Driving into Darkness (DI Angus Henderson 2) Read Online Free

each new contract was a triumph, and 12-hour days were the norm. These days, growth had slowed down to regular but unspectacular single digits and almost all of the major mobile and laptop manufacturers were their customers, and it was hard not to see his work colleagues as a bunch of over-paid, squabbling kids who needed the occasional boot up the arse to wake them up.
    On the ground floor and behind a smoked, glass-topped desk, sat the immaculately coiffured Mrs Carla Roberts. She represented the modern face of security, replacing the stoic, uniformed and tattooed, ex-army sergeant-major, and while her repertoire of skills did not stretch to a punch in the chops or a forearm lock, her faultless diction and impeccable sense of style would dissuade any feckless intruder from chancing their arm.
    ‘I’ll bid you farewell, Carla. I’m off to see Sir Mathew.’
    ‘You're not coming back to the office tonight, Mr Lawton?’
    ‘I’m afraid not. Bye.’
    ‘Goodbye Mr Lawton.’
    He stepped out of the building and walked to the car park at the rear of Markham House and climbed into his car. It was a short, effortless drive to Holland Road but the same could not be said for the climb up to Melanie Shaw’s flat, as it was on the fourth floor of a restored Victorian building without a lift.
    When she opened the door, she greeted him as she always did, as if she had not seen him for weeks and gave him a long, sensuous kiss. If his hormones and everything else had been dulled during the last management meeting, with all the dreary descriptions of project milestones and coding problems, they were alive now and jigging with delight.
    ‘Hello William,’ she said, her hot breath wafting into his ear as her beautiful even and pearly-white teeth nibbled at it.
    ‘Hello Melanie, it’s good to see you.’
    ‘Did you have trouble getting away?’
    ‘Oh no, the old faithful, ‘I’m going to see the chairman’ never fails.’
    ‘Ha. How long have we got?’
    ‘I’ll have to head home at seven.’
    ‘We’ve no time to lose, then,’ she said as she walked into the bedroom.
    Lawton loosened his tie and followed her leisurely, swinging rear. It reminded him of his grandmother’s antique pendulum clock but there was nothing old-fashioned about the way Melanie performed between the sheets.
     

FOUR
     
     
     
     
    He rushed out of his office clutching a slim folder, now late for his next appointment. DI Henderson was due to chair another meeting of the Operation Poseidon team, the inappropriate name allocated to the inquiry into high-value car thefts by the police computer, a moniker that should have reserved for a boat nicking scam or drug shipments being smuggled aboard cruise liners.
    While the car thieving case was an annoying thorn in the side of Sussex Police, it had not yet reached the level of a major investigation. It was unlikely to do so in the light of a number of more serious crimes on his plate and on those of senior colleagues, and so his small team of eight could easily fit into Meeting Room 4, a small pokey room without any windows.
    It had been a long day. He had been seated at his desk by seven, an hour earlier than usual as recurrent toothache kept him awake most of the night and he couldn’t see the point of spending any more time lying in bed or moping around his flat. On those rare occasions when he made it in before the rest of the team, he often got more done as there were fewer phone calls and even fewer interruptions, but what started out as a promising day work-wise had rapidly degenerated as his day had filled up with a succession of meetings.
    By nine-thirty the first of many visitors had trooped in and out his office, offering updates on their progress, or the lack of it in the case of the car-jacking investigation, and after lunch there had been a major get-together of senior officers and the Chief Constable when they listened to his latest thinking on Community Policing and improving relations