Not Dead Enough

reached out an arm that felt totally disembodied from the rest of him, as if someone had attached it to his shoulder by a few threads during the night. Numb fingers fumbled around on the floor until they found the phone.
    He lifted it up, hand shaking, his whole body shaking, thumbed the green button and brought it to his ear. ‘Urr?’ he said.
    ‘Where the hell have you been, you piece of shit?’
    It was Barry Spiker.
    And suddenly he was really wide awake, a whole bunch of confused thoughts colliding inside his brain.
    ‘It’s the middle of the fucking night,’ he said sullenly.
    ‘Maybe on your planet, shitface. On mine it’s eleven in the morning. Missed holy communion again, have you?’
    And then it came to Skunk. Paul Packer. Detective Constable Paul Packer!
    Suddenly his morning was feeling a bit better. Recollections of a deal he had made with DC Packer were now surfacing through the foggy, drug-starved maelstrom of pain that was his mind. He was on a promise to Packer. To let him know the next time Barry Spiker gave him a job. It would be cutting his nose off to spite his face, to shop Spiker. But the pleasure the thought gave him overrode that. Spiker had stiffed him on their last deal. Packer had promised him a payment.
    Cash payments from the police were crap. But if he was really smart, he could do a deal, get paid by Spiker and the police. That would be cool!
    Ching. Ching. Ching.
    Al, his hamster, was busy on his treadmill, going round and round, as usual, despite his paw in its splint. Al needed another visit to the vet. He owed money to Beth. Two birds with one stone! Spiker and DC Packer. Al and Beth! It was a done deal!
    ‘Just got back from mass, actually,’ he said.
    ‘Good. I’ve a job for you.’
    ‘I’m all ears.’
    ‘That’s your fucking problem. All ears, no brains.’
    ‘So what you got for me?’
    Spiker briefed him. ‘I need it tonight,’ he said. ‘Any time. I’ll be there all night. One-fifty if you get the spec right this time. Are you capable of it?’
    ‘I’m fit.’
    ‘Don’t fuck up.’
    The phone went dead.
    Skunk sat up in excitement. And nearly split his skull open, again, on the roof.
    ‘Fuck!’ he said.
    ‘Fek you, Jimmy!’ came the voice from the far end of his van.

94
    Glenn Branson terminated the second interview with Brian Bishop at twelve twenty p.m. Then, leaving Bishop alone with his solicitor in the interview room for a lunch break, the interviewing team regrouped in Grace’s office.
    Branson had kept to the script. They had held back, as planned, the really big questions for the third interview, this afternoon.
    As they sat down at the small round table in Grace’s office, the Detective Superintendent gave Branson a pat on the back. ‘Well done, Glenn, good stuff. OK, now, as I see it –’ and he used a phrase of Alison Vosper’s which he rather liked – ‘here’s the elephant in the room.’
    All three of them looked at him expectantly.
    ‘Bishop’s alibi. His evening meal at the Wolseley restaurant in London with this Phil Taylor character. That’s the elephant in the room.’
    ‘Surely the DNA result kicks his alibi into touch,’ Nicholl said.
    ‘I’m thinking about a jury,’ Grace replied. ‘Depends how credible this Taylor man is. You can be sure Bishop’s going to have a top brief. He’ll milk the alibi for all it’s worth. An honest citizen versus the vagaries of science? Probably with evidence from British Telecom, showing the time Bishop booked his alarm call, to back his time-frame up?’
    ‘I think we should be able to nail Bishop in this third interview, Roy,’ Jane Paxton said. ‘We’ve got a lot to hit him with.’
    Grace nodded, thinking hard, not yet convinced they had everything they needed.

    They started again shortly after two. Roy Grace was conscious, as he sat back down in the slightly unstable chair in the observation room, that they had just six hours left before they would have to release Brian Bishop, unless they applied for an extension or charged him. They could of course go to court for a Warrant of Further Detention, but Grace did not want to do that unless it was absolutely necessary.
    Alison Vosper had already rung him to find out how close they were to charging Bishop. When he related the facts to date to her, she sounded pleased. Still in sweet mode.
    The fact that a man had been arrested so quickly after Katie Bishop’s murder was making the force look good in the eyes of the