Killing Time (38 page)
Authors: Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
Atherton sat up. ‘Really? Fantastic. Who is it, anyone we know?’
‘Oh yes, we know him. I should think everybody knows Detective Superintendent Fred Porson.’
Atherton’s eyes widened. ‘Oh bloody Nora! Not The Syrup! What have we done to deserve that?’
Hart was looking lost. ‘Who’s this? The what?’
‘Fred “The Syrup” Porson,’ Atherton elucidated. ‘Famously foul-tempered and notoriously the bearer of the most unconvincing hairpiece ever to leave the back of a cat!’
‘I crossed paths with him briefly when I was at Hampstead,’ Slider said. ‘We used to call him The Rug From Hell. He doesn’t
like it to be mentioned, so I warn you,’ he said to Hart. ‘Or looked at.’
‘Trouble is, you can’t look anywhere else,’ Atherton said. ‘But it’s not just the rug: he uses words like a blind man swatting wasps at a picnic. Ernie Wise crossed with Mrs Malaprop. It’s going to drive me mad. You know I’ve got a low threshold for language abuse.’
Slider was quietly pleased that Atherton was assuming he would be there to be driven mad. Talk of taking another job seemed to have been dropped. Things were definitely looking up.
‘D’you know where he’s coming from?’ Atherton was pleading. ‘Where’s he been lately? Somewhere taxing, I hope.’
‘He’s been on a Commissions Office posting at the Yard,’ Slider said. ‘Traffic Planning Unit. So he’ll be full of beans, raring to go, ready to get his teeth into an operational again. Ready to take out all his frustrations on us for being CO’d for three years.’
‘Look on the bright side, guv,’ Hart suggested. ‘Maybe he’ll be so glad to get out again he’ll be in a sweet and pliant mood.’
‘In the pig’s eye,’ Atherton said elegantly.
Published by Hachette Digital
ISBN: 978 0 748 13323 9
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 1997 Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
Hachette Digital
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DY
With special thanks to Laurence Cohen for his generous help with
the background, not forgetting tea and biscuits.
