Page 3 of The Unlikely Spare

“No. But it’s big. The deputy commissioner is there too.”

Jaysus.

“Am I getting the boot?” I’m joking, but my stomach clenches. This job is everything I’ve clawed and bled for since leaving Belfast.

Sometimes it feels like the only thing that separates me from the likes of Donny is a different path chosen at the same crossroads.

“If you were being fired, they wouldn’t waste the deputy commissioner’s time on it,” Patel says. “Car’s waiting at the end of the street.”

Fucking grand. Blood is drying on my face, my clothes reek of cheap beer, and I’m about to meet with the highest brass at Scotland Yard.

What in the name of God do they want with me?

Chapter Two

Eoin

The Scotland Yard headquarters is an architectural middle finger to subtlety, all shining glass and polished steel. It’s far from the original Victorian building where London’s Metropolitan Police began, with its back entrance on Great Scotland Yard, which gave them their nickname.

Heads turn as I stride through the lobby.

Can’t blame them. I look like I’ve gone ten rounds with a wheelie bin, and the bin won by a unanimous decision.

But then, I’m used to looking like I don’t belong.

I’m a Belfast lad from the council estates, where ambition was scarcer than a boiler that stayed lit for a full winter. Then I joined the police, which, as a Catholic in Northern Ireland, is the perfect career choice for someone who enjoys being despised by everyone equally.

I’ve never shaken that feeling of having the wrong accent in the right rooms.

During my first year after Scotland Yard recruited me for MO3, I was summoned to brief a room of senior officers on the Irish gunrunner I’d spent weeks cultivating. Halfway through, I was interrupted by one of those Oxbridge tossers that infest Scotland Yard’s upper ranks.

“Could you repeat that caliber? Was it ‘thirty’ or ‘thirty-tree?’”

A ripple of laughter had gone around the room.

The back of my neck went hot as a kettle, but I’d given him a flat stare. “That’s thirty-millimeter. Would you like me to write it down?”

His eyebrows had flown up, but a month later, when my undercover work cracked open the biggest arms trafficking ring the Met had seen in a decade, the Oxbridge prick was silenced.

That success helped me fly up the ranks to become a temporary detective sergeant in four years, a timeline practically unheard of. It’s now my probationary year, where I’ve got to prove my mettle before getting signed off to make my promotion permanent.

When I step into the lift, the mirror shows me what everyone else is seeing. Christ, I look rough. The bruise forming on my cheekbone nicely complements the dark circles under my eyes from months of late nights in London’s seedier establishments. My dark-auburn hair curls over my collar, desperately needing a cut.

Exactly how you want to look when you’re about to meet the Met’s top brass.

I try to brush some of the alley grit from my leather jacket, which only serves to rearrange the dirt. I look like something the cat dragged in, then thought better of it and dragged back out again.

Thornton’s secretary actually recoils when I approach her desk. I try not to take it personally.

“Detective Sergeant O’Connell for Detective Chief Superintendent Thornton,” I tell her.

My new rank still doesn’t flow off the tongue quite yet.

She sniffs disapprovingly. “They’re waiting for you in the conference room.”

They. My gut twists.

Taking a deep breath and squaring my shoulders, I open the door.