Snatched From Home: What Would You Do To Save Your Children? (DI Harry Evans Book 1) Read Online Free
Author: Graham Smith
gut doubling him over. A quick combination of blows left Carlisle Hat on his knees with any vestiges of a fight long gone from him.
The fifth man pushed himself from the door frame as Ivy Arms ran towards him, intent only on making his escape. Ivy Arms reached out a muscled arm to brush aside the fifth man.
The fifth man shrugged his way inside the arm to deliver a stunning head butt, sending Ivy Arms crashing to the floor with a reverberating thump.
‘He-Man one, fuckwit nil.’ The fifth man raised his arms like a boxer after a winning bout and did a little Ali shuffle.
He then pulled his left hand from his coat pocket, showing a warrant card to Campbell, identifying himself as DI Harry Evans.
Evans was the man Campbell would be replacing now that this case was dealt with.
A bunch of PCs charged in the shop. ‘How many are there, guv?’
‘Four. They’re here, here and here. Oh yeah, there’s one here as well, Sergeant,’ Evans indicated each of the gang to the policemen who were charging into the shop, with a hard kick timed to match each call of ‘here’.
Chapter 5
Sitting alone in his flat, Evans laid down his glasses and the faded letter he was reading. He’d read it a thousand times before. With each reading it made perfect sense, yet at the same time it made no sense at all.
The letter was from the love of his life. The one he’d forsaken all others for. She’d made him the happiest man alive the day he’d married her. They’d been married for just two years when she’d written the letter.
When Janet had told him she was expecting, he thought his heart would burst from his chest and wrap its arms around her such was the love he felt. The child he hadn’t known he wanted was due to make an appearance, but he’d never meet his son or daughter.
Janet was twelve years his junior and before he’d met her, he’d given up any hope of marriage and children. Like almost every copper he knew, he’d had a series of failed relationships. The job had seen to that. Few women would tolerate the string of broken dates, the endless uneaten meals and telephone calls at all hours of the night.
Janet had. She had embraced it, knowing it was what made him the man he was. Her father had been an inspector, her upbringing conditioning her to the vagaries of life with a dedicated copper.
Yet here he was alone. Single. Empty. Reading and rereading the last note she had written him.
His detective’s mind had analysed her words and cross-examined her motives countless times. Every time he read it, he understood why she had chosen to leave him, but he could never understand why she actually had.
Five months had passed since she’d written that damned letter and still he couldn’t accept she was gone from his life. That he’d never see his child grow up. At his age, he’d long ago given up on finding love and starting a family. Janet was his last and only chance.
His fifty-first birthday was charging over the horizon at him and he knew that once again his life would change forever. After thirty years of service, detective inspectors like him were retired from front-line policing. Of course, they didn’t call it retired any more and had some fancy management term for it. But that didn’t change anything in his mind. A sack of shit would always be a sack of shit, despite some desk-bound fuckwit calling it a manure-transfer system.
Most of the coppers he’d known over the years had been only too glad to reach retirement, many of them taking it after reaching their thirty years. Those who didn’t want to retire stayed on in an office-based role supporting the front-line troops.
He couldn’t envision a worse fate. He would sooner retire than be tied to a desk, reading other people’s reports. A people person at heart, he would find life as a desk jockey akin to imprisonment.
DI Harry Evans knew countless hundreds of people around his native Cumbria and they all knew him. They knew he was hard but
The fifth man pushed himself from the door frame as Ivy Arms ran towards him, intent only on making his escape. Ivy Arms reached out a muscled arm to brush aside the fifth man.
The fifth man shrugged his way inside the arm to deliver a stunning head butt, sending Ivy Arms crashing to the floor with a reverberating thump.
‘He-Man one, fuckwit nil.’ The fifth man raised his arms like a boxer after a winning bout and did a little Ali shuffle.
He then pulled his left hand from his coat pocket, showing a warrant card to Campbell, identifying himself as DI Harry Evans.
Evans was the man Campbell would be replacing now that this case was dealt with.
A bunch of PCs charged in the shop. ‘How many are there, guv?’
‘Four. They’re here, here and here. Oh yeah, there’s one here as well, Sergeant,’ Evans indicated each of the gang to the policemen who were charging into the shop, with a hard kick timed to match each call of ‘here’.
Chapter 5
Sitting alone in his flat, Evans laid down his glasses and the faded letter he was reading. He’d read it a thousand times before. With each reading it made perfect sense, yet at the same time it made no sense at all.
The letter was from the love of his life. The one he’d forsaken all others for. She’d made him the happiest man alive the day he’d married her. They’d been married for just two years when she’d written the letter.
When Janet had told him she was expecting, he thought his heart would burst from his chest and wrap its arms around her such was the love he felt. The child he hadn’t known he wanted was due to make an appearance, but he’d never meet his son or daughter.
Janet was twelve years his junior and before he’d met her, he’d given up any hope of marriage and children. Like almost every copper he knew, he’d had a series of failed relationships. The job had seen to that. Few women would tolerate the string of broken dates, the endless uneaten meals and telephone calls at all hours of the night.
Janet had. She had embraced it, knowing it was what made him the man he was. Her father had been an inspector, her upbringing conditioning her to the vagaries of life with a dedicated copper.
Yet here he was alone. Single. Empty. Reading and rereading the last note she had written him.
His detective’s mind had analysed her words and cross-examined her motives countless times. Every time he read it, he understood why she had chosen to leave him, but he could never understand why she actually had.
Five months had passed since she’d written that damned letter and still he couldn’t accept she was gone from his life. That he’d never see his child grow up. At his age, he’d long ago given up on finding love and starting a family. Janet was his last and only chance.
His fifty-first birthday was charging over the horizon at him and he knew that once again his life would change forever. After thirty years of service, detective inspectors like him were retired from front-line policing. Of course, they didn’t call it retired any more and had some fancy management term for it. But that didn’t change anything in his mind. A sack of shit would always be a sack of shit, despite some desk-bound fuckwit calling it a manure-transfer system.
Most of the coppers he’d known over the years had been only too glad to reach retirement, many of them taking it after reaching their thirty years. Those who didn’t want to retire stayed on in an office-based role supporting the front-line troops.
He couldn’t envision a worse fate. He would sooner retire than be tied to a desk, reading other people’s reports. A people person at heart, he would find life as a desk jockey akin to imprisonment.
DI Harry Evans knew countless hundreds of people around his native Cumbria and they all knew him. They knew he was hard but
Readers choose
Andy Mulligan
Roy Macgregor
H.M. Ward
Mandy Harbin
Kelli Maine
Cassidy Cayman
Deborah Bladon
Peggy Eddleman
Kristin Leigh