The Hireling's Tale by Jo Bannister Page A

The increasing creakiness in his knees didn’t much affect his abilities as a detective: in his mid-twenties he realized he’d have to catch criminals with his brain because it was the only agile part of him. Since then his brain had got smarter and quicker, and his body had got bulkier and slower.
    But it’s amazing how fast even a slow, bulky, elderly detective superintendent can move if he has to. As Donovan watched in astonishment he launched himself up the steps like the demon king in a pantomime.
    He was still watching, startled speechless, when he saw the back of Shapiro’s coat open like a flower, a red flower blooming in a desert of herringbone tweed.
    Time slowed right down. Donovan felt himself rooted to the spot, trying to move and not succeeding.
He heard a sort of surprised grunt from Shapiro and a thin cry from the man on the steps above him, slowly, slowly turning to see what had happened. He saw Shapiro falling towards the steps, and though there was all the time in the world he couldn’t get his arms forward to break his fall. He crashed face-down on the concrete, and time resumed normal speed.
    Donovan unglued his limbs and flung himself to cover Shapiro’s body with his own. But there were no more shots, and after a moment, still keeping between his chief and the lane, he pushed himself up on his knees and looked around.
    WPC Wilson was coming at a run. He waved her back with an urgent sweep of his arm. ‘Get on the radio,’ he roared. ‘Ambulance first, then the DI. You’ - he meant Kendall - ‘inside. Lock the door. Don’t worry about me,’ he added fiercely as the man went to argue, ‘it’s not me he’s shooting at!’ Then, and only then, did he dare look at Shapiro.
    And he thought Shapiro was dead; or if by sheer bloody-mindedness some spark of life persisted within him, it couldn’t possibly last long enough for the miracle-workers at Castle General to get their hands on him. There was a hole in the middle of his back Donovan could have sunk his fingers in, and enough blood had come out of it to baptize them both.
    Someone was cursing: not inventively, just the same obscenity endlessly repeated in a high thin whine of a voice laced through with shock and an
agony of rage. Donovan looked up, wondering who it was. But there was only Shapiro - white-faced and deeply unconscious - and him, so he supposed it was him.

Chapter One
    Superintendent Giles wasn’t really a copper’s copper. He was a highly intelligent man, and a dedicated police officer. He was a graduate, and a Bramshill Flier, and the likelihood was that he would make Assistant Chief Constable. No one at Queen’s Street had a bad word to say about him. At the same time, he knew that if he stayed in Castlemere for the next ten years still no one here would feel about him the way they felt about Frank Shapiro. He commanded respect, he didn’t inspire affection. He was sorry about that, but doubted there was anything he could do about it. He wasn’t one to court popularity, and not only because he knew it didn’t work.
    In the sixteen months he’d been here he’d developed a regard for Queen’s Street that he hadn’t felt at every station where he’d served, and he would have liked to feel accepted as one of the team. But it was never going to happen. He was too young, too smart and too alien for most of them. He knew how the computers worked; he knew how to get the best out of Interpol. Men like Sergeant Bolsover, and Shapiro himself, who’d spent thirty years doing this job and knew it back to front and inside out could
never wholly empathize with a man to whom crime statistics seemed important.
    He was the new generation, the new face of policing. The nearest thing he had to a contemporary was Liz Graham, who had also done her stint at Divisional HQ and never hit ‘Cancel’ on the keyboard when she meant to hit ‘Save’. But bizarrely enough, the one he felt to have most in common with was Donovan. They were