Old bones

There comes a point in the life of a balloon when it has lost so much air that its taut, festive body becomes sagging, wrinkled and - well, frankly, sad. DCI Ron Carver's retirement party had reached that stage.
  Slider cast an experienced look round the upstairs room of the White Horse and saw that the inevitable end was not far away. The young marrieds were eyeing their watches and wondering how soon they could leave. The young unmarrieds were eyeing each other and wondering how soon they could leave. The divorced and miserable were trying with increasing desperation to neck the equivalent of the gross national product of Belgium. A few career bunnies were holding the centre of the room and talking hard about Home Office initiatives and crime statistics. And a few old lags, Carver's bosom buddies, were making a lot of noise in the corner where Carver himself was getting determinedly bladdered.
  Carver was a miserable bastard, who had raised resentment to an art form, and his leaving do was appropriately cheerless. The Osman Room - named with no apparent irony after some dreary character in a popular soap - had clearly been decorated by someone with terminal depression. There was a table with food - mini pork pies, scotch eggs, and the sort of sausage rolls that bend. There was drink - party kegs of beer, and a few grudging bottles of Australian shardonay for 'the wimmin': female police officers, and a boot-faced civilian clerk who had already done eight years hard as DS Benny Cook's mistress, with no hope of parole.
  There was even a cake, a vast flat rectangle covered in rubbery fondant icing, decorated with Carver's name and two dates, as though it were his tombstone. Inside, Slider knew from sad experience, the cake would be a desiccated industrial 'sponge', sandwiched with a red substance in which even the most detailed DNA test would fail to find anything related to the raspberry. Excerpted from Old Bones by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.