That hurt. Timothy knew when he was being taken for a cunt, and the man he was dealing with was not someone who could be palmed off with legal jargon, more’s the pity. He knew he had to deliver, and deliver sooner rather than later.
Michael Flynn was like a man demented. ‘She disappeared three days ago, Branch, and I have it on good authority that she was last seen in a pub in Upney. She scored some coke and grass, and she left around midnight, and no one has seen her since.’
Timothy Branch nodded, as if he was in full accord with everything he was hearing. His carefully modulated pseudo-posh voice was like a red rag to a bull, though he wasn’t aware of that just yet. He was a snob, and a social-climbing arsewipe who had no qualms about taking money on the side to bankroll his wife’s pretentious upper-middle-class lifestyle, and who had believed that his expertise would never be compromised by his association with a known villain. His stupidity and his arrogance were exactly the reasons why he was on Michael’s payroll in the first place; without someone like Flynn on his side, he had no chance of hitting the big time.
‘I will put out a missing persons report, Michael, but, in all honesty, she will probably turn up as per usual, we both know that.’
Michael looked at the man he had been paying handsomely for so long, and it occurred to him that he had been paying out a decent wedge to a complete fucking moron. Timothy had to have known that at some point he would be called on to deliver, that the day would come when he would be asked to do a favour of some description. Now he was being asked to do something that he should be doing anyway – look for a missing girl – but he was not really demonstrating the level of motivation that Michael’s regular payments should have guaranteed. In fact, he was not showing the least bit of willing, and that alone was irritating. He was showing no consideration of how much he had pocketed over the last few years, or how his rise through the ranks of the police force had been orchestrated by the same man he was now attempting to mug off.
Michael Flynn was not in the mood for this kind of aggravation; the last few hours had been a revelation to him as to how deeply his daughter and her fucking lifestyle had impacted on him personally. He was now being treated like a fucking tourist by a no-mark who relied on him for a second wage, and that was not something he could allow. ‘You useless fucking cunt! All the money I have slipped your way, and you treat me like a fucking greebo! Like a fucking no one!’ He dragged the terrified man from his chair, savouring his fear, and his dawning comprehension of exactly who he was dealing with. ‘I expect the best, because that is what I have paid for over the years, and you are two seconds away from making me regret my decision to put you on my payroll. A decision that I can easily rectify – and that, my friend, would of course mean that you would have to return every penny I fucking shoved your way over the years. You avaricious useless fucking ponce! I hate dishonest Old Bill more than anything. If I ever get a capture it had better be from one I couldn’t buy off. That’s an honest nicking, you see, and I could swallow that. But Filth like you are only there to do what I fucking request of them.’
Timothy Branch lay on the floor of his own office, with his arms over his head to protect himself from another onslaught from Michael Flynn. He was well aware that everyone in the station could hear the conversation and would know exactly what was going on. He was waiting for the beating that he was convinced was going to come. He had made a mistake of Olympian standards, and he could not rectify the situation because he had brought it on himself. He had honestly believed that being a policeman, a senior policeman, would have guaranteed him immunity from this sort of behaviour. He had assumed that Flynn, for all his money and reputation, would have thought long and hard before he raised his hand to a member of the police force. But he had been very wrong. Flynn’s power went far deeper than he had ever anticipated. The fact that no one had come to his aid was a real lesson for Timothy Branch. The outer offices were now deathly quiet; everyone out there was listening to this exchange and he knew his humiliation was now complete.