in with them for ten minutes, gave them her description and told them about the Jag being vandalised. They made concerned noises and assured me she’d be all right.
Villains don’t usually carry out their threats. They didn’t threaten Lisa and they didn’t threaten to do the car. They just got on with it. No warning, fait accompli, this is what we are capable of. Giving a warning is dangerous and pointless. I knew the theory, but it didn’t convince me.
I took the long way home, meandering round the streets of town, not really knowing why. When I arrived I left the car out in the road, under the street lamp, because I hoped I’d be using it again before too long. My outside light casts a black wedge of shadow down the side of the house. As I opened the gate I saw a pair of long legs, clad in jeans, jutting out of the darkness where the doorstep was.
Annabelle was sitting there, hands stuffed in her pockets, head back against the wall to avoid the drizzle.
‘You look frozen,’ I said, sitting on the step beside her.
She nodded, and agreed that she was.
‘How did you get here?’
‘I walked.’
‘It’s five miles,’ I said.
‘The map is wrong — it’s ten,’ she replied. She still had a sense of humour.
‘Why?’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I came out for a walk, to do some thinking. And my legs brought me here. That’s all.’
‘You have very sensible legs,’ I told her, putting my hand on her left knee. ‘You should listen to them more often. How long were you going to wait?’
‘As long as it took.’
I’m not usually lost for words. After a few seconds I said, ‘Thank you,’ and helped her to her feet. We went inside and I put the kettle on. Standing in the kitchen I asked her, ‘Did you hear about Lisa?’
‘Yes. It was horrible.’
‘It was me who found her,’ I admitted.
‘I thought it was.’
I folded my arms because I didn’t know where to put them and turned to face her. ‘You read about it in the papers?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘I can explain. I…’
She interrupted me by placing her fingers across my lips and shaking her head. ‘You don’t have to,’ she said.
We carried our coffees through into the front room and pushed the settee closer to the fire. ‘Do you want something dry to put on?’ I asked.
‘No, I will be all right, thank you.’
‘Music?’ I suggested, leaning towards the CD player.
‘No. I want to talk.’
‘Oh. Right.’ I took a sip of my coffee. ‘I did Great Gable today,’ I boasted. ‘I wanted to do some thinking, too.’
‘I wish I’d been with you.’
‘So do I.’
‘Did you come to any conclusions?’
‘No. It’s all out of my hands. Did you?’
‘Yes.’ She sipped her coffee, looking into the pretend flames of the gas fire. We sat in silence for several long minutes, until she began, ‘When we were in Africa — Kenya…’ She stopped and tried another tack. ‘I want to try to explain why I’ve been so stupid, so difficult with you.’
‘I’m the one who was stupid,’ I confessed. ‘Insensitive. In this job you…’
‘No. It was me. When we were in Kenya…I left Peter. He had an affair, was unfaithful, so I came home, back to England.’
‘I’m sorry…’ Once or twice before there’d been hints that the perfect romance between the hard-working bishop and his young, glamorous wife had not been as blissful as the world had been led to believe, but I’d never dreamt it was this.
She continued. ‘There’s still the Happy Valley syndrome out there. Lots of bored women with nothing to do but gossip and drink gin. And have affairs with each other’s husbands. Did you ever see White Mischief?’
‘Mmm.’
‘Not much has changed since then. Well, not in some circles. An eager young clergyman was fair game to them. All the more fun if he had a naive wife they could be charming to, afterwards. At first I thought that was the worst part, the humiliation, the laughing behind my back. But it wasn’t. I soon forgot that. A chance remark gave him away, and suddenly lots of things fell into place. I caught the next flight home, left everything behind, arrived on Rachel’s doorstep carrying a duty free bag containing my allowance of booze. The worst part, Charles, was the sense of betrayal. That never went away.’
‘I know. And Peter followed you?’
‘Yes. He’d been ill with malaria, so he used it as an excuse to come back. We patched things up, in a way, kept up appearances like we were taught to do, and the rest, as they say, is history.’ She looked at me for the first time and gave me a little smile.
‘I’d…no idea…’ I began.
‘So, when this handsome detective appeared on the scene and swept me off my feet…’ This time the smile wrinkled her nose. Some women use tears, Annabelle wrinkles her nose and brave men fall at her feet.
‘You mean I’ve a rival?’ I said.
‘I owe you an apology, Charles. Can we try again?’
‘You owe me no apology. Don’t be too hard on him, Annabelle. The temptation was just too much. None of us can be certain how we’d behave under those circumstances, no matter how strong our resolve. Most men might have gone the same way, who knows?’
She tried to smile again, saying, ‘But you wouldn’t have been able to stand in your pulpit and quote the seventh commandment while keeping a straight face. I doubted you, Charles, because of something Peter had done. For that, I’m very sorry.’
I took her cup from her and walked into the kitchen with them. When I returned I stood behind her and placed my hands on her shoulders, rotating my thumbs against her neck muscles.
‘Mmm, that’s good,’ she said, rolling her head.
Over the fireplace I had an original painting of a World War II Halifax bomber that the squad presented to me when I made inspector and moved on. Every six months or so I rotate my pictures, and it was the Halifax’s turn to have pride of place. Not great art, but I love it. A gang of us had been walking, and we found the remains of wreckage on Brown Tor. We did some research, found out all about it. Vaguely, I could see the outline of my reflection embracing the four engines, with an RAF roundel where my eye should have been. When I spoke, I talked to the reflection.
‘When my wife — Vanessa — left me,’ I began, ‘I went a bit crazy. Nothing clinical, just hit the booze, you know. Did some silly things, took risks. One day, about a month after she’d gone, a letter came for her, in a Heckley General Hospital envelope. I wasn’t sure where she was, so I carried it about with me for several days, thinking I’d ask the force doctor to read it, decide if it was important. One day, I found it there and thought, what the hell, and opened it.’
A Halifax bomber had a crew of seven, average age about twenty. The chances of surviving ten raids were less than fifty per cent. The one we found had flown into Brown Tor on a training flight in bad weather — they didn’t even make the starting line. I’d never told anyone else about the letter, and I wasn’t sure if I could make the words come out. ‘It was from the ante-natal clinic,’ I went on, ‘fixing her an appointment. She was pregnant.’ My hands had stopped massaging Annabelle’s neck, but I left them on her shoulders. ‘I was fairly certain that she was living with a tutor from the art college. I went straight round there, gave her the letter, told her she had to come home with me. I wasn’t having my baby brought up by him. He was sitting on the arm of her chair, all protective. It was
