Bad Boy Read Free Page A

Her father would have given her a stern talking to and thrown the gun in the sea, but hewould never have turned her in to the police, either. But, she reminded herself, Juliet Doyle had come here asking for Banks’s help. No doubt she had hoped that he would have been able to deal with the matter unofficially, off the record.
    “What happens now?” Juliet asked.
    Gervaise moved away from the edge of her desk and went to sit behind it. She didn’t seem quite so imposing there, and Annie felt the atmosphere lighten a little. “There are procedures to be followed,” Gervaise said. “Where is the gun now?”
    “In the kitchen. Patrick has it. We didn’t think it would be a good idea for me to carry it in the street, and I must admit the idea made me very nervous.”
    “And your daughter?”
    “She’s with him. We agreed this was the best way. They would stay at the house. I would come here and talk to Alan, ask him to go back with me, but…”
    “Yes, I understand that DCI Banks was a neighbor,” Gervaise said. “Don’t worry, we’re all professionals here. We’ll deal with this just as he would. I know it’s much more pleasant to have a familiar face around in a situation like this, but we all want the same thing. First of all, are you absolutely certain it’s a real gun? You have no idea how many people we get reporting replicas or ball-bearing guns.”
    “Patrick said it is. He used to belong to a gun club, many years ago, after grammar school. I don’t know about such things.”
    “Did he also happen to check if it’s loaded?”
    “He says it is. He handled it very carefully.”
    “Good,” said Gervaise. “Did he unload it?”
    “No. He said it was best to leave it as it was, not to contaminate the evidence.”
    Wonderful, thought Annie. Another one been watching too many episodes of CSI. A loaded gun. Now they would have to bring in the Firearms Support Unit for certain. It would have had more sense, and been much safer, if Patrick Doyle had unloaded the gun. Annie also knew that most people rarely act sensibly during crises. After all, how often do you find a loaded gun in your daughter’s bedroom?
    “Did he happen to mention what kind of gun it is?” Gervaise asked.
    “He said something about a semiautomatic. Can that be right?”
    Annie knew very little about firearms, but she knew that a semiautomatic used a removable magazine to hold cartridges, rather than a cylinder. It usually held several rounds of ammunition, and it fired one shot each time you pulled the trigger.
    “So when you left the house,” Gervaise went on, “your husband and daughter were in the kitchen and the gun was on the table?”
    “Yes.”
    “Still wrapped?”
    “Patrick wrapped it up in the tea cloth again after he’d examined it, yes.”
    “What state of mind was Erin in then?”
    “She was upset, obviously. Angry. Tearful. Frightened.”
    “Did you ask her who she’d got the gun from?”
    “Of course. But she wouldn’t say.”
    Gervaise pursed her lips and thought for a moment, then she glanced at Annie and stood up. “Thank you,” she said to Juliet Doyle. “I’m going to ring for someone to take care of you for the time being while we deal with the problem of the gun. That has to be our priority, you understand. We need to get that loaded gun out of your house and into safekeeping, and there are strict procedures we need to follow.” She picked up the telephone and talked to the officer on the front desk.
    Juliet looked pleadingly toward Annie. “Will you stay with me?” she asked.
    “I’m afraid I need DI Cabbot,” said Gervaise. “She’s the only other senior officer I have here at the moment. But don’t worry, I’ll make sure you’re nice and comfortable with WPC Smithies in the canteen.”
    “Can’t I go home?”
    “Not just yet,” said Gervaise. “Not until we’ve cleared the premises of the firearm.”
    “But can’t I go with you?”
    “I’m afraid not,” said