Deep Shelter Read Online Free

checked the window. The late shift was arriving. There was some impressive sunburn; no one looked very happy. Sirens came from every direction as the evening began to curdle. London was turning edgy with undelivered promises.
    Late shift, which meant it was almost 8 p.m.
    Belsey shaved in the CID toilets. The swelling had gone down, which looked more appropriate for a date, if less heroic. There was no time to get home first, not that it was ever tempting. Home, currently, was the crumbling Hotel President on Caledonian Road. The arrangement had been a stop-gap while Belsey looked for a flat and had extended to six months now. It meant he could pay by the week and never had to worry about running out of soap. He didn’t spend more time there than he had to. He shaved, showered, splashed on some of Trapping’s Calvin Klein aftershave, found a box of condoms at the back of his desk drawer.
    Halfway out of the station he saw Kirsty Craik, alone in the canteen. The canteen’s shutters were all down. Belsey stopped. He felt a pang of guilt about the shelter, a pang of lingering disbelief that she should have reappeared in his life. He brushed his suit again.
    “Working overtime already.”
    She looked up, a little weary, not ungrateful for distraction. In front of her were personnel files.
    “Just pausing before home. It’s cooler down here.”
    “Where are you living?”
    “Kentish Town.”
    “Good area.”
    She nodded and studied him with an expression he remembered: contemplative, undecided.
    “Do we need to talk?” Craik asked.
    “We’re OK, I think. As far as I’m concerned you’re the new DS. I’ve seen you in action and you’re good. Professionally, I mean. I’m looking forward to it.”
    She smiled, then softened her smile.
    “You’re on restricted duties.” Belsey nodded. So she’d checked his file. What kind of journey would she imagine he’d been on, reading that? “How are you finding it?” Craik asked.
    “Restrictive.” He wondered what else she’d been told, pictured her face as she was warned about him: Oh, he’s trouble, is he ? “Things are fine, though. Much better. But when full duty wants me back I’m ready to serve. Restricted sometimes feels like being a Community Support Officer.”
    “You could visit schools, give talks.” Craik smiled.
    “I’d happily visit schools and give talks.”
    “I don’t think anyone’s going to be sending you to any schools, Nick.”
    She was watching him, calculating something. Old flame was a strange expression, Belsey thought. Maybe that was the point. It was all made more complicated by the way memory gets thick with fantasy. And they had liked each other. That had been the problem, although he couldn’t put his finger on the logic of it right now.
    “This must be odd for you,” she said.
    “Odd for both of us. But there are odder things in life. Last month I attended a scene where someone had broken into a vet’s surgery and OD’d on Euthasol. They were there, stretched out on the operating table. We work well together, you know that. I said you’d rise fast.”
    He prepared to leave before the conversation got deeper. Then she surprised him.
    “Where’s good for a late bite around here? Dark rum and dry roasted peanuts—that was your dinner of choice, I seem to recall.”
    The late hour had turned the gleam of her eyes opaque. Good CID eyes, hard to read. But the offer was clear enough. Part of him would have loved to. There would be time, he thought. If this was how it was going to go.
    “On the high street head to La Traviata. It’s better than it looks. Or try Carluccio’s. Skip Nights of India. Believe me.” He smiled again, didn’t offer to accompany her, and she cast a detective’s gaze across his suit and fresh shave. He felt the reek of Calvin Klein coming off him.
    “You’ve got a date.”
    “Just meeting a friend.”
    “OK, Nick. Don’t be late for your friend.” She turned back to the paperwork but not