Truth Lies Bleeding Read Online Free

he found surprising now.
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    The police Astra sped past the lines of traffic. A young woman on the street put her hands up to her ears. Brennan knew the older ones didn’t bother – their hearing had atrophied to the stage where the sirens didn’t bother them . . . It was another one of those observations that the job afforded you. Very few were worth noting.
    The driver was too quick into the Crewe Toll roundabout. Brennan felt some movement on the back tyres as the car spun onto Ferry Road. He felt himself automatically gripping the door handle, his right foot pumping an imaginary brake pedal. ‘Try and get us there in one piece, eh.’
    ‘Sorry, sir.’
    ‘And stop apologising. You’re far too free with your apologies . . . Don’t mind me, I’m a full-time prick. I point out everyone’s flaws in this job.’
    The main artery road was stocked with ancient figures: they were the occupants of Peter Howson paintings. Huge-knuckled working men; hard drinkers and working girls. Smokers puffed freely, flicked dowps into the gutter. Every one of them shook their head at the sight of the speeding police car. They were filth round here. The fun-stoppers. The Rozzers. No one welcomed them; there was no red-carpet treatment coming their way down this end of town. It didn’t bother Brennan. He’d long since lost the need to be liked – in any way – and certainly not for being a police officer. There had been a time, at the deathly dull dinner parties his wife used to hold for her circle, where spouses had tried to intellectualise their view of the police for him. ‘I wouldn’t like to live in a society without police,’ one pot-bellied middle manager had remarked, ‘for all the same reasons I wouldn’t like to live in Somalia.’
    Brennan remembered the remark, and the smirk the tosser had topped the statement with; it was glib bullshit. The lot of it was glib bullshit. It was a job. A necessary evil.
    The scene darkened down Pennywell Road. Ginger kids, barely school age, with the arse hanging out of their trousers shot the V-sign. A few tried to spit in the car’s direction. Brennan had known stones to be thrown; he was unfazed. There were middle-aged women in baffies and housecoats stood on the road, leaning over gardens and jabbering. They’d obviously clocked the police activity; the talk would be of drugs raids, whose man was being taken in, how the force victimised them. Each syllable of the schemie’s chat would be punctuated by puffs on Superkings; the sight of them was as regular as the street furniture. As harrowing as the bust couch or the rusting scooters in the overgrown gardens. Brennan could have painted the scene from memory. He knew there were liberal thinkers – what Wullie called the Guardian -reading classes – who would gasp and deride the deprivation, but not him. This was a breeding ground for crime, a dumping ground for the dispossessed and the dafties. It was a dangerous place; no question.
    Brennan shook his head, sighed, ‘Another poor lassie’s met her end. How many’s that?’
    The constable shrugged, looked like he was wondering who the DI was speaking to.
    Brennan looked ahead through the windscreen, to the point on the road where the Scenes of Crime Officers had set up. The title of an old song played to him, ‘Another Girl, Another Planet’ . . . He thanked Christ his daughter was being raised on the other side of town – no child here had a chance.
    ‘Pull up in front of the SOCOs,’ said Brennan. ‘Don’t want them accusing us of blocking access to their wee gang hut.’
    The driver eased through the gears, slowly, and put the car in at the kerb. A small crowd had formed in the street; some uniforms paced a thin cordon. The crowd looked subdued. At once Brennan knew the word had got out.
    ‘Look at them,’ he said to the constable.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Their faces . . . They know.’
    The younger man stared out of the window. His expression