Courting Death

by Elleby Harper

  “What was your relationship with your dad like? Did you two get on?”

  “A dad’s relationship with his son is private. It’s not to be discussed with anyone else.” Harley’s lips tightened.

  “Who told you that, Harley?”

  “That’s what my dad says.”

  “Did you love your dad? Or did you hate your dad?”

  Bex had read the police reports and listened to the interview tapes. These questions had already been asked. Harley had vouchsafed no answers. There was no discernible motive for the murders.

  The sound of the whirring tapes hummed in the room, but Harley remained mute.

  “Did you love your mum?” Eli asked

  “Yes. I miss her.” The voice was filled with pain.

  “Did you talk about any of this with Dr. Downer, Harley?” Bex asked.

  For the first time Harley looked surprised.

  “We know you visited him regularly for a number of months. That gave you plenty of opportunity to talk. What did you talk about? Your feelings?”

  Harley shook his head. “Dr. Downer said I never had to tell anyone what we talked about. He said everything I told him was private.”

  “That’s right, Harley, unless you give Dr. Downer permission to talk about your sessions. Will you do that?” Isla intervened.

  Harley’s face creased with perplexity. He still didn’t look at anyone. “What for?”

  “It might help us determine a motivation, Harley. It might help your case when it goes back to court,” Bex urged.

  He lifted his head and looked straight at Bex. It was the first time he had willingly made eye contact with her.

  “It’s not going to help, you know.”

  Bex slid the consent paper forward.

  “Then it can’t hurt either.”

  “Nothing’s going to bring back my mum.” Harley’s voice trembled, sounding on the cusp of tears. He squirmed, rubbing his back against the metal chair as though bothered by an itch.

  “Talking to Dr. Downer won’t bring back your mum, but it might get us a little closer to the truth,” Isla said.

  Harley closed his eyes. “I’ve told you the truth,” he replied. “That’s how I know nothing’s going to help.”

  “Please reconsider,” Isla pleaded.

  When he opened his eyes he picked up the pen. His hand shook as it poised over the paper. With a quick dash he wrote his signature at the bottom of the page.

  Chapter 18

  Thursday 14 December

  Bex rubbed both palms over her eyes, trying to ease the strain of the past three hours lodged in front of a computer screen. Bloody hell! When you were a recruit aspiring to be top of the food chain no one told you the hours of paperwork the position entailed, she thought. At this rate she was going to need glasses before her thirtieth birthday!

  It was already two hours past the end of their shift but she was under pressure to wrap up some of their outstanding cases. From inside her cubby hole of an office she heard the soft tapping of Quinn’s fingers and the murmur of Reuben’s voice over the phone as he chased down names with the hospitals to match a dead girl to one of the names on the Kids Commando list. Idris and Eli were downstairs in one of the interview rooms going through the first batch of recordings they had confiscated from Dr. William Downer’s office. Isla was already hassling her about getting access to the information.

  The outside door to the office banged open and Eli and Idris barged through.

  “Big Ben may not be chiming but my inner clock tells me it’s time to hit the local. Who’s up for a pint at the Sail and Ale?” Eli announced, walking past Quinn and snapping shut the lid of his laptop.

  “Hands off, mate!” Quinn growled, but the words lacked any heat.

  Reuben stretched his long legs under the desk and grinned at Eli.

  “I’m in on that. I’ll even buy the first round to get you going on some more tales of life on the beat, Eli!”

  Bex heard Eli’s soft chuckle and, even though it was a ghost of his former laugh, it was a heartening sign that his spirit was finally mending.

  “It’ll take more than one round to whet my whistle for that, my lad, let me tell you. I can be a bottomless pit when it comes to someone buying me pints.”

  Quinn was already on his feet to slip into his black pea coat.

  Idris stopped by Bex’s office and poked his head around the open doorway. “Coming for a pint, Bex?”

  It was a rhetorical question. It had been asked many times over the past few months and her answer had always been no. She knew Idris was simply going through the motions of being polite to his boss.

