One Bad Turn by Emma Salisbury

was because they worked through the night, turning up at addresses in the arse end of nowhere to check for themselves that claims made could be verified. ‘They’re pulling out all the stops here, boss,’ Coupland spoke up in their defence, though he knew the real person who needed to hear this was Superintendent Curtis and he wasn’t even present. Mind you, his handicap must be single figures by now. Mallender raised his hands in mitigation, ‘Don’t shoot the messenger,’ he pleaded, ‘I just want to know we’re going down all the right avenues, step by step we should be closing in on this bastard. Kevin, can you allocate the workload giving priority to concluding the Hate crime actions by close of play? I’ve an update to prepare.’
    Coupland nodded, delegating tasks before asking Ashcroft if he could cover for him for an hour, there was something he had to do. Before he had time to change his mind he drove to Amy’s college, careful not to leave his car in the public car park where she might see it but in the car park allocated to staff, with a card he placed on the dashboard stating he was on police business. He followed the signs into the main reception area and flashed his warrant card at the woman behind the desk.
    ‘I’d like to speak with the principal, love. Now.’

Chapter 4
    DCs Turnbull and Robinson pulled up outside the King Jimmy on Walkden Road and looked at each other. The pub attracted little attention from its drab exterior, but the back room was notorious for being the meeting place of a chapter of Neo Nazis since it went under new management ten years before. ‘Do you think we should call for back up?’ Turnbull asked, glancing up and down the street as though expecting a lynch mob to arrive on the back of a jeep. Robinson tutted, ‘Don’t start getting cold feet on me. It’s hardly chucking out time. We go in, ask a few questions, bugger off out again. Job done.’
    The landlord was leaning on the counter rubbing the edge of a coin over a scratch card. He glanced up as the pub door opened, scowled when he caught sight of the warrant card Turnbull pushed under his nose. ‘Looking for Gerrard Bundy and Charlie Deeks, through the back room I take it?’ The landlord regarded the detectives without speaking. Stubble was starting to grow through on his shaven head. A gym bunny who guzzled steroids by the look of it, either that or he had a bicycle pump out back that he used to blow up his arms, each one covered with a sleeve of tattoos. The number 8, signifying the eighth letter of the alphabet, representing Hitler’s surname, had been inked on the back of his hand. He glanced over to the pub’s main entrance and both detectives had the sense not to deprive him of the notion they had come alone. A couple of lone drinkers sat in the main bar, hard up men too broke or too lazy to be fussed about the pub’s usual clientele. They broke eye contact when Turnbull looked at them, as though looking away made them invisible. ‘The back room?’ Robinson persisted. The landlord, who’d been sipping at a coffee mug, banged it down noisily, nodding his head in the direction of a door at the far end of the bar. ‘I don’t want any trouble,’ he said loudly, and then, louder still, ‘Rozzers are in!’
    Either the mug shot on the Police National Computer had been taken recently or time had been kind to Gerrard Bundy, for he still looked the same. His black goatee beard and barbed wire tattoo along the right side of his face made him easy to pick out from the half dozen men nursing their pints. The assembled punters resembled death row inmates, bare arms and necks displaying the usual range of supremacist paraphernalia: SS Lightning Bolts, Swastikas; the US confederate flag. Bundy’s left arm had a home-made portrait of Hitler tattooed on it, only the dimensions were wrong so it looked more like the fat one from Laurel and Hardy. The woman beside Bundy smiled meanly and said something under