The Lost Sister Read Online Free

didn’t like people to use my first name. I used to kid that I even made my parents call me McNee. No one’s ever been sure how serious I am on that point. And Mum and Dad aren’t around any more to ask. Ernie was grinning at me, like he’d made the slip on purpose. Wanting to see if I was still the same man he had known.
    In some ways, I hoped not.
    â€œYou were always good with wild guesses,” I said. “Hunches, too.”
    He snorted, put his hands behind his head as he leaned back in the swivel chair. “If I don’t give you access, you’re going to poke around anyway.” Not a question.
    I couldn’t say anything in response. Opted for a half-shrug.
    He said, “You were a tenacious little prick even as a constable. One of the things I liked about you.” An accusation?
    Fuck him if it was. He wasn’t my superior any more. Nothing he could do to me that hadn’t been done. So why was I still on the defensive?
    â€œThe same can’t be said for others.”
    He got it. “Lindsay’s not attached to this case. Oh, I know he’d be all over it. You know how he is since he had his wee lad, but a case like this requires someone with a…subtle touch.”
    Subtlety wasn’t one of Lindsay’s traits. A lot of people in the department talked about how he got results, as though that one simple fact somehow excused the fact he was an unreconstructed arsehole.
    In the police, results wash away all other sins.
    I pressed on: “How much access do I get?”
    Was he happy that I’d avoided airing my opinions on Lindsay? Did I see a smile play about the DCI’s usually tight lips? Christ, time was I might have been able to tell. He had been my self-appointed mentor and now…now we were strangers. Alien to each other in the worst possible ways. He said, “How much do you want?”
    â€œMuch as I can. All the way. I need to know when there’s a break. What the break is. What it means. I need to be there in meetings, observing interviews, all that good stuff.”
    â€œYou’re asking a lot for a courtesy.”
    I gave it a shrug. Emphasis; making sure he got the point. “Like you said, I’m a tenacious prick.”
    â€œJesus, what is it with you? You’re bored, don’t have anything else to do?” He shook his head, leaned forward. “When I tell you to back off, you do it. Don’t think I don’t know about you and David Burns. I don’t want this getting personal. There’s a girl’s life at stake. So when I say…that’s the condition.”
    I hesitated long enough to worry him. Then I said, “That’s the condition.” Shot him a smile, too. Playing with him just a little.

    First time I met Ernie Bright, he called me up to give evidence on an internal police matter. A DI by the name of Griggs had got himself in hot water over his handling of a murder case. I’d been present at the scene when Griggs had taken charge. Didn’t do much more than guard the door at the crime scene. Standing around the hall of a halfway house keeping away the lookie-lous and the gawpers who came out to see what was going on.
    All of them wondering, who finally got killed. And was it by their own hand or someone else’s?
    It has been a shitty detail, but I followed the chain of command in those days. And why not? One of these days, I figured I’d be the one asking some poor sod to do the dirty work. The copper’s version of karma.
    I remember waiting to go in for the interview, sitting on a felt-covered chair in the hall outside and sweating beneath my uniform. Not knowing what to do. Whether there was a right or wrong way to approach this.
    I’d picked up fast on the politics of policing. As with every other job, there were ways of approaching affairs that had little to do with the work and everything to do with saying the right things to the right