Closer Than Blood: An addictive and gripping crime thriller. Paul Grzegorzek

got to be staying somewhere, and if Jake was telling the truth then they don’t have much of a network down here. I also want to find out if we’ve got anything from the ambulance on Wilsons Avenue – there were loads of people with their phones out when we arrived.”

      “Good.” Striker nodded. “I’ll get CID to help. I’d like to avoid using uniform as much as possible, I don’t want to spook these Russians and provoke them into doing something stupid. What else?”

      “Well …” I thought furiously for a moment. I’d been too worried to think this through properly, but the Chief Super was the type of senior officer who expected her troops to come to her with answers as well as problems. “I can visit a few people, see if anyone I know has actually spoken to the Russians. If they’ve been putting the word out, someone must have been face to face with them.”

      “Do that. I want these men in a cell before someone else gets hurt or they find your brother and disappear. If you need more resources, I’ll throw the whole damn division your way.”

      “Thanks, ma’am.” I stood, recognising the dismissal for what it was, and ushered Barry out.

      “That could have been worse,” Barry whispered as we took the stairs down to our office.

      “It could have been,” I agreed, “but it could have been better too. These guys are professionals, and despite what I said upstairs I don’t think we’ll find them easily.”

      “What do you need me to do?”

      That was one of the things I loved about my team. We’d been working together for a long time now, and no matter how difficult the task they simply got on with it – no fuss, no bullshit.

      “This fifty grand changes things. It’s going to draw some of the nastier bastards out from whatever rock they’ve been hiding under. So speak to your regulars, see if anyone interesting has surfaced. It’s early days yet, but you never know.”

      We’d almost reached the door to DIU when it burst open, Phil Blunt careening through it with a dark expression on his face. The moment he saw me, he thrust his phone at me.

      “You’re gonna want to see this,” he growled.

      I took the phone and looked at it, seeing the webpage for the local paper, The Argus. I had little love for them, having had my fair share of negative press over the years, and so I wasn’t terribly surprised when I read the headline “War in Woodingdean!”

      “Great,” I muttered as I read on.

       A little before 9 o’clock last night, the sleepy village of Woodingdean was rocked by a scene more in keeping with downtown L.A. than the Sussex coast. According to reports, armed men, rumoured to be from a drug cartel, stormed the family home of Sergeant Gareth Bell, an officer known for …