He crouched down and looked under the heating unit. He wassweating, but that had nothing to do with the hot air blasting from the painted radiator.
    ‘Lost something, DS Ross?’
    Frank jumped, inwardly swore, then got up with as much dignity as his well-padded frame would allow.
    ‘No problem, guv. Just lost my car keys. Thought they might have fallen out of my pocket up here.’
    Detective Superintendent Jerome Raleigh looked at Ross and smiled thinly. ‘I can hear them jangling in your back trouser pocket from over here, Frank,’ he said flatly. And opened the door behind him. ‘Come on through.’
    Frank gulped and followed, frantically thinking up a good lie. One thing was for sure: no matter what, he was not about to tell the super that he’d misplaced a gun.
     
    Hillary filled in the last form and shook her aching fingers. Her only consolation was that, somewhere, Dobbin was suffering from the same plight. Paperwork was the bane of every copper’s life. She glanced across the open-plan office and saw that the light was still on in Mel’s cubicle. She wondered if Janine was in there with him, or if she’d gone home. Word had it she was almost living permanently now at Mel’s des res in ‘The Moors’, Kidlington’s answer to Belgravia.
    She’d just slipped into her coat when she heard the phone ring in Mel’s cubicle, then his voice answering. She grabbed her bag and was walking fast to the door when she heard him call her name.
    Damn. Not fast enough.
    She turned and tried to look interested. Mel smiled wearily, hardly fooled. ‘We got a call from a village called Lower Heyford. Know it?’
    Hillary did, vaguely. She’d visited it once on a previous case.
    ‘Looks like a suspicious death – almost certainly murder. A local would-be politician. Want it?’ Mel asked, this time with a genuine grin.
    Hillary nodded, all sense of tiredness abruptly gone. In truth, it had been a stupid question.
    She always wanted murder.

chapter two
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    DCI Mel Mallow watched Hillary head for the door and smiled grimly before turning back into his office and reaching for the phone. He called his own number first, and waited. As he did so, his eye fell on one particular photograph standing on his desk. It was not of his ex-wife, or even of his son, but a picture of himself and Detective Chief Superintendent Marcus Donleavy. It had been taken many