The Shadows of Justice by Simon Hall Page A

passed the entrance to the control room. They turned a corner. Now they were approaching the end of the corridor. Ahead was a fire exit and next to it another door, a little smaller. It was plain and bore no sign to betray its purpose, but was strong and well-secured.
    Only one of the strip lights was working, and it grumbled with a low buzz. Daylight was a stranger to this part of the station. The corridor was tainted with dust and smelt musty. Many of the floor tiles were cracked and chipped. The gossamer patterns of a spider’s web stretched from the top of the door.
    “What’s going on?” Dan asked. “I didn’t even know this place existed.”
    “Quite,” Adam replied.
    He fumbled in his pocket, found a fob of keys and picked one out. It was fatter than the rest, shinier and looked little-used.
    With a begrudging clunk, the door opened.
    ***
    Around the walls were propped signs, an unofficial history of concerns long-forgotten. Several appealed for witnesses to road crashes,
others muggings and one a robbery. Most carried the everyday warnings of the business of policing: the risks of ice, pickpockets operating in the area and the ever-present danger of leaving valuables in your car.
    In the corner was a ramshackle stack of old desks and chairs. There were a few abandoned computers too, some which harked back to the days of the ZX Spectrum. Dan reached out to touch one. It was like laying a finger on his past.
    The teenage Dan had bought an early model, second hand, with the money he’d saved from a Saturday job picking tomatoes on a fruit farm. The lasting memory was of more crashes than a banger racing weekend, and a keyboard which resembled long-dead flesh.
    A couple of stacks of traffic cones teetered by the door, their hoops smeared with dirt. Guarding them was the incongruity of a line of gnomes. A note attached to the hat of the tallest read, Nicked by students, owner to collect next week . It was dated nine years ago.
    At the far end of the room was a metal filing cabinet, and it was to here that Adam stepped his careful way.
    Dan found Claire by his side. “The twilight files,” she whispered.
    Adam was delving hard into the cabinet. Wisps of dust took to the air. Katrina began coughing.
    Claire’s radio crackled.
    Two minutes to the off .
    Adam was still bent double. It was as if the cabinet was making an attempt to swallow him.
    The click, click, click of turning metal filled the little room.
    Finally, the detective stood up. He was holding a stained manila folder.
    “Got it,” he said.
    ***
    Katrina took the wheel, but in a manner that was both unexpected and a little alarming. She worked the gears like a racing driver who’s trailing the pack. The car hugged corners and cut a straight line across bends. They had to wait a couple of times for the rest of the convoy to catch up.
    “Where did you learn all this?” Dan asked, in a voice which he hoped disguised his qualms.
    “Advanced driver training. If you need to speed it pays to know how.”
    “Is that how you got down to Devon so fast?”
    “Not entirely. I caught the train. It’s better for thinking through a case. Besides, it’s only about three hours from London to Plymouth.” She glanced over, her face unreadable. “Very easy to pop back and forth.”
    Dan thought he heard Claire make a kind of strangled noise, but it might have been the percussion of another of Katrina’s gear changes.
    She’d insisted on driving. It made sense, she told Adam. He was the officer in charge of the case. He needed to be free to make phone calls. He could also read out the contents of the file, tell them about the two people who were suspected of kidnapping Annette.
    As his deputy Claire should sit alongside. Which left Dan in the front, next to her.
    The logic was incontestable. Yet Claire appeared unimpressed, her face flinty. It was most unlike her, a woman with a natural warmth for the world, even on the most difficult of days. Dan wondered if