Read Under a Silent Moon: A Novel for Free Online Page B

skinny lad with a shaved head, wearing a vest—a vest , for crying out loud, it was November—push one of the girls on the shoulder, hard enough to knock her off her perch on the metal barrier. She kept to her feet but immediately turned to square up to him, her fist brought back behind her ear.
    “Oh, no,” Andy groaned, “don’t be a muppet.”
    The skinhead in the vest, one of the Petrie family, judging by the extensive monobrow and weaselly chin, was laughing at the girl, pointing. Her mate, squeezed into too-tight white jeans with some appropriate word sequinned across the arse, shouted back at him, wobbled her head and waved her hands, ghetto style, and for some reason, that seemed to be more of a legitimate challenge because the halfwit backed off then, hands up in mock surrender.
    Two minutes later the skinhead was snogging the face off the girl who’d nearly punched him and Andy had finished his kebab.
    21:53
    There was no one in the Intel Unit. The late-shift officers were all out on a job, and Lou went back to her desk and sent an email to the Source Handling Unit to try and hurry up the latest on Nigel Maitland, copying her email to Ali Whitmore.
    It would be a bonus, Lou thought, if she could be the one to nail Maitland, the smarmy bastard. She had met him once, and charming and handsome as he was—hair graying at the temples, light-blue eyes with plenty going on behind them, a warm smile—she’d been wary of him. And it might have been a whopping great coincidence that this young woman, who may or may not have been having sex with her employer and “family friend” who was not quite twice her age, ended up with her skull smashed to pieces on Nigel Maitland’s property: or it might just be the mistake that would finally see him brought down.
    The MIR was still active, but there weren’t many people left. Behind some screens and a long table supporting fax machine, scanner, color printer, and black-and-white printer, Jason Mercer was still hard at work. There was something about him that was making her feel . . . odd. Yet he wasn’t especially good-looking, although he was tall and probably had a good body underneath his meticulously ironed shirt. He held himself with an easy confidence, as though he were here for fun, yet at the same time he was clearly very focused on what he was doing. And he had agreed to work on her team even when he obviously hadn’t wanted to.
    “Hello,” said Lou, smiling as he started. “Sorry—didn’t mean to make you jump.”
    He leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms above his head. “I hadn’t noticed it getting dark.” He checked his watch. “My God!”
    “What time did you get to work this morning?” Lou found herself perched on the edge of the desk opposite, tugging at her skirt.
    “Half past seven. Oh, well.” He gave her a smile. “I daresay your day has been at least as long and twice as stressful. Are you going home?”
    Lou nodded. “The mortuary first, to see if there’s any update or if they need anything from us. After that, home. I need sleep, otherwise I won’t be able to function at all tomorrow. How are you getting on?”
    “Fine so far,” Jason said. “Do you want me to brief you now, or can you wait for the morning?”
    “Tomorrow will be fine. I will have to find some way to contain my excitement until then. By the way, what happened to your eye?”
    It must have been a corker when it was still swollen but now it was a purplish smudge under his right eye with a tiny cut on the bridge of his nose. She’d been dying to ask ever since she’d first laid eyes on him at the briefing.
    “I play hockey,” he said. And then added, as he must have had to do every single time someone asked, which was probably several times a day: “Ice hockey.”
    “Ah,” Lou replied, as if that explained everything.
    “Did you find out about the phones?” he asked.
    Shit. “Sorry. I saw Jane briefly but we were talking about the