Cross To Bear

What was the link between the murder of a senior civil servant in the UK government, a small time drug pusher and addict and an unsolved cold case murder committed three years earlier? What was it that turned a loving husband into a brutal wife beater? All the evidence was there, so why was it that Detective Bill Harrigan of London's, Stonegate Police Station, had so much difficulty accepting the result to which the evidence clearly led. Not only were his superintendent and his colleagues eager to close this case and move on, the Police Commissioner himself, under orders from the Home office, demanded it. Maybe that is why the forty two year old Harrigan, a tough no nonsense bachelor, the son of a country cop who grew up in the Australian outback before returning to London, found it so difficult to let go. He had an intense distrust of politicians, the bureaucracy and governments. In his experience, they will stop at nothing to cling to power. Their eagerness to shut this case down, only served to strengthen Harrigan's resolve to keep it open. But it was more than that? Maybe the evidence was too convenient. Maybe the photograph taken in the gay bar was a red herring. Who was high flying psychiatrist, Winslow-Cammeron's four a.m. mystery patient? Too many questions. Harrigan was determined to find the answers. A decision he may live to regret. "If you're feeling flattered that I know so much about you, Inspector," Police Commissioner, Sir Charles Reece added, "please don't. My need to know a policeman's details are rarely borne through any complimentary reason." My God, he thought, we're flirting on the way to the morgue! He felt there was something animalistically stimulating about that.