[PS & GV #6] Death on Demand Read Free Page B

light.
    Jan blew on her tea. ‘I went once,’ she said, ‘with the kids on the railway.’ Wells, Jan’s old home town, was five miles from the shrine by a narrow-gauge tourist line which just about kept up a year-round service. ‘They’d just held a service in one of the old churches and the nave and the aisles, every bit of the floor was covered in fresh herbs – rosemary, thyme, mint. They’d processed up and down with the icon and crushed the herbs underfoot.’ She met Valentine’s eye. ‘It was amazing Georgie. Put the kids in a trance. Like breathing perfume.’

    Valentine looked dubious. When they’d taken a weekend break to Paris, Jan had tried to get him to join her inside Notre Dame, but he’d just walked away to watch the riverboats sliding past on the Seine. It wasn’t that Valentine didn’t believe, he later explained over an ice-cold litre of Normandy cider, he just reasoned that he’d find out one way or another soon enough. Life was a game of poker, why show his hand now?
    Munching the cast iron crust of his toast, he switched on the local radio news: haystack arson at Gayton; an affray on the Tuesday Market; weather fine. He worked a finger under his stiff white shirt collar. ‘Who you with today?’ he asked.
    Jan would be a West Norfolk Constabulary probationer for two years. She’d got through her initial training and was now spending time with various units, learning different aspects of The Job. She’d just completed two months on foot patrol.
    ‘DS Chalker. Shoe squad.’
    ‘ Shoe squad? ’
    She took Valentine by the arm and led him into the living room: sixty-inch flat-screen TV (with Sky Sports), ironing board and a mantelpiece crammed with pictures of Jan’s grown-up children. Parting the net curtains to look out in to Greenland Street, they found the world outside was bathed in mist, lit a rather beautiful lemon-yellow by the pale disc of the risen sun. Briefly it reminded Jan of the supermoon they’d glimpsed the night before, floating free of the rooftops, capturing Zebra in silhouette.
    A milk float tinkled past with a whirring electric motor.
    The house stood at a T-junction so that they could see down Whitefriars’ Street directly opposite. The telephone wires were strung between poles in a zigzag pattern into the distance. About a hundred yards down on the left a pair of trainers had been lobbed up over the lines, dangling in the air like a set of South American bolas.
    ‘Shoes,’ said Jan.

    ‘Right. They’re illegal, are they?’ said Valentine. ‘That’d be the Dangerous Sneaker Act, 2008.’
    ‘Listen,’ she said. She’d brought the yogurt pot with her and quickly took another teaspoonful. ‘Joyce has got some expert coming in to give us all the lowdown. It’s billed as a lecture , no less. It’s nothing new, I know, but there’s definitely something afoot …’
    She smiled at her own joke. ‘Twenty, thirty pairs a day out on the estates. And here in town. If you don’t look up, Georgie, you’d have missed them.’
    Valentine’s eyes rarely left the pavement.
    ‘Some of it’s art, vandalism, but criminal gangs use them too, drugs, gambling, prostitution. The Met’s had a spate around White City, West London that was drug related. Apparently there’s a lot of interest in the international policing community. ’
    An ability to talk in italics was only one of the gifts Valentine admired in PPC Jan Clay.
    ‘We’re going out with the cherry picker to take ’em all down,’ said Jan, valiantly attempting to instill a sense of urgency into the project. ‘I saw a pair last night on Greyfriars right opposite the nick. Cheeky bastards. And we’ll have those too …’ she added, nodding down Whitefriars’ Street. ‘Last thing we want is the local PTA on our backs. Street drugs outside the primary school playground, not nice.’
    ‘It’s a craze,’ said Valentine, suddenly short of breath. ‘You take them down the kids will put some new ones