The Betrayed

“It's impossible,” Dennis Jewel said, “even if you'd got a case of JD tucked under your arm there, I'd be telling you the same thing.”
Mark Fletcher placed the bottle of Jack Daniels Old No 7 he had brought along as a sweetener on the desk between them. “Dennis,” he said, “what say you lock the door there, we pull a couple of glasses out've your bottom drawer and we sip a little of this amber nectar and see if you don't change your mind.”
“There's no way I'm going to do that,” Jewel replied, “not while we've got an operation running. You think I can conjure blokes up out of the air or something? I'm not a bloody magician, Fletch.”
Fletcher sighed. He's come to the Borough for a favour and he'd expected to have to haggle, but here was Jewel sitting on his backside just acting stubborn. “What operation trumps a murder?”
“Zatopek, you know, the lorry hi-jacking thing.”
“Zatopek?”
“Don't you start,” Jewel took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and glanced wistfully at the image of a rotting lung on the packet. The only place he could light up these days was skulking in the station yard with the last of the diehards. “Some comedian up at the dream factory came up with that stupid name, something about it's got to run the distance.”
“Christ,” Fletcher said, “Now I've heard everything.”
“Well it don't change a thing,” Jewel insisted, turning the cigarette packet over in his hand. “I'm committed a hundred percent and if they get wind up the road that I'm even thinking of loaning blokes to you on the old pals act, they're going to have my balls, it's as simple as that.”
Mark Fletcher regarded his friend for a moment as he marshalled his thoughts for a new gambit. Jewel was a heavily built man, solid with beefy shoulders which bulged under his shirt. He had a head of tight grey curls and his face wore a permanently perplexed expression. They were the same rank, detective chief inspector, only Jewel was a guv'nor on the Borough wide CID under the wing of the Metropolitan Police Major Crime Directorate with his own complement of detectives. He took his orders from New Scotland Yard. Normally the Borough would be only too happy to