  Remembering Walt’s advice, Bex straightened her slump and nodded her head in his direction. This might be the perfect opportunity to broach her troubled teens drop-in center with her team to test their support.

  “Why not? I’m fed up with being here right now. Can you believe I’ve been in London nearly six months and I haven’t seen the inside of a local pub?”

  Reuben halted next to Idris.

  “Well, you’ve picked the best time of year to do it. They’ll have a fire roaring and their Christmas bells on. They may even have mistletoe so I can get some action.”

  Idris shoved an elbow into his ribs.

  “Keep dreaming, mate, no girl’s going to want to get her hands on your skinny arse.”

  Reuben flipped him a rude gesture. “I never said I was after a girl! I’ll settle for a goat, a pig. Sod it, it’s been so long since I’ve had any action I’d even shag you, Idris!”

  Idris’s even white teeth gleamed. “You could do worse, mate, you could do worse!”

  Reuben roared with laughter and the others joined in, except for Quinn. Bex noticed his piercing eyes checking her out. His nostrils flared and his mouth became a tight-lipped grimace.

  “Count me out, lads. My time’s too precious to spend it in company I don’t enjoy.”

  The laughter halted abruptly.

  Bex’s mouth went dry. Damn the man for spoiling the moment! To say they didn’t see eye to eye about policing methods was an understatement. Quinn’s constant deployment of sarcastic venom had battered her until she felt black and blue. He was shoving his weight around, daring her to go to a verbal showdown to assert her authority, but she didn’t see that as a solution. Either Quinn would win or she would win. Either way her team would suffer.

  She knew she couldn’t keep letting him usurp her position because that was equally bad for the team’s morale. Yet she certainly couldn’t order him to stay after hours to have a drink with the team because that wasn’t official police business.

  Frustrated, she turned her head slightly and watched the rain outside whip against the transom windows, indicating a storm on the horizon.

  “Run on ahead, guys. I’ll join you at the pub in a few minutes,” Bex broke the sullen silence that had descended. “Quinn, wait up.”

  “I’ll order a pint for you, Bex,” Reuben said, looping a knitted scarf around his neck.

  “That scarf is so not cool, man...” Idris’s voice faded as they closed the door.

  The dislike glaring from Quinn’s blazing eyes was hard to take, but she made the effort to hold his gaze and not falter. She hoped her look told him she was no quitter.

  “Quinn, no one’s higher on my shit list right now than you.” She intentionally put a chill in her voice.

  “If you’ve got a problem with me, I’m right here.” His voice held an undertone of contempt.

  She had exhausted her gamut of reactions to Quinn, from ignoring his insults and accommodating his work tactics, to complaining to Dresden and being hard-nosed about his behavior. So far nothing had dented his superiority complex in regard to her. She had very early picked up from his attitude that Quinn thought he was the best candidate to lead the team, not her.

  The only glimmers of respect he had ever eked out to her were when she resolved two of their most difficult cases and saved his wife’s life. Could she wi
n him over by proving she could best him in an arena that he felt confident in? There was a tactic her brother had taught her when she reached her teenage years to discourage boys from hitting on her. It was a trick she had also used successfully when her halfway house teens had tried it on as arrogant assholes. Quinn Standing certainly ranked as one of those.

  “The issue is that you’ve got a problem with me,” she countered. “Listen here. When you pull a little old lady over for speeding, she’s just that. When I pull her over I never know if she’s toting a shotgun in the car. That’s the difference in our policing styles. Maybe here in London being prepared for the worst is overkill. And just maybe one day you’ll thank me for it.”

  “Bugger that for a game of soldiers!” Quinn snarled.

  Bex was thrown by his words. While his tone clearly indicated displeasure she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what his words actually meant. Bloody hell, why did there seem to be so many different variations with English swearing?! she wondered, knowing Quinn was bound to pick up on her confusion.

