Bad Boy Read Free Page B

Gervaise. She touched Juliet’s arm. “Don’t worry. I told you, you’ll be well taken care of.”
    “Can I ring my husband?”
    “Sorry,” said Gervaise. “It might seem petty and silly to you, butwe can’t allow any contact until the matter is settled and the firearm is safely in our possession.”
    “But what harm could it possibly do if I talked to my husband?”
    It could do a lot of harm, Annie thought. It could precipitate an argument between father and daughter in the house, for example, and with a loaded gun lying on the table and tempers no doubt already stretched to breaking point, that could prove fatal. But before Gervaise could answer the question, assuming she was intending to, WPC Smithies knocked at the door and escorted a reluctant Juliet Doyle to the canteen.
    Gervaise beckoned Annie to stay. “We’ll do this by the book, Annie. I don’t want any guns on my patch, and I certainly don’t want any accidents with them due to haste or negligence. Is that clear?”
    “Yes, ma’am,” said Annie. “Want me to log the incident and call in an Armed Response Vehicle?”
    “Yes. And get one of the DCs to run a check on the Doyles, especially the daughter. Everything seems hunky-dory on the surface, but find out if we’ve any cause for alarm. I’ll ring ACC McLaughlin and he’ll no doubt get in touch with Deputy Chief Constable. I also want to arrange for the Leeds police to search Erin’s house. I hardly think she’s an arms dealer, but we’d better cover it. Let’s get this in motion. The longer we delay, the more chance there is of something going wrong.”
     
    IT WASN’T the first time Annie had witnessed an armed police raid. She had been involved in two of them in London a few years earlier. The first had gone smoothly, but the second had been a disaster. Shots had been fired and two men had been killed. This time, she felt much stranger, being just down the road from the police station, across from Banks’s old suburban semi. It all seemed so ordinary. A black cat picked its way through a flower bed; people passed by the end of the street with their shopping and paused to see what was happening.
    Annie sat silently in an unmarked police car with Detective Superintendent Gervaise and waited for the Armed Response Vehicles to arrive. She almost wished she smoked. It would be something to do tohelp pass the time. Instead, she just gazed out at the bay-windowed semis with their low-walled gardens, pebble-dash and trim lawns, and she realized she found it hard to imagine Banks ever living here as a family man. To her, he had always been very much a lone figure, even when they had had their brief romance. Now she couldn’t fathom him at all. Something had changed in him, something fundamental had broken, and she wasn’t sure if it could ever be mended.
    Two Volvo T5s parked at the junction with Market Street. Each Armed Response Vehicle from the Firearms Support Unit comprised two Authorised Firearms Officers, or AFOs, in full Personal Protective Equipment, carrying PR24 batons, rigid handcuffs and CS spray, in addition to Glock sidearms and Tasers. They would have Heckler and Koch MP5 carbines locked in the boots of their Volvos, along with an array of other lethal weapons.
    Laburnum Way was a cul-de-sac about a hundred yards in length, so their arrival effectively cut off the street. Two patrol cars were parked at the far end. People were already watching at their windows.
    The four AFOs had already been briefed on the layout of the house, as provided by Juliet Doyle, should they need to effect entry. They didn’t expect to have to do that, however, as Patrick Doyle and his daughter knew where Juliet had gone, and they were expecting a police visit.
    Annie thought one of the team members was a woman, but it was hard to tell behind all the body armor and equipment she was carrying. Another car pulled up and Mike Trethowan, the Firearms Cadre’s superintendent, also wearing full PPE,