SENTINEL: an exciting British detective crime thriller by JOHN STANLEY

long gone and better forgotten. The place had not changed.
    Memories, memories. Crap memories, to boot. A young boy standing and peering in through the window at the cosy lights of the bar like something out of a fucking Dickens novel. Just a young boy, his nose pressed up against the glass. Who am I kidding? Not any old young boy. Me. And not Victorian England either but twenty-five years ago. Supposedly more enlightened times.
    The inspector noticed Gaines eying him intently as the sergeant came to stand next to him.
    ‘Something wrong?’ asked the sergeant.
    ‘They never heard of the smoking ban?’ murmured Radford. ‘Place reeks of it. Come on, let’s lift de Vere’s little pals.’
    ‘Not that you would ever see Jason de Vere in here,’ said Gaines. ‘Not quite his scene. I suspect he’d be happier in the clubhouse, eh?’
    Radford shot him a look but said nothing. He knew that the sergeant was working the angles, looking for a reaction, searching for something that even after a year working together, would reassure him that his new governor was not as bent as his last one. That he could be trusted. Were the positions to be reversed, Radford knew that he would do the same. Trouble was, Danny Radford was no in position to offer such reassurances to Michael Gaines. Wished he could, wished that he could set his sergeant’s mind at rest, tell him the rules of the game, that he was still fighting for the right side, but do that and the game was up just as it was getting interesting. A wrong move now and Sunday would be screwed up.
    This was certainly not the time for mistakes, not when the vicar’s big mouth had finally promised to hand the inspector the advantage. Radford, convinced that de Vere was tangled up in the assault somehow and had finally succumbed to the temptations presented by corruption, was not about to waste a golden opportunity. Not when they were this close. Besides, once the game was over he reasoned that he could get back to a normal life. Start mending some bridges. Restore his hard-earned reputation as one of the good guys.
    Recalling where he was, Radford switched his thoughts to the young man standing behind the bar, wiping glasses and eying the detectives suspiciously, then turned his attention to the elderly man sitting in one of the window seats, nursing a pint. Radford sensed that the pensioner would be nursing his pint for a while and memories of his father flashed into his mind. Not that he ever nursed pints. Rather gulped them down like they were his last. His family had spent years praying that they would be.
    Same seat . See, Gainesy, this was his boozer. His second home. Some would say first home. He leant against that bar, did my father, because this is where he spent the housekeeping before he went home to beat seven shades out of my mother every Friday night . And me as well, if I spoke out of line, with that vicious studded belt of his . Probably why I became a copper, to put scumbags like him away. And why I don’t drink.
    ‘Garvin,’ said Gaines quietly, nodding towards a corner table where two rough-looking men were sitting, deep in conversation over their pint glasses. ‘The one on the left. One with the scar on his cheek. The other one’s his oppo, Des Cranmer. Nasty piece of work. They both are.’
    ‘They likely to have a go?’
    ‘Wouldn’t bet against it.’ Gaines looked uneasily at him. ‘Look, you sure about this?’
    ‘Yeah, why not?’
    ‘Want to call for back-up first? I mean, might do to have a bit of muscle behind us, yeah? Garvin’s handy with his fists and Cranmer sees too much red mist for my liking.’
    Radford sensed the doubt in the sergeant’s voice and gave him merest of smiles.
    ‘I think we can take a couple of low-lifes like them on, don’t you?’ he said. ‘Do me good to get out from behind the desk, isn’t that what you always say?’
    Gaines tried to look confident but he knew that he was getting too old for this lark, knew