  He threw her a pitying look. “Or are you under the impression I should have thanked you for pulling a weapon the other day?”

  “Damn straight I am!” Bex retorted. “If that perp had had a weapon this team might be short one major pain in the ass.”

  She found herself breathing hard as anger strobed through her. She could see the same emotions flooding Quinn’s face. She and Quinn irritated the hell out of each other. But as team leader it was her job to turn that irritation into a pearl!

  She moved towards the desks in the center of the room. Anger made her movements short and sharp as she pushed aside the laptops, making a flat space available.

  “Listen to me, Quinn. We’re either going to make this work, or you’re going to make for the door. Where I come from the only thing that matters is if you can handle the job. It’s time to put your money where your mouth is. We’re going to arm wrestle. The winner gets to choose the outcome. Are we clear?”

  Quinn threw back his head and laughed for several minutes of uncontrollable amusement.

  Bex ignored him and took a stance at one of the desks, propping her elbow on the flat surface and flexing her fingers.

  “Ready when you are.”

  Quinn subsided into chuckles. He swiped one hand across his eyes.

  “Bollocks, I can’t believe you’re serious.”

  In reply, she simply returned his look with one of grim determination.

  His eyes raked over her, checking her out thoroughly. He placed two hands on the desk and leaned down to her. “Don’t be a daft cow! I outweigh you by two stone and I train regularly at a mate’s gym. Brazilian jiu jitsu.”

  Bex stared back unblinking. She didn’t bother responding that she also trained with weights because it helped maintain her sanity to work out as hard as she could.

  “If I win, you toe the line in my team or you ask Dresden for a transfer out of Youth Crimes,” she said quietly.

  Quinn straightened, expelling a long breath.

  “Right, don’t say I didn’t warn you. If I win, you quit the London Met and go back to your sinkhole precinct on the other side of the Atlantic.”

  Bex swallowed and a knot of anxiety tied itself into a ball in her stomach. Did she really have the guts to back herself arm wrestling Quinn? He wasn’t some over enthusiastic drunk trying to hit on her in a bar. She gritted her teeth and steeled herself. She knew the right techniques, she could do this!

  “Agreed,” she announced.

  “Agreed then,” he responded. Shrugging out of his pea coat, he rolled up his shirtsleeves and dropped into position opposite her, holding out his right arm.

  “You can count down to ‘go’ just so you don’t think I’m cheating when I win,” she said.

  Through narrowed eyes she watched Quinn’s relaxed frame. Good! He was already underestimating her.

  Bex straightened her back, jamming her hips against the desk to give herself more purchase. As Quinn’s fingers wrapped around her palm, she tucked her thumb under her fingers, wriggling her arm so that it was centered to her body and seated slightly closer to her chin than Quinn’s arm was to his body. When her knuckles were pointed towards the ceiling she stilled her movement.

  She took a deep breath, remembering her brother’s caution: “use your elbow as a fulcrum and leverage your hand upwards while rotating towards you.”

  “Three. Two.”

  Bex braced her feet and steadied her wrist.

  “One. Go.”

  She moved fast to rotate her wrist, twisting her hand towards her body and bending Quinn’s hand in the wrong direction. Using her full body weight she pulled backwards with her arm to stretch Quinn’s reach and lessen his strength.

  She was so focused on ending the match quickly before her muscles gave out that she barely noticed the shock registered in Quinn’s eyes as her maneuvers deflected his superior strength.

  Pulling his hand down, at the same time she tugged back on his wrist. Leaning her body to the left she used her lateral muscles as though doing a pull up in the gym. There was a satisfying thud as his arm hit the wooden surface and she pinned him down.

  “What the bloody hell?!” Quinn yanked his arm out of her now lax grip, staring at her with disbelief written across his face. “That’s impossible!”

  “Not impossible if you know the right techniques. I’ve done it dozens of times before.” And every single time the guy claimed she’d taken him by surprise and demanded a rematch.

  “You took me by surprise!” The frown on his face deepened.

