Tell No Tales by Eva Dolan

sturdy pine rafters. An agitator. When had that become a bad thing? he wondered.
    Somebody had to ask the questions the rest of the world were too scared to raise.
    Churchill, Thatcher, Benn. They were all agitators and it hadn’t done them any harm.
    ‘They keep banging the same old drum.’
    Marshall sighed. ‘We need to offset some of this damage.’
    ‘No, we do nothing. Not until we have a better idea of what’s going on.’ Shotton knitted his fingers together over his chest. ‘A good general appreciates the value of stillness.’
    Christian’s hulking blond figure appeared on the other side of the glass door, the main office behind him, only one of the four desks manned, Elizabeth, his secretary working her charms on his social diary. The rest were in mothballs until the end of the month when the real work would start.
    Then it would be a electrifying chaos of ringing phones and churning printers, press releases and mission statements, placards and bumper stickers and the stale-skin smell of working through the night. Everybody pulling together, fighting hard to get ticks in boxes, making the long push towards 7 May.
    The mere thought of it made him rise from behind his desk, energy shooting through his body like the old days, waiting for the call to scramble.
    ‘Come in, Christian.’
    ‘You wanted to see me, sir?’
    He stood with his hands tucked in the small of his back, big feet planted wide and his gut sucked in. Still every inch the copper even though he’d been out of the force for a couple of years now, an injury sustained on the rugby pitch removing him from the front line and sending him straight to an agency he was far too good for. Deferential when he needed to be but sharp. Shotton liked that. Liked that the man had an instinct for ensuing ruckus. You couldn’t put too high a price on that in a bodyguard.
    When his contract was finished they would take him on full-time. After all, loyalty didn’t come on a short-term basis.
    ‘This hit-and-run in Peterborough – have you heard anything about it from your former colleagues?’
    ‘What hit-and-run?’
    ‘Don’t you watch the news?’ Marshall asked.
    ‘My kids have cartoons on in the morning.’
    He looked faintly embarrassed by the admission.
    ‘This morning,’ Shotton said. ‘A car took out a group of migrant workers on Lincoln Road – that’ll be a Thorpe Wood job, won’t it?’
    ‘Yes, sir. I’d think so, sir.’
    ‘Right. Well, make some calls, would you? See what the thinking is for us.’
    Christian nodded. ‘Of course.’
    ‘Subtly, please,’ Marshall said. ‘I don’t want to be having a conversation about this with their press officer later.’
    Christian ignored him, kept his attention fixed on Shotton. He was used to a sight more bad attitude than Marshall could muster.
    ‘Is there anything else, sir?’
    ‘Not right now, thank you, Christian.’
    He left with a nod, returning to the main office where Elizabeth’s expensively educated voice rang out across the quiet. A personal call by the sounds of things, but Shotton would forgive her.
    ‘Do you think that was wise?’ Marshall asked. ‘The Chief Constable could keep you better informed with less chance of a leak.’
    ‘Weir’s an overambitious shit. The less he knows about this situation the better. If he thinks we’re concerned he’ll start digging around for a way to hold it over my head. Christian just wants to keep this job. He’ll achieve the same thing for a lower price.’
    Shotton returned to his desk and sipped the cooling tea Elizabeth had brought him twenty minutes earlier, thinking ahead to the afternoon’s interview. Some young woman from The Times . They’d headhunted her from the New Statesman and she was an influential political blogger in her own right, with extremely good contacts and killer instincts, far more powerful than her years suggested. It was a changing world and he knew he’d better get used to it. Political clout was