Crime Novel Series With Strong Female Hero
DCI Grace Swan Thrillers by Giles Ekins
Series Excerpt
DCI Grace Swan was not pleased.
Not pleased at all.
‘Where? Where? she muttered to herself, as she drove around the controlled car park at Concordia Court, the HQ for West Garside Police, before finally sighting the covered space designated for her. She drove her car, a red Alpha Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio into the space, parked and made her way to the front entrance and into the building
She stopped at the front desk and after she had identified herself as DCI Swan, the desk officer picked up a telephone and made a call. ‘DS Horton will be down soon as, ma’am,’ he said as he replaced the receiver.
After a minute or so, DS Terry Horton exited the lift, walked across to Swan and held out his hand. ‘DS Horton, ma’am welcome.
‘Thank you’
Together they walked back to the lift, he ushered her inside and pressed the button for the first floor and they exited out into the CID department. There were perhaps thirty consoles, with low level dividers between them. There was a computer and screen on every desk, about half of which were currently occupied, the detectives looking up and nodding to her as Swan and Horton made their way through the room.
Horton may have given her the names of the detectives they passed but none stayed in her mind as she looked around. To one side were what she assumed to be meeting rooms, whilst at the far end she could see smaller rooms which she took to be offices for senior officers, including, she assumed, herself.
‘Here we are, ma’am, this is yours, the only DCI we’ve got at the moment, what with the death of George Chatham and Trevor Luithen being on sick leave.’
‘Thank you, I’ll make myself at home and then maybe ask you to make more formal introductions.
‘Very good ma’am, I’m here when you need me’
She paused at the entrance to her office. A piece of paper with her typed name was sellotaped to the glass of the door. ‘That can stay as it is,’ she thought, her appointment was supposedly temporary, and she fully intended to keep it that way.
She hung her coat on the stand and walked around the room, running her fingers across the top of a bookcase to check for dust before sitting down behind her desk. Grace was 37, tall and slender with glossy black hair which today she wore in a tight roll at the back of her head. She had large, surprisingly blue eyes, the high cheeks bones of a model, long legs, small bust and a stomach that was not as flat as she would like, however hard she tried to get it down.
She was wearing a dark grey Hobbs trouser suit, with a white blouse buttoned up to the throat and black patent shoes with a kitten heel. During the day, she wore little make-up apart from lip gloss and a touch of eye shadow and a dab of Jo Malone perfume. She had small diamond stud earrings, there were no rings on the fingers on either hand and she wore a plain Olivia Burton watch and carried a soft black leather Furla handbag. Understated but professional, that was the way she saw it.
As she looked around her new offices and surroundings, Grace was still feeling aggrieved.
Three days ago, she had been called in to see Martin Vickers, the Assistant Chief Constable for Specialised Crime Services and told she had been ‘temporarily’ assigned to the West Garside CID as a replacement for George Chatham, who unfortunately had been killed in a car crash. Another DCI, Trevor Luithen was on sick leave receiving treatment for an unspecified condition, but even so, he said, her detachment ‘will only for a short time, Grace, a month or so until we can find a permanent replacement,’ giving her a smile so artificial his face might well have been moulded polystyrene.
‘Yeah, yeah, she thought,’ and we all know what temporary assignments out in the sticks mean, exile, out of sight, out of mind. Gee, thanks, Mr Vickers! But what could she do, she could not refuse the order, could only say ‘sorry to hear about DCI Chatham, sir, yes sir, thank you, sir’
So, she had emptied her desk at South Yorkshire Police HQ in Sheffield, handed over her current case-load to DI Francis, who gloated like a Cheshire Cat and had driven over to West Garside from her home in Dore to the south west of the city. And now here she was, banished in all but name. It was not a demotion, but it might well have been, she had simply been pushed sideways into a back-water
She knew that she did not belong in the ACC’s coterie of favoured officers, Vickers and Grace had a past which precluded that, but even so! This was bloody unfair with zero chance of recognition or promotion and Grace knew enough about Martin Vickers to know her chance of a recall to HQ were virtually non-existent.
Bugger!
Still feeling disgruntled she switched on her the computer, hunted around the desk and in the drawer for the piece of paper that she was sure that DCI Chatham would have written down his password. Nothing Then she had a flash of inspiration, turned the mouse-pad upside down and there it was, taped to the underside, SaabFoxie1922Mondaymorning.
There was a pile of case files on the desk, cases that George Chatham had been working on but ignoring these she had randomly called up a case online. An Edward Swainson, a 59-year-old man had repeatedly exposed himself to his next-door neighbour, 46-year-old Harriet Little, who had now reported it. to the police.
Another case involving two men getting into a punch up inside the ‘Fox and Duck’ on a Saturday night, no major injuries and both men given cautions.
With a sigh of resignation, she began to work her way through the current case files; a robbery at a corner shop, the Pakistani owner, Mr Rashid Khan, was racially abused and threatened with a knife. An 18 year old student, Jessica Maltby, going home from a night out with her friends had been dragged into Westbourne Park and assaulted. Margaret Carson, a 76 year old widow had been mugged and her handbag snatched and a juvenile offender, Darren Webber, aged 17, with multiple ASBO’s and a rap sheet as long as his arm was suspected of a series of thefts from gardens or opened garages.
‘If this is what constitutes big time crime in West Garside, I’ll hardly be able to contain myself for the excitement, she groaned, deciding that the assault case was priority and began to work through the file, referring to map of the town she had pulled up on her screen.
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