does – would you be my partner?’
‘Sasha wouldn’t like it,’ James said, shaking his head.
‘Come on, James,’ Junior begged. ‘We’d be great partners.’
James was tired and doubted that Junior would remember the conversation by morning.
‘Whatever,’ James shrugged. ‘Partners.’
Junior broke into a huge grin and put out his hand. ‘Gimme some skin.’
And the two boys slapped their hands together before rounding off with a beer-fuelled hug.
39. GRILLED
Pulling a suspect is a tricky business. If you bust them at home or at work someone is going to know that it happened and then a whole bunch of other people – including criminals and bent police officers – are going to see them getting dragged into the police station. If Simeon Bentine was arrested and questioned in the normal manner, Major Dee and Sasha Thompson would probably learn all about it.
To get around this, Chloe spent the whole of Wednesday following Simeon to see how he lived his life. Interrogation wasn’t Chloe’s speciality, so she asked her old boss John Jones to come down from CHERUB campus and help out the following day. She’d told her liaison withthe Bedfordshire police what was going to happen, but there are strict rules about arresting, cautioning and threatening suspects and Chloe was going to break almost all of them.
To make life even trickier, Simeon worked out of a dilapidated office above a shop less than two hundred metres from the Green Pepper café; so there were always going to be Slasher Boys in the neighbourhood.
The brass plaque beside his front door said that Simeon was an accountant, but Chloe had checked him out and found no evidence that he’d earned any of the initials engraved after his name.
John and Chloe watched from inside a workman’s café as Simeon arrived for work, just after 9 a.m. He placed a blue disabled badge in his windscreen, before unlocking a door sandwiched between two shop fronts and bounding up a narrow staircase. Once the pair saw the light flicker through the blind in his office window, they headed out of the café and cut between the rush-hour traffic. They didn’t give Simeon time to settle in. They wanted him on edge.
By the time the two mission controllers reached the cracked lino at the top of the stairs, Simeon was standing in the reception where his secretary worked, placing a paper filter into a coffee machine.
‘Good morning,’ Simeon said warmly as they stepped through his frosted glass door. ‘I’m afraid I’m not open to the public. If you’d like financial advice you can make an appointment with my secretary, she’s due in at any moment.’
‘Linda won’t be here today.’ Chloe smiled.
‘I believe she’s having some difficulties with her car this morning,’ John Jones said as he slid a bolt across the door.
‘What are you people?’ Simeon asked apprehensively. He’d been playing a dangerous game with two gang bosses and clearly feared the worst.
‘Perhaps we can take this through to your office,’ Chloe said gently.
‘Are you cops?’ It wasn’t that Simeon relished getting busted, but at least cops wouldn’t blow his brains out.
‘In your office,’ John said firmly, pulling back his overcoat to show that he had a gun. ‘Sit down and we’ll talk matters over.’
John’s demeanour and Chloe being female was enough for Simeon to decide that they were cops. ‘I could have you for this,’ he said, wagging his finger as he sat down. ‘There’s proper procedure.’
‘There certainly is,’ John said, as he reached across the desk and pulled Simeon’s phone off the hook. ‘But you can’t make a complaint if you don’t know who we are.’
‘The security services are always interested in the drug business,’ Chloe said, as she flashed a fake MI5 ID. ‘Drug smugglers and terrorists are almost interchangeable when you get to the top level.’
‘But a man should only have one master,’ John added.
Chloe smiled. ‘And a man with two should at least have the common sense to switch his mobile phone once in a while.’
‘If you have information, arrest me,’ Simeon boomed, sweeping his hand through the air. ‘Otherwise get outta my face.’
‘We could arrest you,’ John said. ‘But you’re not that big a fish.’
‘We’re more interested in what might happen if recordings of conversations between yourself and Sasha Thompson slipped into the hands of Major Dee,’ Chloe said. ‘What was it you said yesterday? Don’t worry Sasha old friend, I’ll be sending some juicy business your way soon.’
John nodded. ‘And the amount of paperwork we have to fill in if we bust anybody