Dark Side by Margaret Duffy

penned at some speed later that day, was mostly about not quite falling off.
    On Monday morning, Patrick having departed by train for London earlier, I rang Sulyn Li Grant to ask her if she had any of her husband’s possessions that might hold traces of his DNA. At first she said that she had thrown out everything he had left behind, got rid of ‘all his rubbish’, but then remembered an old rucksack he had used that she thought might still be in a cupboard somewhere. She said she would look for it and phone me back so I gave her the number of my official SOCA mobile. In this job you don’t give personal phone numbers to anyone other than close friends and family.
    I had to wait for over two hours for a reply but when it came she said that she had found it after much searching. I asked her to put it in a safe place in a plastic bag of some kind so it could be collected and then rang Patrick. He promised to contact the relevant Met department. This seemed to be the best course of action; after all, they were in possession of the body. DNA testing normally takes around a week but Patrick asked for it to be fast-tracked.
    It was very important, for friendship’s sake if nothing else, that Patrick was seen to be doing something on the Cooper/Mallory front. A round-the-clock watch on Cooper and tailing him everywhere was really the only way that his new-found mobster friend could be identified but, from our point of view, completely impractical right now as neither of us could spare the time. Carrick could hardly justify police time and expense for such an exercise either when no actual crime had, to our knowledge, been committed. I was fully in sympathy with his anger and frustration.
    Almost three days dragged by, during which I found myself unable to concentrate on writing. My main character, a middle-aged DCI of outwardly placid manner, kept morphing in my imagination into a dark-haired sort of smarmy-looking man wearing shades. Finally, unable to put up with this any longer, I shut down my computer mid-afternoon and went outside through the front door, hoping to find inspiration if I went for a walk around the garden.
    Parked across the end of the drive was a red sports car.
    My first reaction was to stand and stare but I did not, following the advice given to Carrick by ignoring its presence after the first glance and wandering away. I told myself that it could easily be another vehicle, not Cooper’s – someone might have stopped to answer their mobile or to look at a map. Not everyone uses a satnav. But why had I got the impression that someone was taking photographs of me?
    It goes without saying that writing inspiration, or that of any other kind, failed to arrive and shortly afterwards I returned to the house, using the back way through the conservatory. Going upstairs, I was about to go into Patrick’s and my bedroom as it is at the front and overlooks the drive, when it occurred to me that I would still be visible to whoever was in the car if I looked out of the window. If it was still there. I peeped around the edge of the curtain.
    It was.
    My mobile rang and for a moment I looked wildly around the room for it before realizing that I had put it in my pocket. It was Patrick.
    â€˜Wildly bored here,’ he reported briskly. ‘Just completed the job, Mike’s out somewhere, just about everyone else in this department seems to be on hols and I’ve tackled every crozzy I can lay my hands on – without a lot of success.’
    â€˜How much leave do
you
have left?’ I asked him. I don’t get paid leave, the understanding being that my role is part time and I do not work while Patrick is on leave except in exceptional circumstances.
    â€˜Oh … dunno. Some of that last lot was sick leave after we were chucked out of the van on the last case. Why, d’you fancy jetting off somewhere?’
    â€˜I think we ought to get on with this Cooper and Mallory