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The leading firefighter, Gary Cullen, walked over to join them. It was De
“What do you think?”
“Joyriders.” De
“Why here, then?”
“Du
“Under control. What if there’s a body in the boot?”
De
Janet walked over to the car. “I’ll get it,” she said over her shoulder.
“Control to three-five-four. Come in, please, three-five-four. Over.”
Janet picked up the radio. “Three-five-four to Control. Over.”
“Domestic dispute reported taking place at number thirty-five, The Hill. Repeat. Three-five. The Hill. Can you respond? Over.”
Christ, thought Janet, a bloody domestic. No copper in her right mind liked domestics, especially at this time in the morning. “Will do,” she sighed, looking at her watch. “ETA three minutes.”
She called over to De
“Tell him that joke, did you?” Janet asked, settling behind the wheel.
“Which one’s that?” De
Janet started the car and sped to the main road. “You know, the one about the blonde giving her first blow job.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Only I heard you telling it to that new PC back at the station, the lad who hasn’t started shaving yet. You ought to give the poor lad a chance to make his own mind up about women, Den, instead of poisoning his mind right off the bat.”
The centrifugal force almost threw them off the road as Janet took the roundabout at the top of The Hill too fast. De
Janet smiled to herself as she slowed and curb-crawled down The Hill looking for number 35.
“Anyway, I’m getting sick of this,” De
“Sick of what? My driving?”
“That, too. Mostly, though, it’s your constant bitching. It’s got so a bloke can’t say what’s on his mind these days.”
“Not if he’s got a mind like a sewer. That’s pollution. Anyway, it’s changing times, Den. And we have to change with them or we’ll end up like the dinosaurs. By the way, about that mole.”
“What mole?”
“You know, the one on your cheek. Next to your nose. The one with all the hairs growing out of it.”
De
“I’d get it seen to quick, if I were you. It looks cancerous to me. Ah, number thirty-five. Here we are.”
She pulled over to the right side of the road and came to a halt a few yards past the house. It was a small detached residence built of redbrick and sandstone, between a plot of allotments and a row of shops. It wasn’t much bigger than a cottage, with a slate roof, low-walled garden and a modern garage attached at the right. At the moment, all was quiet.
“There’s a light on in the hall,” Janet said. “Shall we have a dekko?”
Still fingering his mole, De
Janet paused by the door. Still all quiet, apart from De
Seeing no doorbell, Janet knocked on the door.
No response came from inside.
She knocked harder. The hammering seemed to echo up and down the street. Still no response.
Next, Janet went down on her knees and looked through the letter box. She could just make out a figure sprawled on the floor at the bottom of the stairs. A woman’s figure. That was probable cause enough for forced entry.
“Let’s go in,” she said.
De
Poor technique, she thought. She’d have reared back and used her foot. But De
The door crashed open on first contact and De
Janet was right behind him, but she had the advantage of walking in at a more dignified pace. She shut the door as best she could, knelt beside the woman on the floor, and felt for a pulse. Weak, but steady. One side of her face was bathed in blood.
“My God,” Janet muttered. “Den? You okay?”
“Fine. You take care of her. I’ll have a look around.” De
For once, Janet didn’t mind being told what to do. Nor did she mind that De
Bastard, she thought. Whoever did this. “It’s okay, love,” she said, even though she suspected the woman couldn’t hear her. “We’ll get you an ambulance. Just hold on.”
Most of the blood seemed to be coming from one deep cut just above her left ear, Janet noticed, though there was also a little smeared around the nose and lips. Punches, by the looks of it. There were also broken glass and daffodils scattered all around her, along with a damp patch on the carpet. Janet took her personal radio from her belt hook and called for an ambulance. She was lucky it worked on The Hill; personal UHF radios had much less range than the VHF models fitted in cars, and were notoriously subject to black spots of patchy reception.
De
Janet eased the pillow under the woman’s head, covered her gently with the blanket and applied the towel to the seeping wound on her temple. Well, I never, she thought, full of surprises, our Den. “Think he’s done a ru
“Du
Before Janet could say anything, De
Curious, Janet looked at the injured woman. The bleeding had stopped and there was nothing else she could do. Even so, she was reluctant to leave the poor woman alone.
“Come on,” De
Janet took one last look at the prone figure and walked toward the back of the house. The kitchen was in darkness.