This Thing of Darkness Read Online Free

than Major Crime, he applied for, and secured, a transfer. He’s now doing something with a boring acronym which involves using data-driven intelligence to target police resources.
    Buzz starts to answer. I half listen, but there’s something depressing about the relentless trend of the crime statistics and the way modern policing responds. I try to say the right things, but my heart’s not in it.
    ‘How about you?’ asks Buzz.
    I find a chip, a long one, and steal some of Buzz’s ketchup.
    ‘Boring, stupid crimes. Boring, stupid paperwork. Boring, stupid prosecutions.’
    ‘That bad?’
    ‘Worse.’ I tell him about Ifor Dawes and Chicago and Owen Dunwoody.
    Buzz laughs. ‘You’re going to be an exhibits officer? Bet you just love that.’
    My mouth moves, but nothing comes out. I don’t have the words to express how much I loathe the role. It’s not even that I’m bad at it. I’m not. Truth is, if Ifor needed a temporary sidekick, they probably couldn’t have found a more suitable helper. I’m fast and accurate at anything paperworky. My memory is excellent. I don’t know a lot about forensic technicalities, but I know enough that I’m unlikely to cock anything up.
    But, Gott im Himmel , the boredom!
    ‘I’d honestly sooner spend time in prison,’ I say with feeling.
    Nor did it help matters that I was complaining loudly about Dunwoody in the canteen. Called him Owen Dunthinking and shared my thoughts about the extent to which he deserved his current position. I assumed I was in the clear because we’d just had news that protective coverings placed down at the crime scene might have failed, thereby compromising further forensic investigation. Any competent DI would have been down there like a shot, getting the problem sorted. Alas, Dunthinking decided it was more important to spoon a plateful of pie and mash into his face first and, as he was returning his tray, he managed to hear my full assessment of his abilities. He said nothing, but went pink with anger – pinker than usual – and his eyes were little raisins of hatred in the surrounding pudge.
    I say something of this to Buzz, who says, ‘Ah, yes, I did hear about that.’
    I grimace. Not apologetically, just not very thrilled to know how widely my outburst has circulated. Dunthinking’s nephew, Kyle Bransby – a part-time SOCO, a part-time instructor at the university sports centre, and in my never-humble view a full-time dickhead – told me with relish that Dunthinking ‘is going to make this the biggest exhibits operation in force history. Months, it’ll take. Months.’ He leered at me, a wash of stained teeth and aniseed breath. That vision – and that threat – haunts me still.
    I try to continue chatting with Buzz the way we normally would. But this isn’t normal. Anything but. I break off and say, ‘It is weird this, isn’t it? It’s not just me.’
    ‘No, it’s not just you.’
    His smile tilts down to his plate, and I see that for all his Buzzishness, this is a man in pain.
    Pain that I caused.
    I’m tempted to say sorry – again – but instead say, ‘I think it’s the same for me. I think it hurts the same way.’
    I think : with my crazy head, I can’t always feel my feelings. They just get cotton-woolled away. But it all connects up. This long, dark winter. My restlessness. My gloom.
    The awareness settles me. It’s like I’ve been living with my own baffled version of this Buzzian pain, and now for the first time have a glimpse of it. A painful thing, yes, but also a true thing. A real one. It’s like I’ve been carrying around a steel weight all winter without knowing it’s there. Then someone shows me a glimpse of it – a metal edge, a dull sheen, the heft of something folded in cloth – and I feel a sense of relief. This pain, that weight: it all connects up.
    ‘Oh, Buzzling,’ I whisper.
    He grimaces.
    Sergeant Brydon isn’t what you would call an emotionally complex man, but his methods for