Chapter One

I was running laps in the local park when my mobile rang. I managed to drop my headphones around my neck and hook the headset over my ear without breaking stride. I was hoping it would be Julie, but it was Detective Inspector Pete Reid, T12's duty officer. He said, "I need you to make a pick-up."

"I'm not on call," I told him, and rang off.

I could just about stand up to Pete Reid, a dedicated alcoholic at the end of an undistinguished career. At least, I could do it over the mobile, which rang again almost at once, with the insistent warbling of a small and very hungry bird. I let it ring and put on my headphones (the extended reissue of Elvis Costello's Armed Forces) and kept running.

Sunday, early June. The sky hazy with heat as if bandaged in gauze, the sun burning through it like the business end of a welder's torch. According to the watch Julie had given me the previous Christmas, it was eighty-eight degrees. It felt hotter. People in various states of undress ... read full excerpt from Whole Wide World ebook