Hunter Hunted by Jack Gatland (best value ebook reader .TXT) 📗

stopping at the wall beside them, a wall that earlier that day a barman had indicated to, when mentioning a car that had been waiting outside at the time of Monroe’s attack.

‘I can’t believe he’s still in a coma,’ he muttered. ‘And I can’t believe we’re still considering Declan.’

He raised his glass.

‘To Belgrade.’

‘I’m not doing this bloody code words thing with you,’ Anjli muttered.

But she raised her glass all the same.

After work, Declan had driven home to Hurley On Thames, spending what felt like a good hour in the shower and finally changing out of his suit. The problem with one-night stands was the lack of a change of clothes, and Declan had already decided that a wise thing to do in the future, if things continued to progress with Kendis, would be to place an overnight bag in the car's boot for those unforeseen occasions.

Although today’s unforeseen occasions eclipsed a single overnighter with a childhood sweetheart.

After showering, he’d spent a couple of hours in his father’s secret study; he still hadn’t cleaned out the room yet, and so the office area was still the equivalent of a modern day priest hole, created behind a fake wall and with a doorway hidden behind a slidable bookshelf. He still didn’t know why Patrick Walsh had gone to such extremes here, but that someone had broken into the house two days earlier and stolen his father’s iMac from the living room made him think that there was gold of some kind in the room; and not just a strange USB drive with a passcode cypher that now rested on the desk with WINTERGREEN written on it in his father’s handwriting, the name of an apparent Detective Sergeant that once worked with his father, but who no longer seemed to exist in current records.

There was something more going on here.

He’d spent a good hour working once more through his father’s crime wall; photos of suspects and post-it notes with names and locations on, all linked with red string. He’d gone over this wall many times over the last few weeks, and each time he found something new, a different rabbit hole to fall down. But today his attention was distracted, and he moved to the bookshelf where he’d found another book, a fake one like the one he’d found that housed the WINTERGREEN USB drive. This one was The Count of Monte Cristo, and inside it was close to two thousand pounds in twenty-pound notes. Declan didn’t understand why his father would have such an amount squirrelled away, and the recent revelations that Patrick Walsh had been less than clean returned to his mind.

Was this dirty money that Patrick was too scared to declare?

Closing it and placing it back on the desk, he continued to search for more clues, before moving back to the fake book and removing some notes, placing them into his wallet. Funds were funds, after all.

He’d been looking for something, anything that could help him work out why Monroe was targeted; the attack could have been from friends or allies of the Delcourt family, Danny Martin or even the Byrnes in Birmingham, and that was only a list of people that had a problem with Monroe resulting from the last couple of days. He had decades of people hating him, as Derek Salmon had shown. And if it had been a long-term grudge that had caused the attack, then surely Patrick Walsh, one of Monroe’s oldest friends on the force should have known about it. And, fastidious and organised as he’d always been, would have noted it down in a journal or file somewhere.

But there were a lot of journals and files in this room, and over the last few weeks Declan had been through them all, most of the time with Jess beside him.

There was another option though; earlier the previous day, before everything happened in Beachampton, Billy had met with an informant who had told him that Charles Baker was hunting the Last Chance Saloon, and it seemed convenient that Monroe was attacked the same day they passed the news. But that didn’t quite pan out right, as Billy had also been told that Declan was the primary target, so why would they attack Monroe? And this wasn’t a beating, like the one that Declan had once had at the hands of the man with the rimless glasses outside his Tottenham apartment a couple of months earlier. This had been an attempted murder. One that needed to be solved before whoever had done this heinous act tried to finish the job.

Declan had decided that he’d be spending a lot more time next to Monroe in the next few days, in case the attacker returned. That said, Doctor Marcos was a suitable, and often creatively vicious defender. Declan felt sorry for any attacker who arrived while she was on guard.

At around ten pm Declan was feeling wiped, his eyes starting to unfocus with the strain of so much paperwork passing his vision and the lack of sleep the previous night; partly due to the events of the evening and partly because of the monstrous hangover he’d woken up with, and with a yawn and a stretch, he went to bed. He wasn’t a young man anymore, able to lose an entire night’s sleep as he crammed for exams, or working a case that required constant attention and he knew that it’d be easier to work through these files in the morning, filled with coffee and with a better idea of what was going on following a night’s sleep.

This plan was stopped however by a frantic Lizzie who called around ten thirty.

‘You okay?’ Declan asked, sitting up in the bed that he’d only just climbed into. ‘You don’t usually call this late.’

‘It’s Jess,’ Lizzie replied. ‘She was supposed to be back an hour ago.’

‘She’s probably lost track of time, Lizzie,’ Declan rubbed at his eyes. ‘We’ve all done it.’

‘I’ve tried calling her,’ Lizzie replied. ‘She’s not picking