Gods and Monsters

IX

Scotland Yard, London

Peggy stood outside the interview room, waiting for Mike and Atlin to emerge after speaking with Katherine. She imagined that most of her answers would be a variation of "no comment" and "I want to speak to my lawyer", but it was still worth a shot, just in case she revealed something they didn't already know.

"Nice job with Katherine, Detective Parker," William Yates said, with a beaming smile as he walked down the corridor.

Her skin crawling, Peggy replied, "Well the jobs not done yet, sir. Jacob Kenny is still on the loose, and we believe that he's the killer."

Yates' face looked uncharacteristically perturbed at this. "I understand, Peggy. I'm sure you'll get him too. I just wanted to congratulate you on a job well done so far."

Despite this possibly fantastical idea of Yates that Peggy had, she couldn't help but feel bad now. "Innocent until proven guilty" was a phrase often banded around, but Peggy couldn't quite bring herself to apply it to Yates just yet. She gave him a wry smile in an attempt to get rid of him, but it instead only brought him closer.

"Look, Peggy, I know you've been through a lot lately, why don't you take a while off? You've certainly earned it with your work with the task force so far. I think we all knew you and Nick were more than friends, and you haven't had a chance to grieve. I'll let you know if we find anything about who killed him."

The sympathy she had momentarily felt quickly disintegrated at the mention of Nick. That was a low move, using his death as an excuse to get rid of her. The investigation into his death had been going on for a few weeks now, and still nothing had happened. She bet that there wasn't even an investigation going on, at least not a serious one. Just enough paperwork being filed to make it seem like something was happening without raising too many questions. God she needed her pills right about now.

"Thanks for your concern, boss. I'm fine though." Another cute smile and she walked off down the corridor to the ladies bathroom, sure that at least in here she could get away from Yates. Reaching into her pocket, Peggy removed a small orange bottle containing her pills. She poured a small amount into her hands and quickly swallowed, following them up with some more, and then some more after that as the effects didn't instantaneously kick in. She wasn't sure what she was thinking right now; she must have swallowed more than half a dozen pills in just a matter of seconds, hopeful that they might kick in straight away to ease her suffering. Shit! She thought, barging into an empty cubicle, kneeling over the toilet bowl as she began to do something she had never done before. Two fingers quickly found themselves tickling the back of her throat making her retch, once, twice...

Peggy moved her hand out of the way as she vomited up the pills she had swallowed moments before, not having given them a chance to properly enter her system. She slumped against the door for a moment and caught her breath before getting up, flushing the toilet and leaving the cubicle. A young Asian woman stood in the otherwise empty bathroom, a look of shock across her face.

"Jessica?" Peggy asked as she recognised Atlin's new girlfriend from a picture she had been shown when the pair had first started dating. A beautiful young woman, she wore tight jeans and black boots, her light-brown hair billowing over the upturned collar of her black leather jacket.

Jessica spoke good English, but her voice was still quite heavily accented. "Sorry. I meeting Atlin after work. I needed toilet so came in here. Are... are you okay?"

Having realised that Jessica had probably heard Peggy's vomiting, she quickly had to come up with an excuse. "Oh, don't worry about that. Just some dodgy fish from last night, nothing to worry about."

"Oh no! Me and Atlin are going to a restaurant later, hopefully, we don't get anything." Jessica let out a giggle that gives the impression the child inside her had never left.

"Well I hope you have a lovely time, but I'm extremely busy and I've got to go for now. Maybe you can come along with Atlin and we'll all meet up sometime?"

Jessica nodded as Peggy spoke, smiling before she went to the bathroom herself. Peggy hoped she had bought the food poisoning story, as she really didn't want Jessica going back to Atlin and causing her to ask questions too. Leaving the bathroom and walking down the hallway, Peggy met up with Charlie. "We all good to go?" She asked.

"Looks like it. I've got in touch with Tommy and he's agreed to it, so we'll just have to wait and see how it works. You alright, Peg? You look a little... drained."

"I'm fine. I'll meet you in the car park."

With that, Peggy walked off down the corridor and headed towards her car, hoping that Charlie's plan, as ludicrous as it was, would actually work. After some of the stuff she had witnessed recently, very little surprised her anymore, but Peggy still had her reservations about what they had set up.

Continued in Part 10