Deadlight Read Online Free Page B

putting out like this?
    Winter, predictably tight-lipped, had shrugged the question aside and only when they’d turned up on her doorstep did Ellis realise that the old lady thought they were from Southern Electric. Quite why a power company should have been interested in mounting surveillance on the Patel store was anybody’s guess, but Doris Ackerman was charmed by Winter’s smile and happily let them get on with it.
    There were, of course, strict regulations about the use of private premises for covert operations. The standard risk assessment called for prior consultation and a sheaf of double-signature forms, but Winter had seldom let procedure stand between himself and the prospect of a modest result. If Hartigan wanted a bunch of scrotey kids off the plot, and if Cathy Lamb thought a stake-out might do the trick, then so be it. With the clock ticking on, and the wastelands of Somerstown a virtual no-go area, then the time had very definitely come for a spot of creative policing.
    Personally, Ellis had thought using the cross of St George to camouflage the camera a crap idea. Winter had spotted the big, grubby England flag in a Fawcett Road junk shop, arguing the price down to fifty pence, and back in the car Dawn couldn’t believe he really meant to use it, but the moment they’d turned into the Somerstown estate she’d had to give him the benefit of the doubt. These same flags were everywhere, hanging over balconies, draped in front windows, knotted to the rusting bodywork of builders’ pick-ups, part of the city-wide carnival that would doubtless carry Sven’s boys into the World Cup final.
    In three days’ time, England were playing Argentina. The entire country was readying itself for an epic encounter but here in Pompey – the city which had despatched the Falklands Task Force – the game alreadyreeked of expended cordite and hand-to-hand combat. Several gallons of lager and a goal or two were bound to kick off the usual mayhem, a source of some anticipatory excitement for the younger uniformed lads who enjoyed – in the parlance – a spot of robust policing.
    Winter was morose. The afternoon had come and gone and the expected excitements had failed to kick off. At the morning briefing, Cathy Lamb had put her money on a blag just after lunch. That way, the kids could be ready at school gates across the area, flogging nicked gear to other kids en route home. Accordingly, the corner shop had been rigged with discreetly mounted hi-res video cameras, and the till had been stuffed with marked notes. Only an outbreak of lawful behaviour could keep the likes of Winter, Ellis and the uniformed lads on the pursuit bikes out of the medals.
    For the umpteenth time, Winter phoned one of the DCs in the back-up unmarked Fiesta on his mobile. He’d long ago given up on the police net because these days the kids were way ahead in the comms war and routinely used scanners. He knew this because they, too, were nicked and regularly turned up on the shoplifting reports.
    The conversation was brief. Winter pocketed his mobile.
    ‘And?’ Ellis shot him a look.
    ‘Bored stiff. Plus they’ve been clocked again.’
    ‘Tell him to move.’
    ‘They’re going to.’ Winter glanced across at her. ‘You want some really bad news?’
    ‘About what?’
    ‘That dead screw in Niton Road.’
    Ellis nodded, saying nothing. The Coughlin murder in Niton Road had been common knowledge since mid-morning and there wasn’t a Pompey DC who wasn’t praying for secondment to Major Crimes. The suspicion that none of them – not Winter, not Ellis, not either of the guys in the Fiesta – had made it on to the squad wasgalling, to say the least. In overtime alone, a decent murder would pay for a couple of weeks in the Caribbean.
    ‘Well?’ Ellis said at last.
    ‘Bev Yates, for starters.’
    Dawn absorbed the news. At forty-five, Bev Yates was a veteran DC. His glory days as centre forward on the CID team were long gone and three