Perfect Crime (D.I. Callanach, #5)

by Helen Sarah Fields

PERFECT CRIME

I don’t often write reviews, that’s what I I figure Kindle notes & Goodreads are perfect for, feel something right in the moment and post it, otherwise you’ll forget it come the end. I call my rather unique mental scaffolding ‘the spidey web’, it, along with a Olympic sized swimming pool full of ‘little red fishies’ (red herrings) & of course myself, The Ego, spend the entirety of any book being read battling over a plethora of plot twists, guesstimating, maybes & hopefully semi hilarious puns & diatribe, although, be warned before you read, that sometimes I even scare myself. So without further ado…

Stephen had hated pointing the carving knife towards his own jugular and threatening to cut, thereby forcing the driver to pull the car over on the bridge – a strictly no-pedestrians zone – but had been unable to think of a less abusive plan.

Ummm, well, how about you get let out before the bridge then walk? See, that’s simple? Huh?….

All he’d ever wanted was to blend into the crowd.

Ditto

Not so much as a glimmer of a smile.

Well there’s the first 2 suspects, or should I say little red fishies… The authors such a tease!

Still, he couldn’t stop. The rape his mother had suffered had echoed through the years, the trauma so bad that she’d deserted Luc when he’d been falsely accused of the same offence. Jenson and Western had never had to pay for what they’d done.

Agreed, there’s no forgiveness or forgetting some things, if there’s a god? Then she can deal out the consequences

He accepted that it was beyond his power to punish this one of his mother’s attackers, but he needed to know if the man had fathered him. He’d spent a long time weighing up that particular decision, but even now he wasn’t prepared for how to face the outcome.

I wonder how many of us suffer with questions, about ourselves, family, things that happened too long ago, that eat us up inside, battling whether to ask them or not, and fear doing so because of what the answers may be, or what the repercussions of asking will take out on us all. I know I do, some questions, some knowledge, I’ll probably do nothing with either, because of any repercussions, my Dads not alive so I don’t have to worry about him doing anything, he would probably of been like Luc, my Mummy Dearest would deny deny deny, then start all over again, or get into an instant anger and hit me. Great options huh.

‘Did he suffer?’ ‘Not physically, I can say that with a high level of certainty. We know from high-fall victims who survive that their brain protects them immediately prior to impact. They pass out or go into a sort of impending trauma fugue. Very few have any memory of impact at all. In this man’s case, I can tell you death was so instantaneous that he wouldn’t have had time to have registered the pain.

Our brains are good like that, even when working at 1/2 speed. When I had my cerebral haematoma the last thing I remember is calling my Mum and asking her to come and get me, that something was wrong, and thank god I did that rather than go to bed hoping I’d feel better in the morning, as I had so much blood in my head it had pushed my brain entirely to one side of my head, I kid not. The point though, there was no pain, at all, that I can remember, but there’s point two, I remember nothing between the phone call & waking up in neurosurgical ward afterwards. And a lot had gone on, I’d gotten in a car with mum and went to the hospital, no memory, apparently I was acting really weird in the waiting room, freaking people out as I was shaking and jerking, totally out of it, I got examined, there was an emergency ambulance ride to another hospital who could do the surgery, everything is a total blank, not one iota of pain nor of memory of it all. Clever little brains we have indeed.

Do you believe in ghosts?’ she asked. ‘No. It’s simple statistics. How many people have inhabited this earth and died? Surely we’d be overrun with restless spirits if that was the case.’ ‘Cynic,’ she replied.

I like to, but I don’t know how much is pure wanting versus it’s not really feasible. It’s one hell of a Pandoras Box when you dive into any field even remotely regarding theology. How far do you take things? Is ‘god’ a ghost? As a lot of believers think he is, but their idea of ghost may be slightly different to others. I believe there can be imprints left behind by the past, before you Pooh Pooh it, think of records, tapes, videos, digital anything, all of that is imprinted, as such, to be seen or listened to later… not sounding quite so weird now is it?

My English is still pretty literal and most words only have one meaning.’ Ava frowned in confusion momentarily, then closed her eyes and shook her head in mock disgust.

