Crossing the Line (Kerry Wilkinson) Read Free

their voices.
    Jessica set off at full pelt but Esther was already barrelling ahead, bellowing into her radio mic for
    details. The cold air filled Jessica’s lungs in seconds and by the time she was close enough to have an
    idea of what had happened she could barely breathe. People were running in all directions, the thin
    line of uniformed officers struggling to maintain anything approaching a perimeter, let alone keep
    control.
    As Jessica put her hands on her hips and tried to catch her breath, sirens blared in the distance,
    drowning out a man’s hysterical cries: ‘He’s down, call an ambulance’.
    2
    DCI Jack Cole sat in the sparsely filled temporary incident room on the first floor of Longsight Police
    Station, looking at Jessica and the four unfortunate PCs who had been walking through reception when
    Jessica had grabbed them to make the event look busy. The actual incident room in the basement had
    been closed the previous week for renovations, with no one seemingly thinking CID might need
    somewhere to work in the meantime. As an alternative, some of the far smaller, damp-riddled
    storerooms had been cleared out upstairs. The fact there was no adequate heating system in rooms
    usually filled with boxes didn’t appear to be a priority for anyone, meaning coats and gloves were a
    necessity.
    The chief inspector seemed to be losing hair by the day, sporting a receding hairline that could
    have been parted by Moses. The worry lines across his forehead were now permanent features,
    although if Jessica had had to tell a superintendent about the bowling-ball incident, then she might
    have them too.
    Cole stared at Jessica as the PCs shuffled nervously, probably wondering why they were there. ‘So
    to sum up, I’ve been in meetings since first thing this morning,’ he said. ‘The Home Secretary’s back
    in London on the warpath, telling all and sundry that there weren’t enough officers on duty and that
    he’ll be pushing for a full investigation.’
    Jessica was feeling defensive. ‘I wasn’t even officially there! I was doing Esther a favour and it
    wasn’t her fault either – he said he wanted to be accessible, how were we meant to know some loon
    would turn up with a bottle full of acid?’
    ‘Aylesbury’s gone bananas – it’s been on the news channels non-stop all day.’
    ‘I’m surprised the super found time to get himself off the golf course. It’s not as if it was raining.’
    Cole silenced Jessica with a ‘you’re-an-inspector-now’ look, something she had seen a few times
    recently. No wonder he was losing his hair.
    ‘Where is everyone?’ Cole asked.
    ‘Half of them are still out cleaning up from the weekend, the rest are on it. We’re a DS down too . .
    .’
    Jessica had constantly been onto the DCI about the fact she hadn’t yet been replaced, meaning that,
    although she had technically been promoted, she was now doing an entirely new workload as well as
    much of what she had handled before. ‘Budgetary constraints’ and ‘I’m aware’ were his favourite
    responses. Cole ignored her, nodding towards the empty whiteboard.
    ‘Someone keeps nicking the pens or there’d be stuff on there,’ Jessica explained. ‘If you don’t nail
    it down around here, some bugger walks off with it. Someone should get the police in.’
    Cole wasn’t amused.
    ‘All right, fine,’ she added. ‘Councillor Luke Callaghan was hit in the face with some sort of acid
    thrown from something we’re not sure about yet. We’re going to have to wait for the results but the
    paramedics reckon it was nitric. It’s not the type of thing you can buy over the counter, so we’re trying to get a list of suppliers and potential buyers. Izzy says there are loads – plus some of the businesses who store it have thousands of staff on their books. It was only a small quantity, so we’re looking at
    all sorts of places, mainly labs. Don’t expect anything any time soon – we’re getting nailed