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however, played the game with enthusiasm, to the point of being accused in court by one unfortunate victim of trying to shove the stuff down her throat with his tongue, causing her to cough up the goods as it were.
    “I won’t beat about the bush, Erskine,” Osborne began. “We searched Morton’s flat and found this in his safe.” He tossed over a brown envelope. “I thought you might be interested.”
    Powell extracted the contents of the envelope—four or five pages stapled together and several loose sheets—and looked through them. There was a contract of some sort between Morton and an entity called the Dockside Development Corporation, represented by someone named Paul Atherton, plus several architectural views of a building complex, a block of flats with a restaurant below. He looked more closely. The restaurant was called Chez Clive. Morton’s revenge, he thought.
    “Interesting, don’t you think?” Osborne observed neutrally.
    “The fact that Morton had delusions of culinary grandeur, you mean?”
    Osborne cocked an eyebrow. “I’ll make allowances for the fact that you’ve only just started working on the Brighton case—but doesn’t the name Dockside Development Company cause a bubble to come off the old think-tank?”
    Powell sighed. “Get to the point, Tony.”
    “You could show a little more gratitude, mate. Docksideis the development scheme in Rotherhithe that Richard Brighton was trying to shove down the throats of the good citizens of Southwark.”
    This caught Powell’s attention. “You don’t say?”
    “Which brings me to my point in asking you to come here. I’d like to bring you in on this one. It’s probably a long shot, but there may be a connection to the Brighton murder, which is out of my jurisdiction. At the very least, someone is going to have to look into the possibility, and you are the logical candidate.” He paused to give Powell the opportunity to consider his request.
    If nothing else, Powell mused, Osborne was a breath of fresh air. Divisional Superintendents were generally reluctant to ask for outside assistance, jealously guarding their egos and territories. Osborne, however, possessed sufficient confidence in his own abilities that he took the view that
his
job was to marshal whatever resources were necessary to get the job done. End of story.
    For the first time in a long while, Powell experienced that familiar rush of energy signifying that a case had begun to take hold of him like a drug. There was, however, one cloud on the horizon. Powell looked at Osborne with a straight face. “My fee will be the use of your flat while you’re away.”
    Osborne grinned. “Well, that’s it then. Do you want me to fix it with Merriman?”
    Powell pulled a face. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to keep it unofficial for a few days.”
    Osborne scrutinized his colleague closely. “All right. As long as it gets sorted out before I leave on Sunday.”
    “Right,” Powell concluded with an air of confidence he didn’t feel.
    The morning mist was beginning to burn off and a pale smudge of sun overhead presaged a fine day ahead. Powell decided to walk to Leicester Square, where, before leaving the West End Central Police Station, he had arranged to meet the fruit-and-veg merchant who had discovered Clive Morton’s body. As he walked along the gray curve of Regent Street, filled with shoppers and shop assistants on their breaks, he realized that he rarely took the opportunity to appreciate the fact that he worked in one of the world’s great cities. It was always easy to complain about the traffic, the train service, the latest tasteless redevelopment scheme, the tourists, and of course Lord Archer, but he knew he couldn’t live anywhere else. From time to time, he and Marion had toyed with the idea of moving to the country, where he could no doubt find a job with a provincial constabulary and she at a local college. He had to admit that the thought of a small holding