Yeah, well that’d be a nasty old hag dressed up like a succubus who’s going to take a LOT more than any man really wants to give… incubus

‘No, I’m fine. Nothing a couple of paracetamol won’t fix,’ Ava said.

Pfft they don’t do diddly squat

You only have to panic when there’s no lump.’

BS As someone who nearly died from a ‘brain bleed’ NEVER EVER take something like that as anything other than SERIOUS Not if you want to wake up again.

‘I won’t ever leave you,’ he whispered. ‘You don’t need to worry about that.’

Might as well join the gang of people who’ve highlighted this, just have to add though 1 - the author is such a tease! 2 - hell I certainly wouldn’t be sleeping next to him…

‘Transferring to us with promotion after a long and distinguished period working with undercover teams across Scotland, Detective Inspector Pax Graham.’

He can transfer anywhere to me, err I mean anything, umm, I’ll just go get that drool again…

You could be the best manager in the world, but if the men and women under your command didn’t like you, they wouldn’t respect you, either.

Agreed, in all my jobs whenever I was in charge I never made the others do all the dirty jobs, everyone did everything including me.

Trying to persuade people to open up to you, knowing it would initially at least be pouring salt on their wounds. Wanting to help people who wanted to be left alone.

Those people who ‘want to be left alone’ don’t really, they’re just scared, when your broken, and you know that you are, pulling out that plug and letting it all out is hard, especially if it’s because of various trauma, family issues, drugs etc etc, starting to open up can seem like very long road ahead, sometimes it’s easier just to keep the status quo.

Maclure smiled and Callanach was drawn to him.

I like this guy, don’t let it be him, even the fishes are a little in awe

Once fate had decided that you were an apt target, it was as persistent as chewing gum on the bottom of your shoe.

Oh sing me a river, that flows & flows & flows, a never ending river, oh how I wish it wasn’t so….

‘You think it was a staff member who killed him?’ Callanach asked.

Or, Cal hasn’t been as quiet in looking for these 2 as he thought and either the other man had him killed for safety’s sake, or something else is in the mix… I’m not sure I like this plot, I have issues, like Cal, about being blamed for things I haven’t done, mine nearly landed me in jail as well, all for trusting the wrong person. Now, whenever I read a book or watch tv, and a plot anything along these lines comes up, I get really peeved off, to the extreme. I know it’s because of what happened with me, I’m just hoping this doesn’t get too bad or I’m going to not like segments of this book.

What he wanted to know was who and why.

Asked and answered a page or so back

But trouble followed him.

I’d be his perfect match then

God, it never rained but it dumped an entire fucking ocean on you,

It’s ok, you can keep the ocean, I have 2 eco friendly Olympian sized swimming pools full of little red fishies, it used to be 1 pool, but the little buggers are getting randy after all the (almost) sexual parts of these books! Who knew the little buggers could duplicate SO fast! The author better put Pax & Cal on house arrest otherwise I’ll have to get another blimming pool! And they don’t come cheap, even imaginary ones cost enough to make my poor old spidey webs eyes water, well, I suppose if there’s crying to be had, in a pools as good as anywhere! Reading the above and thunk I’m crazy? Read the very first highlight/note

He’d had a bad day and as someone who’d been accused of misconduct before, she wasn’t sure how well he was going to handle a second incident.

I can tell you, and I rarely swear (kinda) but he’s gonna handle it Really Fucking Badly! I know I do, at the slightest flipping thing at times

‘Ava, you know I haven’t …’

It could be the evil little biatch who cried rape, she seemed to disappear a little too easy

where’s the blade?

Sitting on it? In her mouth, other orifices? Hey you never know..

‘You can decide not to do as I say, and get an infection that at best will result in you needing time off work and at worst will require surgical intervention.’

Sepsis, everyone’s best buddy

‘You need me to anaesthetise you first?’ she asked. ‘Don’t bother. It’s so painful already that you sticking a needle in won’t add much.’

I bet it will….

It was that co-dependency that police partners sometimes developed,

There’s the old saying about people who work long hours together that they have a work wife/husband & a home one.

father’s passing with her. There had been no one to hold her as she’d grieved, and no one for her to comfort and give her a reason to live.

