The Score Read Online Free

The Score
Book: The Score Read Online Free
Author: Howard Marks
Tags: Fiction, thriller, Suspense, Mystery & Detective, Women Sleuths, Crime, Drug Gangs
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boat, his hand reaching instinctively into his hoody’s front pocket. Looking at the original on the screen, she thought he was over-acting it a touch. The first shot caught Tulle in the shoulder. He staggered backwards like a drunk. On the second impact, he fell on the gangplank and lay still. Tubes of light flashed, the torches of the black-clad Armed Response, their faces masked, closing in around him. Quickly they were on him, and he was secured with plastic cuffs and left in place for the medics.
    Then the actress playing Kyle appeared. Colleagues had levelled many accusations at DCI Gwen Kyle but nobody could ever call her a coward. Because although the ARs had taken out one gang member, there were still three more, and judging by the actions of the first, they were all armed. The woman stood now in full view of the gang, in full view also of the cameras. She was shouting at Morgan to surrender. In front of her, the ARs had fanned out in a semicircle, their Heckler lights trained on the men on the deck. Everything seemed to slow down. Kyle stood on the edge of the water. In the darkness there was a spark above her, rising into a long flame.
    Later it had come out that Morgan had threatened to blow the boat and everything with it, but somehow in those desperate seconds Kyle had persuaded him to surrender. He had come quietly along with his lieutenant, Mike Tulle. Only the fourth man, one of Morgan’s soldiers known as Diamond Evans, had swum for it. On cue, there was a splash. The AR actors immediately tramped the gangplanks, swinging torches across each bobbing inch of water and peering down the sides of the marina’s every boat. The Kyle actress loudly called for back-up and for the entire marina to be locked down and searched. But to no avail. Somehow, in the darkness and the confusion, lucky Diamond Evans had got away.
    Cat remembered how the press briefings had played down the escape of the fourth man, a minor player who had only recently joined Morgan’s crew. The main prize had been the capture of Morgan himself, a fugitive who’d been on the run for ten years. He was that rare thing, a major criminal with no previous record, a figure so elusive that some, encouraged by the internet’s conspiracy centrifuge, had even begun to doubt his very existence. But there he was, banged-up courtesy of the smart reactions and operational nous of DCI Gwen Kyle.
    The criminal spook had human form after all.
    Of the canoes recovered at the marina, nine were found to be loaded with MDMA, and the tenth with almost a million Mandrax pills. These were a niche product, but highly profitable. The street value of the total haul had been estimated at an eye-watering fifty million. A lot of money, Cat thought, and maybe twice that if the first ten canoes had not been lost. In all the hoo-ha over trapping the elusive Morgan, this point was also conveniently glossed over. Neither that first load nor the men that handled it had ever been found.
    ‘Price.’
    Cat looked up to see that the real Kyle was standing next to her.
    Cat realised it was the first time they had been one-on-one. Since being transferred to Kyle’s unit, Cat had been working down in the basement, and when they had passed each other in corridors Kyle was always hurrying along with a secretary or task-force officers and merely levelled a stiff, silent glare.
    ‘Ma’am,’ she replied.
    Kyle said nothing, just looked away across the set. Kyle’s face appeared so often in the press that it was like looking at someone Cat had known all her life. The short, fair hair, cut close to the scalp Joan of Arc style, the strong, classical nose and small, decisive chin. But closer, there was a dusky pallor to the skin, the long work hours showing in black circles beneath her eyes, a fragility uncaught by the camera’s gaze.
    ‘The thing is,’ Kyle’s cut-glass voice broke in. She turned to face Cat then, scrutinising her and making no attempt to hide it. She was taking in
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