  “That’s the point, Quinn,” she broke it to him gently. “If you concentrate on just one area, like your physical strength, you’re going to overlook other aspects.”

  She shook out her hand to release the tension as she walked into her office. A few seconds later she returned, wearing her long, down coat and pulling a beanie over her short hair. The coat had held its own against a New York winter so she wasn’t worried about its lack of style.

  “I suppose you’re going down to the pub to take the piss out of me and have a laugh with the lads at my expense.”

  Quinn had his hands jammed into the pockets of his thick black jacket while a worried frown creased his forehead. Part of Bex was glad to see that Quinn’s smugness had taken a beating. After the crap he’d dished out to her since she’d joined the team, she felt a justified enjoyment about basking in his humiliation.

  Inside her head she heard Zane’s admonishment. A man’s got his pride and if you strip that from him what you’re left dealing with is an uncivilized animal. Never back a man so far into the corner he’s got nothing left to lose.

  Zane. He had been her anchor, her rock, the buffer she relied on to guide her when she moved, sometimes recklessly, off course. She stifled a sigh, knowing she was going to have to be the bigger person in this scenario if she wanted the team dynamics to work.

  “Quinn, you’re curt, dismissive and you piss people off. But. You’re also smart, motivated and experienced. You work fast and you solve cases. I really want you on the team if you can drop your grudge against me and collaborate with everyone. Call this a lesson to remind you that each of us has our own strengths and if you give us a chance we may surprise you. It’s about trusting and respecting your colleagues.”

  Quinn’s strong jaw with its dusting of stubble knotted as he ran an irritable hand over the bristles on his chin. He heaved a sigh fraught with bitterness.

  “You expect me to put the past behind us like a piece of ancient history?”

  “If you want to move forward, then yes. Whether you like it or not, Quinn, you don’t get to set the rules and you don’t get to dictate the terms. If you can’t accept me as head of this team, then I expect your request for a transfer out of the squad on my desk ASAP. By the way I have no intention of retelling this saga. I like to keep something up my sleeve because you never know when it can come in handy. So, are you coming with me to the Sail and
Ale?” She forced her tone to be light, conciliatory.

  Quinn offered her a grudging smile.

  “What are you going to do for an encore? Drink me under the table?”

  Chapter 19

  Thursday 14 December

  It had been dark outside for a number of hours before Isla lifted her head from her computer screen. Shutting her eyes, she placed both hands behind her neck to squeeze and massage the tense muscles. Trawling through old cases, looking for similarities and precedents she could use for Harley Carroll’s re-trial was draining. She wished Ironrod Lyons Freemont would employ some of the new Artificial Intelligence systems to do this type of drudge work. A computer could do the tedious searching in a matter of minutes rather than days, she thought.

  Her stomach growled. The waste basket beside her desk held the wrappers for three small packets of salt and vinegar crisps and an entire container of Cadbury fingers, a delicious, finger-thin cookie coated in chocolate. That was the sum of tonight’s dinner.

  Through her glass wall she could see that most of the offices around her were empty. Two offices down and across the corridor from her she could see Ryan Gildenstern standing at his height adjustable desk. Ryan was the type who took the stairs between floors rather than the lift, she knew. She had heard via the office water cooler gossip that he was negotiating with the firm to install a treadmill at his desk. It wasn’t a bad idea, she conceded, given the number of hours they spent at the office.

  Isla yawned and stretched. Tonight she didn’t have the energy to outlast Ryan. And what was the point, she wondered bitterly, when he was Ernest Lyons’s blue-eyed boy and nothing she did impressed the partners. It was as though the thought of the company’s senior partner had summoned him.

  Isla had just decided to power down her computer when Ernest Lyons slid open her door.

  “I hope you don’t mind me visiting, Isla, but I wanted to have a quiet word.”

  With an effort Isla prevented her jaw from dropping to the floor. None of the partners had ever stepped foot in her junior office before. She was always the one summoned to visit their palatial office accommodations.