Death Line by Maureen Carter Page A

then Lancelot was the boss, the buck stopper.
    “Yes, sergeant, but I’m the one supposed to have an overview. We got sidetracked. If we’d run a more thorough check on his movements earlier...” She narrowed her eyes,
cast her mind back to the interview room, recalled Haines’s knowing smirk.
    “Yeah, but...” Hold that thought. She frowned. Sodding Magnum was a distraction she could do without, a load of gunge was leaking out the paper.
    “What?”
    She spotted a bin, wandered over, got shot of the mess. “Way I see it, soon as we picked him up, he could’ve put himself in the clear... if he wanted to.”
    Knight was speeding up. “You think he was playing us?”
    Like the Royal Philharmonic. They ought to do the bugger for obstruction. “He was enjoying it, gaffer. Knew he hadn’t done it. Knew we couldn’t touch him. Maybe thought he
could screw a few quid out of us for the injuries.” A bob or two for the black eyes. “The only time he got antsy was when we told him about the sock.” Because if its presence
wasn’t down to him it meant someone else had joined the game. On the opposite team. “It was news to him, gaffer, I’d stake my pension on that.” Knight was rubbing his chin,
she heard the rasp.
    “He claimed it was a plant all along.” The DCI sounded pensive. “Christ, this is all we need. You know what it means...?”
    Bent cops, rotten apples, bad press. He could be right. But Bev was thinking about the duff tip-off that had led them to Haines’s door in the first place. Who, where, and more importantly
why, had an anonymous informant pointed the finger in the wrong direction? She was about to share, but the question must’ve been rhetorical.
    “Right, OK.” Brief, businesslike, the DCI cutting losses. “He gets a bollocking for withholding information but we’ll have to release him. We need to review, refocus,
redirect the inquiry. Get back soon as you can. Well done, sergeant.”
    Better late than never.
    “’Kay, boss?” Mac sounding chipper.
    She turned to see what he was up to, arched an eyebrow. “Where’d you get that, mate?”
    He didn’t even look sheepish as he waved half a Magnum at the nearby bin. “Shame to see it go to waste.”
    Still pensive, Knight hung up, picturing a basket bulging with venomous snakes. Bad enough a child murderer was still at large, but it looked as if someone had deliberately
tried to implicate an innocent man.
    The DCI rose, walked to the window, thought it through. Photographic evidence made it clear Roland Haines could neither have abducted Josh Banks nor dumped the boy’s body. But someone
– and it could be a police officer – wanted Haines to go down for it. The sock hadn’t appeared in the guy’s bedsit by magic. But wasn’t a bent copper too obvious an
explanation? And the original intelligence placing Haines at the Marston Road crime scene had come from a woman.
    Knight chewed his bottom lip. On top of all that, it looked as if the nick had a leak the size of Wales. Floundering wasn’t quite the right word for the DCI’s current state, he
wasn’t out of his depth yet. But he wouldn’t say no to a lifebelt.
    He strode back to the desk, picked up the phone, hesitated only briefly before hitting Byford’s internal extension. “Bill...?”

14
    “I wanna see him? Where is the bastard?” High-pitched screeches punctuated by what sounded like a fist pounding wood.
    “Hell’s that?” Back at Highgate, Bev was halfway up the first flight of stairs heading for the squad room, Mac bringing up the rear. The fracas was kicking off at the front
desk. And getting louder. Bev cast a wry glance over her shoulder. “Reckon Vince needs a hand?”
    “Nah, Vinnie’s no wuss.” Well true. Vince Hanlon was fifteen stone of rippling... lard, longest serving front line sergeant in the nick, and safer pair of hands than a
micro-surgeon. “Nothing he can’t...”
    Smashing glass. Jagged screams. Hurled obscenities.