Roll With It Read Online Free Page B

enough to carry on a mountain bike.
    Playtime over, a couple of squad members wandered over to commiserate. Duncan even slung a big arm over Laver’s shoulder. ‘You’ll be right, mate. The inquiry will be a formality and you’ll be back, hating the job as much as ever.’
    ‘Maybe,’ Laver replied.
    He finished packing. Simone, the department PA, appeared at his desk. ‘I’m really sorry, Rocket. But look at the bright side, you’ll have plenty of time to do your Christmas shopping.’
    Laver stared at her, then decided she was serious; she was sincerely trying to lighten his mood. ‘Thanks, Simone. Pity a bike doesn’t have anywhere to carry the parcels, eh?’
    She played with one of his now-defunct Major Crime business cards, lying near a coffee mug full of pens. ‘Well, I’ll miss you, anyway, Rocket. I hope you’re back here soon.’
    Laver winked. ‘She’ll be right. Just don’t let the bastards give away my desk.’ He turned to the room. ‘I’ll see you bunch of low-life desk-bound no-hopers when I’ve got a better suntan.’
    ***
    Jake slumped in his swivel chair. He was sure it could win some sort of prize for a lack of ergonomics if he ever got around to submitting it to the United Nations’ Physics Institute or whoever it was that was in charge of RSI and that sort of thing. He pondered whether they would hand out anti–Nobel Prizes for design.
    The office was gloomy, a crooked but effective white blind warding off the bright sunshine from outside. Jake’s left leg was stretched and splayed to the front and side of his old oak desk. His right leg was bent underneath, twisting his hips so that his weight was balanced heavily on his right shoulder against the back of the ludicrously uncomfortable chair. An electric fan hummed and spun on top of the filing cabinet, listlessly shuffling the warm air around the tiny office.
    Four small black-and-white TV monitors silently beamed out the findings of surveillance cameras placed unobtrusively around the supermarket’s entrance and aisles, flicking occasionally from one camera to another. One screen showed a young woman pushing a trolley past the ice-cream fridge; next it switched to an old lady with a set jaw scrutinising the fine print on the back of a can of baked beans; now to a mother trying desperately to control two rampant toddlers. She finally got a hand on both of them just as an even younger child, riding in the trolley basket, reached out and swiped three packets of cornflakes to the floor. In aisle five, a shoplifter may as well have been loading up a wheelbarrow for all the notice Jake was paying to security. Jake didn’t see a thing. He was staring at nothing in particular, his empty gaze landing somewhere about halfway across the blotter pad on his desk. The only movement came from his right hand, twisting and turning a ballpoint in clockwise and anti-clockwise circles.
    She’d been there again this morning. Materialising at the end of his thirty-fourth lap, she’d still been swimming when he’d had to leave for work.
    He couldn’t believe he had never seen her enter or leave the pool in all those weeks of admiring from afar. He never seemed to see her until those legs materialised in front of his goggles. Part of the problem was that she never arrived until at least 8 am, and Jake couldn’t hang around long enough to see what she looked like or where she went when she got out of the pool. Barry Paxton, his boss, was enough of a bastard that Jake couldn’t afford to make himself late for work by hanging around the pool. The time clash only left him those few moments when they happened to be together at the end of the lane, but how do you land a pick-up line, even open a conversation, while dripping wet and gasping for air? Jake had never had much luck in green-light pick-up situations like late at a party or one-on-one in a nightclub, so the thought of making a move in the real world was beyond comprehension. The ballpoint