Murder Path (Fallen Angels Book 3) by Max Hardy

Strange said in a raised voice, tinged with sarcasm.  ‘Were you in the army?’
    ‘Get real Strange.  I am four foot eleven with flat feet and the physique of a fairy.  The Army wouldn’t even look at me.’  Cruickshank answered, entering the living room with two glasses in her hand.  She had taken her shoes off and was now in stocking feet and had also removed her jacket and unbuttoned the collar button of her frilled blouse, exposing a sliver of chest flesh.  Placing the glasses on the coffee table, she sat down next to Strange on the sofa, curling her legs up under her backside.  ‘Pour the drinks man, some of us are gasping.’ she demanded.
    Strange obliged, handing her a half full glass and taking his own, reaching it out to toast hers.  ‘Cheers.’ he started, clinking glass. ‘So why the Army austerity?’ he finished, throwing his gaze around the simple room.
    ‘Father was in the Army.  I spent most of my childhood in one set of perfunctory accommodation after the next.  It was practical, it did a job.  Just like this place.  It’s all I need.’
    ‘Didn’t your mum want to bring a bit of life to the digs, make them a home?’
    ‘If she’d been around, then perhaps.  But she left when I was four.  Army life didn’t suit her.  Father didn’t suit her.  I didn’t suit her.  But Army life is all I have ever known.  Up until the force.  Now they did take a four foot eleven flat footed fairy.’  Cruickshank divulged factually, without a hint of emotion.
    ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.’  Strange responded, his tone and demeanour awkwardly embarrassed as he took a long swig of rum.
    ‘Don’t be.  This is me.  You get what you see.  Don’t expect to peel back the layers and find a soft centred feminine side.  It doesn’t exist.  But I appreciate it in others, when it’s genuine.  That’s what I like about you, your feminine side.  It infuriates me, but I find your tactile manner and nurturing nature strangely arousing.  So why do you think Saul has started lying to you, given you are such good friends.’  Cruickshank finished, downing her rum in one go and holding the empty glass out to Strange for a refill.
    ‘It’s as I said to you earlier, I think John is trying to figure out what is happening to him.  Whoever these Fallen Angels are, I think they have compromised him.  I think that happened right the way back at Featherstone Hall and he knew it.  That’s why he kept the videos and the phone.  And just to be clear, even back then I warned him that if I found any evidence of his involvement in that affair, I was going to arrest him.  He understood that.  At the time, I did warn him that it could be Jessica Seymour who was playing him.  I am sure he realised that too.  The one thing it is vitally important you understand about John, the thing that makes him such an excellent detective, is that he doesn’t forget.  He doesn’t forget anything.’  Strange responded as he filled both their glasses again, this time to the top, half the bottle gone already.
    ‘That’s as maybe.  But it doesn’t change the facts.  It doesn’t alter the overwhelming forensic evidence.  Even if he is trying to figure out what is happening, he’s still doing it on the wrong side of the law and I stand by what I said earlier, buck your ideas up or I will talk to your Super.’
    Strange chuckled, swigging back the whole tumbler of rum, watching Cruickshank match him swallow for swallow, before filling them both up again.  ‘And is stand by what I said earlier, I think you have a locked and prejudiced approach to this.  I agree, we need to target John and Rebecca.  But we also need to work out if he really does have a double, or that’s just a decoy.  I’m waiting to hear back from Harry Massah on those photographs, because if the dates on them are correct, there’s at least three that were taken when I know John was in the station with me.’
    ‘Okay, just to