Dark Side by Margaret Duffy Page A

know.
    â€˜We didn’t see anyone but someone must have been watching our movements.’
    â€˜I take it this is being investigated.’
    â€˜Yes, DI Campbell’s working on it. Several of these yobs were arrested so we might get a lead from them.’
    There was silence for a few moments, broken by Greenway saying, ‘You’re beginning to convert me. Because now, if the local rumours are correct, Cooper has a powerful associate. From what you’ve told me, taking into account his job as a sort of newspaper hack, he must know everyone and everything about the city, especially anything on the illegal side. Perhaps this Raptor character is using him for that reason.’
    Patrick said, ‘Or if he just wants a place to enjoy quiet weekends away from the hard grind of serious criminal activities in London he could be using Cooper to sniff out and even deal with any bother from what he regards as the local plods or resident mobsters.’
    â€˜Does Bath have resident mobsters?’ Greenway enquired.
    â€˜Right now, probably not. Not since the turf war when we cleared out those left standing or they disappeared or died from the effects of drink and drugs. What we don’t want – and here I’m speaking both as a peripheral cop and someone who lives in the area – is an outsider to spot an opening and move in.’
    The commander turned to me. ‘Believe me, Ingrid, I do value what you both do here and I’m sorry if I’ve given you the impression that I don’t.’ And to Patrick, ‘My concern having weighed all this up is that Carrick might take the law into his own hands and do his force untold harm. It’s just as well he’s out of it for a while. With Avon and Somerset’s permission I’ll send you back there with a remit to check up on the Raptor side of this – and I don’t need to tell you not to tread on this DI Campbell’s toes.’
    We decided to start right where we were, in London.
    â€˜You really don’t have to tolerate a carpeting from Greenway,’ I said, still aggrieved, a little later. ‘I know he’s a commander but he did say a while back that he didn’t want you to call him sir on account of your being a retired lieutenant colonel.’
    â€˜It’s not a rank thing,’ I was told. ‘He has trouble at home, the usual kind that happens to policemen who work long hours, his wife fed up with hardly ever seeing him. She’s threatening him with divorce.’
    â€˜Mike told you this himself?’
    â€˜No. Benedict, his son, still keeps in touch with Matthew. He told him and Matthew told me. I said it was a good idea to keep very quiet about it.’
    â€˜Even to keep it from your wife?’
    â€˜Ingrid, sometimes you’re not very good at hiding your feelings. You might have displayed some kind of – well, sympathy that would have led Mike to realize we knew. I’ve only mentioned it now to explain what happened so please don’t say anything.’
    Sometimes women have to accept that men have their own laws of the jungle. And come to think of it, Patrick hadn’t even looked mildly irritated at Greenway’s diatribe.
    The Metropolitan Police Detective Sergeant, Paul Smithson, who had supposedly committed suicide, had been living on his own at the time of his death as he was separated from his wife, Susan. The time lapse involved, getting on for a year, and the fact that the flat had been re-let meant that it was pointless for us to go there to talk to neighbours. We went instead to see his widow, who had moved from the family home in Ilford, but only a few streets away, to a terraced house in a street crammed into the area between the High Road and a large railway depot. We did not park outside.
    The door was opened by a man, probably in his late twenties, with luxurious tattoos and a very generous paunch. When he saw us he prepared to shut it again