AM02 - The End of the Wasp Season

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Book: Read AM02 - The End of the Wasp Season for Free Online
Authors: Denise Mina
the link with the infamous McGraths and she felt triumphant, claiming he was dead when he wasn’t. It made her feel as if she had killed him.
    “Yeah,” said Harris, “your auntie.”
    “It was all right, anyway.”
    “Yeah, good.”
    She looked up again. The house had been dearly beloved of someone at some time: an apple tree in the front garden was overloaded with fruit, unpicked, dropping and rotting in the overgrown lawn. The flower beds had been turned but not replanted.
    She found it depressing—it made her think of Danny and John and the frailty of family, how easily, despite all the parts being in place, everything could suddenly turn to shit. “Where’s the cash?”
    Harris looked at her, the little “o” of his mouth like an undelivered kiss. “In the kitchen.” He raised his eyebrows. “There’s more than we thought. It’s in euros.”
    “High denominations?”
    “Five-hundreds.”
    They smiled up at the house. Five-hundred-euro notes usually meant money laundering, usually meant drugs. It was the highest denomination note available in a dependable currency and needed far less space than hundred-dollar bills. “How much?”
    “God, I don’t know, hundreds of thousands?” He grinned. “Wait till you see it.”
    “Someone in there with it?”
    “Aye, Gobby. He’s glad of the sit down.”
    She felt herself warm to the house. “She had the money but she’s not spending it? Is it someone else’s? Maybe she didn’t know it was there.”
    Harris shrugged. “Possible, not likely. Wait till you see where it is.”
    If it was drug money it could lead them to a team, a big international operation. It could make for a nice tidy case, give them extra clean-up.
    “It’s something well organized anyway ’cause it’s not loose cash. It’s got bank bands on.”
    “You know this area?”
    He shook his head. “Been in and around for an hour or so, haven’t seen a soul in the streets but workmen and gardeners.”
    “Ma’am?” Leonard had hurried over from standing with Wilder. “Boss called. Says your phone’s turned off so he called him.” She pointed back at Wilder, standing a hundred yards away holding his work mobile and looking shifty. He had been wise enough not to come over with the news. “Wants to talk to you.”
    “Does he now?”
    At her shoulder, Harris coughed a wry comment.
    Leonard didn’t understand what was going on. “Yes?” she said uncertainly.
    “Say you couldn’t find me.” She turned her back abruptly and asked Harris, “So what’s the story?”
    “Female, twenty-four years old. Her mother died here recently—”
    “That hers…?” She pointed to a steel ramp leaning against the steps to the front door.
    “Yeah, mother was in a wheelchair.”
    “Carers coming in and out?”
    Harris checked his notes. “Round-the-clock care. Found a set of accounts in the living room.”
    “Expensive?”
    “God, aye. Makes me want to save up paracetamol for my own mother, looking at that.”
    “Maybe the money was for that?”
    “You’d keep it in a bank then, wouldn’t you? If it was straight.”
    In their peripheral vision, they saw Leonard edge away.
    “Check the agency they used, find out who was coming, who had keys and so on.”
    They watched Leonard arrive at Wilder’s side and say “I can’t find her” to him. Wilder held the phone out to her. Morrow was glad to see Leonard hold her hands up and back off.
    “Shit runs downhill,” observed Harris pleasantly.
    Morrow allowed herself a smile. “So, victim’s name?”
    “Sarah Erroll.” Harris paled slightly.
    “You look ill, Harris.”
    “Oh…” He tipped his head up the stairs to the green front door, cringed and glanced down at her stomach. “I dunno…”
    Morrow tutted at him. “For God’s sake, don’t start that.”
    She looked back at him. Harris was genuinely not sure that she would be all right. It bode ill, she thought; Harris was fairly hardened.
    She looked up the steps to the

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