They had no idea that she’d have done anything at all never to have to go back to yoga classes again, with a teacher who constantly talked in sing-song hushed tones and insisted that she should love her body and listen to it. Fenny’s body, she was pretty sure, fucking hated her and she didn’t want to listen to anything it had to say,

Love it, I think I’m her long lost twin, I’d like to say that my bodies thrown everything it can at me, but that would be very very foolish, it’s listening with the words “wanna bet?” Set on its tongue, well my tongue, you get the point …

Fenny still had some of those drawings tucked away in an envelope, hidden in a box with her wedding photos and Mother’s Day cards so dearly prized that she dared not take them out and handle them any more.

God, way to humanize her, to the point where I know she’s dead, but I want her to of had what the lie promised. I thunk we all have lost friends/family or lost wishes, dreams, that we put away in a box, mental, real, likely both and some to the point it’s hard to look as to acknowledge them too much brings everything back to the surface and once you dredge things back up, it’s hard to put them back down to rest.

There was no phrase that was strong enough to express the disgust she felt at what was happening.

Abhorrent

I want to see it just the way it was.’

He’s the one left behind ….

Ava said nothing. She didn’t need to. Any experienced police officer could have guessed what was coming.

So would any woman

There were times when no one should have to be alone.

We see a lot of military personnel here and he’s specially trained for that.

Hmmm said the spidey web as she swung in the breeze…

‘The blade couldn’t be found at the scene because

Ding ding ding Ding … Oh i’m damn good at times

Over the years, the hardening of the skin on the ends of the fingers and the palm leaves its mark. Writing, cutting vegetables, picking things up, opening jars, you name it. Also, the muscles of the dominant hand are always fractionally more developed.

And for those of us who are disabled this goes up tenfold

If she changed her mind, though, why not pull the plug at least,

Or why not use the knife to cut the ties?

there’s no corroborative evidence to suggest the death was suspicious.’

See, I think Ailsas more intelligent than that & she was sounding sure something was unusual before, a sudden switch

To my knowledge, I’m the only French officer in Police Scotland, so there was no way I was deceiving her about who I was. It was just quicker. I fully accept it was the wrong way to go about it, but she saw my name and would have been able to identify me just the same as if I’d signed the visitors’ book.’

Shouldn’t of said that, why use the word ‘deceiving’? That’s an odd term for someone to use if they were just visiting. The first part of being used to just showing the badge was good, but this blows it, my brain instantly latched onto ‘deceiving’, the same with what comes after it, it sounds guilty, or like he’s hiding something.

Callanach sat back in his chair, grateful that DI Graham had mistaken his reaction for insult rather than shock.

Actually both work, shock or indignant or pretty much both, that was an honest sounding reply

‘You called her Ava,’ Graham said. ‘Is MIT’s chain of command really that informal?’

That’s silly, they’re all of higher rank, speaking informally, using her first names normal, to me anyway, prior to this, on the tape, that may of been a bit off.

If the daughter is still alive, she either needs to be informed of her mother’s death or treated as a suspect.

No daughter could do that to their mother,no matter how your relationship is, you’d have to be a 1st grade psychopath to do that, and I DO mean a 1st grade one!

accident or suicide. He was taking an antidepressant,

Most people NOT taking an antidepressant are more likely to kill themselves, don’t you think?

queen of profanity.

Love it, so she’s actually the perfect match for Lively!

He should have spoken to her

I agree, should of really talked to her, their interactions come across as odd at times, even the way they talk to each other seems stilted, maybe it’s just me and the Kiwi way of talking to each other, or their personality/status type talks more like that, I dunno..

All my love, Luc.

That’s it? Sheesh, more like a quick brb note than a letter

more persistent than a salmon jumping upstream,

Heh, I’ll remember that one However, 5 mins ago he was thinking he’s being set up, but that’s just been forgotten? As most people would of mentioned that to Ava & also be looking into it instantly, especially with psycho biatch wandering around loose & unfenced.

there comes a time when you want to be able to watch the rugby, cook a curry and listen to the Beatles

Sounds like my Dad

Lance had his mobile out and was typing notes onto the screen.

Wouldn’t it be easier to record him? Much easier…