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It had taken far too long for Wendy to convince the national newspaper to hand over their list of informants. They had many excuses, but she suspected the primary one was pure spite. Initially, they’d trotted out their usual ‘duty to protect our informants’ line. She’d rebutted that with her usual ‘illegal to knowingly hinder an active police investigation’ response. It was the usual merry dance, and one she’d seen many times in the past. When she’d finally convinced them they’d have to hand over the information, they’d pushed everything back to square one by pointing out that Wendy was a mere Detective Sergeant. They could only consider a request from a Senior Investigating Officer of at least Detective Inspector rank, they said. With Culverhouse AWOL, that had meant a call to Malcolm
