Blue Lantern by Gil Hogg Page A

that might lose a wheel. Sherwin’s face darkened, forced to return to the preoccupation of weeks.
    â€œI suppose it’s going as well as expected. I’m sure learning a lot.”
    â€œYou don’t look too pleased, Paul.”
    Brodie didn’t press; it would be painful to hear what he expected; but Sherwin dropped a shirt back in a suitcase, and sat down beside Brodie.
    â€œWhat surprises me, is the atmosphere of suspicion from the day I made the report. At first I thought I was imagining it, and my superiors were just being careful. But it’s unmistakable. I mean you’d think there would be some degree of approval for trying to clean up the Force, but no. When Internal Inquiries came to see me, it was as though I wasn’t telling the truth, trying to pay off a score, or work an angle.”
    â€œPerhaps you should have shut up,” Brodie said, considering how he might have behaved himself.
    â€œWe’ve discussed that. You know how I feel. If it happened now, I’d do the same thing,” Sherwin said abruptly.
    â€œYou have to think of yourself, Paul. You’re more important than two corrupt cops. You can do a lot for the Force.”
    â€œI can’t do anything for the Force if I don’t do this. Are you coming down to the level of this place?”
    â€œNo, but for Christ’s sake, in any walk of life you have to think of yourself. You can’t be a complete idealist, or you’ll ruin yourself, and not get near achieving any of your objectives.”
    Brodie sounded confident, but he wasn’t.
    â€œThat sounds like a quotation from Andy Marsden,” Sherwin said, too battered by his recent encounters to get into further conflict. He pressed his palms against his forehead. “You ought to hear the scepticism in the court. How could anyone make these incredible allegations against two loyal Chinese officers? That’s the tone. Do you realise that their story is that I had been on the take, and wanted more, so I pressured them into collecting it, and turned them in when they refused. It’s pitiful, but that’s their defence. And it has a horrible credibility in court, believe me.”
    Brodie saw his friend in no-man’s land, a mud covered figure, being shot at from all sides. “As if you were on trial yourself.”
    â€œExactly. I am on trial.”
    â€œGoddam! There can’t be the slightest evidence that you were on the take.”
    â€œThink about it. One of these men has twenty years in the Force. The other, fifteen. Irreproachable records.”
    â€œUh-huh, and you’re a new boy.”
    â€œSure. And they’re impeccable liars. They know police procedures. They didn’t break down in the cells and confess.”
    Brodie thought for a while, and lit a cigarette. “If they get off, you’ve done your best.”
    Sherwin had reached the same conclusion. “I can accept the verdict. I can see now that to catch these guys I’d have needed marked money, taped conversations, all the gimmicks of professional detection. I wasn’t ready for that. Never gave it a thought. What happened, happened in a few minutes, the day they came into my office and made the offer. I locked up their money and told them what I was going to do, what I had to do.”
    â€œOK. The sooner it’s over the better, and you can get back to work,” Brodie said, optimistically.
    â€œIt isn’t as simple as that. I’ve been dragged into a fog of suspicion. The judge, the lawyers, the police – they’ve all heard defence counsel thumping the table about a corrupt young police inspector. It’s hard to take. And hard to know how much of these speculations might find their way into my personal file.”
    Paul Sherwin slumped back on the bed, new hollows in his waxen cheeks.
    Brodie and Sherwin decided to have lunch in the Mongkok mess before crossing in the ferry to the Island for the