Black Daffodil (Trevor Joseph Detective series) by Katherine John

the oven chips and chicken burgers he’d cooked in the frying pan onto plates. Kept awake half the night by their noisy quarrelsome neighbours playing their televisions at full blast, he and Sarah had fallen into a deep sleep as dawn broke. As a result they’d overslept.
    Sarah walked into the kitchen from the living room where she had been watching TV. She stared in dismay at the plate Chris handed her. ‘Do you call that breakfast? I don’t even call it food.’
    ‘There was nothing resembling food in that shop. I’d like to see what you would have come up with if you’d gone in.’
    ‘I guarantee I would have found something better than this and the beefburger sandwiches we had yesterday.’ She took the plate he handed her. ‘One week of your idea of a diet and I’ll put on a stone. Where’s the salt and vinegar?’
    ‘There isn’t any.’
    ‘No salt and vinegar?’ she echoed in disbelief.
    ‘Forgot, sorry,’ Chris apologised.
    ‘After our bosses call, I do the shopping.’
    ‘Only with an escort.’
    ‘Why? Sneezy wasn’t so bad and no one else would talk to us.’
    Chris dumped the frying pan in the sink. ‘Is that the name of the boy who sold you those four Black Daffodils?’
    ‘The only one he would give me.’
    ‘I can’t wait to see Doc, Happy, Dopey …’
    ‘You’ve been spending way too much time with Peter.’ She held up her plate. ‘Want to watch the news? It might make us forget we’re eating cardboard.’
    ‘By immersing ourselves in the troubles in the Middle East and gang warfare in London?’
    ‘I found an old film on one of the channels. It’s a weepie.’
    ‘News will do. I’ll be with you as soon as I’ve fed the dog.’ Chris tipped a generous helping of the dry dog food into the stainless steel bowl he’d brought up from the car. He refilled the water bowl but he didn’t have to call the German shepherd. Tiger recognised the sound and smell of his food being poured. He ran in and stood patiently, tail wagging, waiting for Chris to set the bowls on the floor.
    ‘You know that dog food doesn’t look half bad,’ Sarah watched Tiger wolf it down.
    ‘Would you like it with skimmed or semi skimmed milk?’ Chris followed Sarah into the living room, sat on the sofa and balanced his plate on his lap.
    ‘How about freshly squeezed orange juice?’
    ‘They didn’t have oranges. And stop complaining.’
    ‘Soon as we’ve eaten, I’ll take another walk to that shop. I won’t be gone long and you never know. They might have had a delivery from a greengrocer.’
    ‘Or we could wait for our visitors and leave after they’ve gone. The dog could do with a walk and we could drive back via Asda,’ he suggested.
    ‘That would be cheating.’
    ‘No one said anything to me about where we should buy our groceries.’ He pulled a black bit from an oven chip before forking it into his mouth.
    ‘These aren’t wonderful at the best of times, but they are better cooked in the oven than a frying pan. As the manufacturer advises,’ Sarah criticised.
    They stopped eating at a timid knock at the door of the flat.
    Chris turned down the TV. ‘Sneezy?’
    ‘He said he’d stop by if he tracked down more Black Daffodil.’
    ‘He might have been here sooner if someone hadn’t been soft enough to give him half a gram of cocaine for four pills. Unlike us, he probably had a great evening.’
    A disembodied voice wafted through the keyhole. ‘Dog girl. I got what you want. Let me in. Quick!’
    ‘Dog girl?’ Chris left the sofa. ‘As opposed to cat woman. Who am I, Batman or the Joker?’
    ‘A Peter clone,’ she retorted irritably. ‘Go easy on Sneezy. I feel sorry for him.’
    Although Chris wouldn’t have admitted it to Sarah, he pitied the junkie, and probably for sounder reasons. During his stint patrolling a council estate he had seen first-hand the effects of the despair long-term unemployment caused and the moral bankruptcy and crime it led to. Along with his