Team Spirit (Special Crime Unit Book 1) (38 page)

‘Jesus,’
Luke said, his eyes flicking to the doorway, perhaps in fear that Mrs Lynott,
who wouldn’t approve of his blasphemy, might be earwigging. ‘Debbie’s lucky
they didn’t do her in and all.’

Yes,
Debbie Clarke was ironically fortunate, Sophia thought, to have a former
neo-Nazi for a dad. A father who had successfully though possibly in ignorance
interceded for his daughter’s life and safety. Anglo-Saxon blood, as far as
Edward Porter was concerned, apparently was thicker than water.

‘What’s
going to happen to her?’

‘We
don’t know yet,’ Sophia told him. ‘The mastermind of all this, the man we
probably would have charged with your mother’s murder, being out of the
picture, it will depend on what Scofield and Mansfield have to say when we find
them.’

‘
If
you find them.’

‘We
will,’ she smiled, hoping Luke was more reassured than she felt. ‘Being the
kind of people they are, they will have gone to ground, but they’ll turn up
soon enough. The lifestyle they lead, they cross paths with the law quite
regularly. And since every police station in the country now has a description
of them, it’s really just a matter of time.’

Luke
said, as if in answer to Sophia’s earlier wondering, ‘I don’t know how to feel
about this. I just wish… shit, I don’t know
what
I wish.’

Except
for my mum to still be alive
, was the unspoken qualifier they both knew hung in the
air.

‘I
can’t tell you how to feel, Luke,’ Sophia said.

‘You
know what I wish?’ he cut across whatever else she might have been about to
add. ‘I wish you’d tell me he fucking deserved it. To get shot. That those
Nazis are wrong.’

Sophia
considered. ‘I can tell you what I told you before,’ she said. ‘That trained
firearms officers shot Quaife while he was trying to evade arrest, believing
him to be a danger to colleagues and to the public.’

‘But
you were
there
!
Can’t you give me anything extra?’

‘Quaife’s
dead, Luke,’ she said softly. ‘Are the circumstances important?’

‘They’re
holding him up as a fucking martyr!’ he shouted, flinging a finger at the blank
screen of the TV. ‘By the time the investigation’s finished the truth won’t
matter. They’ll’ve milked this for all it’s worth.’ He stood up, shaking with
impotent anger. ‘Some fucking hero! What about me? What about my family? What
about Mark?
We’re
the victims, thanks to the likes of fucking Quaife. We matter. That excrement
just got what was coming to him.’

‘Sit
down, Luke.’ Her quiet firmness brought him up short. A sad blue stare followed
him back to his chair. Sophia said, ‘Off the record.’

‘What?’

‘Quaife
had a knife,’ she said, ‘and he got close enough to one of my officers for her
to feel mortally threatened. That’s sufficient grounds as far as I’m
concerned.’ It was indiscreet, but she didn’t regret it. Luke Benton had earned
more than the playbook. ‘That was for your ears only,’ she added, making sure
he was paying complete attention. ‘I’ll hold you to it.’

He
held her gaze. ‘Off the record?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m
glad he’s dead. You know what? I’m glad they’re both dead. Him and that fucking
loser who reckoned he could help us black people and ended up destroying
everything anyway. Glad.’ Relaxing, he smiled, and the look on his face as he’d
met her at the front door finally had a definition. ‘I won’t hold you to that,’
he said. ‘You can tell the world.’

ABOUT
THE AUTHOR

IAN
MAYFIELD grew up in South London in a house full of books, and made a valiant
attempt to read them all, even some of the ones in French. Eventually he
developed a desire to convert some of the daydreams these works inspired into
his own writing.

As
if this weren’t enough, he worked for many years as an information technician
– well, all right, library assistant. One of the perks of this job was
being able to obtain even more books for free when they were impartially deemed
by him to be too worn out to continue circulating.

Among
his major influences as a crime writer Ian counts Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy
L. Sayers, Raymond Chandler, Ruth Rendell, William Marshall, Cynthia
Harrod-Eagles and John Harvey.

Following his
tendency to gravitate to the south of things, he now lives in Southern
California with his wife and a cat named Benjamin.

Follow
the further adventures of the Special Crime Unit in

TEAM
GAMES

Echoes of recent history haunt
the detectives of the Metropolitan Police Special Crime Unit as they take on a
new caseload. DC Sandra Jones suspects that an old friend may be connected to a
number of vicious attacks on night bus passengers; DCs Jeff Wetherby and
Danielle Greaves, a newcomer to the team, arrest a high school teacher who has
betrayed the ultimate trust; and DCI Sophia Beadle prepares for the extradition
of a fugitive who nearly killed one of her own.

As Sophia and her team trace
the links between victims, witnesses and suspects through the streets of South
London and beyond, investigations that had seemed straightforward spiral into a
series of shocking consequences, and they must face up to the possibility that
those who survived the violence of the past may not be so lucky this time
around.

Coming
soon from Ian Mayfield

Published by Four
Limes Books

TEAM SPIRIT
Copyright © 2016 by Ian Mayfield.

All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

This book is a work
of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and
incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.

For
information contact: [email protected]

Cover design by
Pixel Studios

Cover image by
noskaphoto

First Edition: 2016

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