Faithfully: Chase & Halshaw #1 by Howard Mellowes

She
wondered whether Sniffles remembered George at all now.
    “Come on, Sniffles,” she sighed, tugging on his lead.
“Breakfast time.”
    Sniffles took no notice, as always.
    She tugged on his lead again, harder this time. “Come on,”
she pleaded. “Mummy needs a cup of tea.”
    Sniffles began to reverse out from under the bush where he
had been foraging, then stopped.
    “What have you found this time?” she asked, indulgently,
squatting down to take a look.
    To begin with, she couldn’t see what the dog had found. A
white paper bag, perhaps? A piece of cloth? No, whatever he had found was
heavier. She could see that from his movements. But the shadows were too deep
for her glaucomatous eyes to make out any detail.
    After a few moments, she felt her hip begin to stiffen, and
knew that if she didn’t stand soon she would be stuck down there all day. Then
Sniffles turned towards her, and she saw what he had found.
    “There’s a good boy, Sniffles,” she said, tickling him
behind the ears. “Good boy!” She straightened up laboriously. “Let’s go home
now and have our breakfast. And afterwards, we’ll take this straight down to
the police station. Some silly girl probably dropped it on the way home from
the pub last night.”

3
    Ten minutes later, Chase was back in the meeting room, a
fresh cappuccino to hand, when there was a knock at the door.
    “Come in!” he called.
    The door opened and a tall, sandy-haired man appeared, his prominent
chin only partly disguised by a thick ginger beard. “Are you ready for me yet,
Inspector?” he asked, in a soft Scots accent.
    “Mr McKinley?”
    “That’s right,” the man replied, with a diffident smile.
    “Come on in,” said Chase. The two men shook hands, and Paul
McKinley took a seat at the table.
    “You work for Portage, don’t you?” Chase began.
    “That’s right.”
    “What’s your role?”
    “IT Delivery Head. I’m responsible for delivering all our
projects, to time, quality, and budget.”
    Chase nodded. “How do you feel about the proposal Sandersons
presented on Monday?”
    “It’s pretty inevitable, I suppose,” said McKinley, calmly.
“Personally, I hate the idea, but I can see the logic.”
    “Why do you hate the idea?”
    “Because we’re giving up something that makes us special.”
    “You mean your IT system?”
    “Not so much the system itself. It’s a third-party package,
anyway. No, it’s the people, the knowledge, that’s what we’ll lose.”
    “I see,” replied Chase. “So, where were you last Monday
evening?”
    “What time?”
    “Between seven and ten-thirty, let’s say.”
    “Football training, Inspector. I play for a local team,
Chiltern Park Rangers. We train on Monday evenings.”
    “Where do you train?”
    “On the all-weather pitch at Chiltern Park.”
    “What time did you finish?”
    “Nine-ish.”
    “And can we check that?”
    “Of course. Talk to Mike Felstead ,
our coach.”
    “Do you have his number?”
    “Yes.” McKinley produced his mobile and dictated the number
as Chase wrote it in his notebook.
    “Thank you, Mr McKinley. What happened after football training?
Did you go straight home?”
    “No. After we’d showered and changed, some of us went to The
Bend Over for a few beers. I was there until about eleven, I guess.”
    “The Bend Over?”
    McKinley smiled. “The Wendover Arms,” he explained. “The pub
just across the road from the park. We call it The Bend Over. Bit of a joke
among the lads, you know.”
    Chase nodded. “Was Mr Felstead with you at the pub?”
    “Yes, he was. Then he gave me a lift home. About eleven
o’clock, like I said.”
    “Where do you live?”
    “Greenford.”
    “Address?”
    “34 Broomfield Close.”
    “And where was he heading for?”
    “Gerard’s Cross.”
    Chase sat back in his chair and snapped his notebook shut.
“Right. That’s it for now. Thank you.”
    McKinley ran both his hands through his fine sandy hair and
sighed.
    “Was