I ain’t done nothing. I just don’t feel so good, that’s all. Must have been something I ate.’
It wasn’t going to wash. Carney was convinced he was on to something now. He peered at Sofrides’s face more closely.
‘I do have to admit that you don’t look so good,’ he muttered. ‘In fact, Tony, you look as sick as the proverbial parrot.’ He paused momentarily. ‘Know what I think, Tony? I think you’ve just made a collection and I’ve caught you bang to rights. I think you’re carrying a major consignment of naughties, that’s what I think. The question is: what, and where?’
Carney suddenly seized Sofrides by the arm, forcing it up around his back in a savage half nelson. He frogmarched him over to his own car, opened it and pulled a pair of handcuffs out of the glove compartment. Snapping the cuffs around the young man’s wrist, he pushed him back to the Volvo, wound down the window a few inches and clipped the other bracelet to the door-frame.
‘So let’s take a little look-see, shall we,’ he suggested, returning to his own vehicle for just long enough to grab a powerful torch.
The Volvo seemed clean, much to Carney’s disappointment. Sofrides watched him search thoroughly beneath and behind the seats, in the glove compartment and underneath the dashboard.
‘See, I told you I ain’t done nothing. So how about letting me go, Mr Carney?’ Sofrides suggested hopefully.
Carney shook his head. ‘We’ve only just got started, Tony. It’d be a pity to break the party up this early now, wouldn’t it?’ He straightened up from searching the interior of the car. ‘Right, let’s take a little look in the boot.’
A fresh glimmer of panic crossed Sofrides’s eyes. ‘Look, tell you what. Suppose I make you a deal?’ he blurted out.
Carney sounded unimpressed. ‘Oh yes, and what sort of deal would that be, Tony?’
Sofrides snatched at his slim remaining chance eagerly. ‘I know a couple of new crack houses which have just opened up. I can give you names…places…times.’
Carney grinned wickedly at him. ‘But you’ll do that anyway, once I get you nailed,’ he pointed out. ‘You’ll sing your little black heart out just as soon as you see the inside of the slammer. You’ll have to do a bit better than that, Tony.’
Sofrides was really desperate now, clutching at straws. ‘How about if I set someone up for you – someone big?’ he suggested. ‘I’m only a little fish, Mr Carney – you know that.’
Carney paused, tempted. ‘And who might you have in mind?’ he asked.
Sofrides picked a name at random. ‘How about Jack Mottram? He deals in ten Ks at a time.’
Carney sighed wearily. The little bastard was trying to wind him up, he thought. ‘Jack Mottram wouldn’t piss on you if your arse was on fire,’ he said scathingly. ‘Now stop jerking my chain, all right?’ He pulled the key to the handcuffs from his pocket, releasing them from the Volvo door. He grabbed Sofrides by the scruff of the neck, dragging him round to the back of the car and nodding down at the boot.
‘Right, just so we don’t hear any little whinges about planted evidence,’ he muttered. ‘Open it up and we’ll take a little look in Pandora’s box.’
For a moment, Sofrides was tempted to try to struggle free and run for it. As if sensing this, Carney tightened his grip. ‘Don’t even think about it, Tony. I could outrun a little lardball like you in twenty yards flat. Besides, you might have a little accident resisting arrest, and we wouldn’t want that to happen, would we?’
Sofrides sagged, realizing he was beaten. His heart pounded in his chest as Carney turned the key and opened the boot, then shone the torch inside.
Carney was not prepared for the sight which greeted his eyes, and he was visibly shaken. It was revulsion, quickly followed by a wave of rage, which washed over him as the beam illuminated the girl’s contorted body, her sightless eyes staring up at him out of her pale, bruised face.
‘Jesus,’ Carney muttered, with a long, deep sigh. His body quivered with shock and anger.
The desperate urge to run washed over Sofrides again at that moment. Not really thinking clearly, he twisted his body to break free from Carney’s grip and jerked up one knee at his groin.
Carney’s reactions were fast, but not quite fast enough to avoid contact altogether. Twisting his body, he winced with pain as Sofrides’s savage blow connected with the side of his hip bone. That, on top of his grisly discovery, was enough to make Carney snap. His mind exploded in a red mist of pain and rage. Suddenly, everything came out – his tiredness, his frustration with the job, his total loathing of little low-lifes like Sofrides. He raised the heavy torch and smashed it against the side of the dealer’s head, shattering the glass. Sofrides screamed in agony as Carney drove a full-blooded punch deep into his solar plexus and then cuffed him across the ear as he began to double up in agony. Several more blows followed as the policeman went berserk, venting the full force of his frustration in a few moments of blind, senseless violence. Finally he pushed Sofrides over the lip of the boot until he was half lying across the girl’s body, and brought the heavy lid crashing down.
There was a last, agonized scream from Sofrides, then silence.
Mentally drained and utterly exhausted, Carney fell back against the side of the car, breathing heavily and cursing himself under his breath. Sanity had begun to return now, and he knew he’d gone too far.
There was no smile of greeting on the desk sergeant’s face as Carney strolled into the station later that morning. ‘Excuse me, sir, but the DCI asked me to tell you to report to his office as soon as you came in.’
Carney nodded. He had been expecting it. ‘Thanks, Sergeant.’ He headed straight for Manners’s office and tapped lightly on the glass door.
‘Come.’ The man’s tone was curt and peremptory. He stared grimly at Carney as he walked in. ‘Sit down, Carney,’ he snapped, pointing to a chair.
Carney did as he was told, his heart sinking. Harry Manners’s use of his surname had given him a pretty good clue as to the severity of the dressing down he was about to receive. He looked across at his superior with what he hoped was a suitably contrite expression on his face.
There was a moment of strained silence before Manners spoke. ‘Tony Sofrides is in the Royal Northern Hospital,’ he announced flatly. ‘He has two skull fractures, a broken arm, ruptured spleen and three cracked ribs.’
Carney could not resist the only defence he had. ‘Christ, sir, did you see that girl?’
Manners nodded. ‘I saw them both.’ He paused for a moment, sighing heavily. ‘Goddammit, man, what the hell got into you? Don’t you realize you could have killed him?’
Carney hung his head, although there was a spark of defiance left. ‘So what should I have done? Slapped his wrists and told him he’d been a naughty boy? Look, Harry, I know I blew my stack, and I’m sorry.’
Manners was shaking his head doubtfully. ‘I don’t think that’s going to be enough – not this time.’
Carney realized for the first time that he was looking suspension, possibly dismissal, in the face. He could only presume upon their years together as colleagues, and as friends. ‘Aw, come on, Harry. You can cover for me on this one, surely. There’s a dozen shades of whitewash. Resisting arrest, assaulting a police officer, injured while trying to escape…’ He tailed off, studying his superior’s face.
Manners shook his head again. ‘I’m not sure I can – and what’s more to the point, I’m not sure that I should,’ he said. ‘The bottom line is that you had a chance to make a righteous arrest and you blew it. Not only that, but you beat the shit out of the suspect as well. That’s bad policework, and we both know it. It was sloppy, it was excessive – and it was dangerous.’ He paused, sighing. ‘And it’s not the first time.’
There