A Silent Death Peter May (i read book TXT) 📖

He wound down the window as the uniformed officer leaned in.

‘Driver’s licence and registration document.’

Mackenzie fished them out from an inside pocket and sat silently while the officer examined them.

‘Are you aware, sir, that you were doing forty in a thirty zone?’

Mackenzie was contrite. ‘I wasn’t. But I realized it as soon as I saw your light in my mirror. I am truly sorry.’

‘You would be if you’d hit a child at that speed.’ The officer glanced across at the sullen boy in the passenger seat and took out an official pad and a pen. ‘Occupation?’

‘Police officer.’

The uniform’s head snapped up in surprise. ‘A cop?’

‘Fifteen years with the Met. Starting with the National Crime Agency next week.’

The officer slipped the pad back into his breast pocket. ‘You should have told me straight away, sir.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I wouldn’t have booked you, sir.’

Mackenzie frowned. ‘I don’t know why not. I’m not above the law just because I’m a cop.’ He paused. ‘Are you telling me you would have let me off?’

The policeman threw him an odd look, as if he were not entirely sure if Mackenzie was being serious. ‘It had crossed my mind,’ he said, evenly.

‘In that case, I’m going to have to report you.’ Mackenzie reached across Alex to open the glove compartment and retrieve a black notebook and pen. ‘I’ll need your name and number . . .’

The traffic cop’s look might have turned him to stone. He said dryly, ‘Perhaps, sir, if you had spent any time on traffic duty you would know that whether I book you or warn you is entirely discretionary. In this case, I am warning you.’ And there was something almost dangerous in the way he said it. He turned abruptly and walked back towards his car.

Mackenzie turned his head to find Alex looking at him with something like contempt in his eyes. ‘I’ll be lucky if I even make next week’s match now.’

*

Hanwell had changed during the years that Mackenzie and Susan had lived there. An influx of Polish immigrants leading to the opening of Polish shops in a High Street which had seen better days. Everywhere you went now you heard Polish spoken. There was even a Polish school in the suburb. Ealing had always been that bit more upmarket than its less well-heeled neighbour. But as Susan had been keen to point out when Mackenzie suggested moving, everything would change when the Crossrail project was completed. Hanwell would have its own station, and direct access to central London in just twenty minutes. Property prices would skyrocket. Something from which she would doubtless benefit if she succeeded in having the house put into her name.

As usual, he was unable to find a parking place outside the house, and Alex refused to take his hand on the 50-metre walk along the terrace to number 23, marching two paces ahead of his father, half a step away from a run.

Alex had arrived too late at the sports centre to be picked for the starting eleven, spending almost the entire game sitting on the bench before coming on as a substitute for the last five minutes.

Now he couldn’t get home fast enough. As soon as Susan opened the door, he pushed past her and ran straight upstairs. Susan folded her arms, standing full square on the doorstep, making it clear that Mackenzie was forbidden entry to his own house. Or her house, as she now saw it. The house whose mortgage Mackenzie had paid for more than ten years.

‘What the hell did you think you were doing?’

He looked at her, surprised by her tone.

‘I got held up in traffic. We were only twenty-five minutes late in the end.’

She tutted theatrically. ‘I’m talking about threatening Alex’s teacher.’

He frowned. ‘Threatening? I didn’t threaten anyone. Certainly not Miss Willow.’

‘That’s not what she says. I’ve just had the headmaster on the phone. He was livid! She went to him in tears, apparently, after your visit.’

Mackenzie sighed. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. The woman refused to read the boy’s essay. Gave him a big fat zero because she said his handwriting – hyphenated – was too big. Exclamation mark, exclamation mark, exclamation mark.’

Susan just shook her head. ‘You never change, do you? And you just don’t get it. You can’t speak to people that way, John. How many friends have you lost? How many bosses have you pissed off? Maybe you do have a brain the size of a fucking football, but you’re a bigger idiot.’

She raised a hand to pre-empt his protestations.

‘I know, I know. Sometimes they’ve got it coming. But Jesus, John, you have to employ a bit of common sense. A little tact. Filter your worst excesses.’ She sighed. ‘Not you, though. Not our John. He’s always right, even when he’s wrong, and damned if he’s not going to tell everyone so.’ She paused only to draw breath. ‘You’re a bloody misfit, that’s what you are. And what’s the point of all those stupid degrees when you don’t have the first idea how to be civil to folk, not a Scooby when it comes to what’s socially acceptable.’ She nodded her head towards the stairs inside. ‘And in front of Alex, too. How humiliating was that for the boy?’

‘He was in tears at the school gate,’ Mackenzie said. ‘What was I supposed to do?’

‘Leave it to me. In fact, leave everything to me. Don’t bother picking the kids up from school anymore. I’ll do it myself. I don’t want you going anywhere near them.’

She started to close the door on him, but he thrust a foot across the threshold to stop it. ‘I want to see Sophia.’

‘She doesn’t want to see you.’

Which took him aback. He recovered. ‘Let her tell me that.’

‘She’s busy. She says she’s fed up with you.’

He gasped his exasperation. ‘She’s seven years old for Christ’s sake. Seven-year-olds don’t say they’re fed up with their dads unless their mums plant the thought in their