Page 16 of First Blood
‘He was thrown out of the gang,’ he said, spitting to his left.
‘For what?’ she asked, moving closer. She’d never heard of any other gang member being thrown out of the BBoys.
He shook his head resolutely. ‘Never gonna happen.’
Damn that sense of gang loyalty that prevailed over all else. Regardless of what he’d done to get himself excommunicated from a criminal gang, and to earn the disgust of a low-level drug dealer, Dundee still wouldn’t tell her the whole story.
‘Dundee, I can have that squad car here in seconds…’
‘You can bring the whole bloody fleet for all I care but I’m not telling you one more thing.’
Chapter Twelve
‘I’ve gor a name,’ Stacey said, putting down the phone to the boss.
‘Good for you. Mine’s Kev,’ her colleague offered, glancing again at his phone.
‘For our victim,’ she clarified.
‘No shit,’ he said, dismissively, without looking at her. ‘But it kinda gets me off the hook with trawling through mispers,’ he said.
‘You wanna start looking?…’
‘Nah, you’re okay. I need to pop out. Be back in a bit,’ he said, grabbing his overcoat.
Stacey watched him go and tried not to let her mouth fall open. He was senior in rank to her so she couldn’t really question him about anything, but she was unsure just how much trawling, as he put it, of missing persons he’d actually done. Unless there was some kind of app on his phone for it, she didn’t think he’d done a lot.
And what should she tell the boss if she asked? Was she supposed to be honest or cover his arse? She didn’t yet understand the politics of CID after half a day, but he was still pissing her off, causing her to wonder if she had the word ‘mug’ tattooed on her forehead.
A tiny voice whispered that he might have some kind of personal problem and needed support. A bit of leeway. Everyone needed that sometimes, didn’t they? she asked herself, aware that she was trying to excuse both his behaviour and his attitude.
People pleaser and now people excuser.
More importantly would she land herself in trouble for not saying anything to the boss?
From what she’d seen of the boss so far, she was direct and forthright. There was nothing warm and fluffy there. Nurturing was not a word that sprang to mind but Stacey found herself not minding that. One of the worst things for a people pleaser was not knowing where you stood, wondering if you were doing okay or totally messing things up. She had the feeling that with DI Stone she wouldn’t have to wonder for long, and Stacey was grateful that the boss had given her a reason to step away from the crime scene. But that had just made her want to return with Dawson. Just to show that she could.
So, on her first morning as a detective constable she had met a new team, visited a crime scene, watched a pathologist at work, got CCTV to check and a name to research.
And that was before she tried to analyse the seed of discomfort that had settled in her stomach when she’d looked down at the body.
There was something in the back of her mind but for the life of her she couldn’t tempt it to the front.
Chapter Thirteen
‘Fuck,’ Dawson said to himself as he walked out into the freezing cold. He took a few steps away from the entrance to avoid nosey parkers.
He was pissed off on so many levels.
He didn’t appreciate being humiliated by his boss in being sent home to change. Although she’d done it privately, the others knew exactly what had happened and now he’d lost face with a trudging DS of equal rank to himself who, despite being in his late forties, hadn’t made it past sergeant. Not to mention being humiliated in front of a detective constable on her first day, for God’s sake.
Thank God Ally had been at work and he’d been able to sneak into the house, shower, change and grab a few items of clothing to keep him going.
He’d felt a bit of a pang as he’d entered the home they’d started renting seven months earlier. They’d had some great times in the house already and in some ways, he missed her. He was pretty sure he loved her even though he said it rarely. He’d never felt this way about a woman before and eventually she had managed to turn him monogamous, for a while. But then he’d remembered the last time they’d been together and the angry, bitter words they’d exchanged. His blood had run cold and he’d hot-footed it out of the house as though the devil was nipping at his ass.
And as if that wasn’t bad enough he’d returned to work, and not only had the boss not even acknowledged his efforts she had proceeded to give him the grunt work of trawling through missing persons. He sneered to himself, glad he hadn’t even bothered with that fool’s errand.
But right now, he had a more pressing problem like where the hell was he going to spend the night.
