things, if you don’t mind. Just in case. We do like to know exactly what’s going off in our little neck of the woods.”
Annette had vanished but didn’t answer the phone when I rang her flat. I’d stayed behind to brief our local RCS boys, and it must have been after eight when I left the station. I drove straight to a pub up on the moors and had the landlady’s steak and kidney pie. Friday morning I apologised to Annette and said I’d tried to ring her.
“I thought you’d be here until late,” she replied, “so I went to the Curtain.”
“Aw, I am sorry. I wish I’d known. Did Mr Ho entertain you?”
“Yes. He was sweet. I said you might be along later, and when you didn’t turn up he was all apologetic and filled with concern. He said you must have had a good reason for not being there.”
“Mmm, stupidity,” I replied.
I told her all about the RCS take-over and she said she’d enjoyed the shout. Her adrenaline was high and it had kept her awake all night.
“Maybe that was the monosodium glutamate,” I suggested.
“Yes, perhaps it was,” she agreed, but there was just a tinge of pink on her cheeks as she said it.
“This weekend…” I began. “Are you going away?”
“Yes, unless…”
“Unless?”
“Unless you want me to work.”
“Er, no. No, I don’t think that will be necessary.”
“Right. Thanks”
I spent the rest of the morning on the word processor, typing a full account of the Heckley station caper in graphic detail. I even slipped in a few semi-colons, because I suspected it would be read in high places. I laid it on thick, saying that I thought it unsafe to approach Chilcott, a suspected killer, in a public place when we were ill- prepared. In fact, I made such a good job of it I decided that any other course of action would have been downright irresponsible. Ah, the power of the pen.
It gave me a headache. I found some aspirin in my drawers and washed a couple down with cold tea. I was rubbing my eyes with my forefingers when there was a knock at the door and it opened. I blinked and looked at my visitor. It was Nigel Newley, my one-time whizz-kid protege.
“Hiya, Nigel,” I gushed. “Sit down. Do you want a tea?”
“No thanks, Charlie. I was in the building, so I thought I’d call in.”
“You did right. So where’s the famous moustache?”
“Ah.” He rubbed his top lip. “You heard about that, did you? I decided it wasn’t quite the part. Looked too frivolous.”
“For a detective on a murder case? Sounds a nasty job. How are you getting on with it?”
“Pretty good. We found semen samples on her, so we’re going straight for mass testing, no messing about. That’s why I’m here.”
“Nothing on the data base?”
“No, unfortunately. She was gorgeous, Charlie. Beautiful and intelligent. I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody wasn’t stalking her, but we haven’t turned anything up yet.”
“Boyfriend? Ex-boyfriends?”
“Married last Easter to a childhood sweetheart who has a cast-iron alibi. He was building a bridge in Sunderland at the time. We haven’t cleared him with the DNA yet, but we will.”
“And what does Les say about it all?” Les Isles was Nigel’s new superintendent, and an old pal of mine.
“Oh, he’s OK. A bit different from you, but he’s OK. He wants to go ahead with the mass testing, soon as possible. Says there’s no point in hanging about.”
“That sounds like Les.” I moved the computer mouse to cancel the screen saver, and clicked the save icon. I was playing for time, organising my thoughts. “Tell me this,” I said. “This girl…”
“Marie-Claire Hollingbrook.”
“…Marie-Claire. The reports say she was sexually assaulted. What exactly did that mean?”
“She was raped. Strangled and raped.”
“Post-mortem?”
“Possibly.”
“Was she assaulted anally?”
“Why?”
“Because I want to know.”
“You want to know if there’s any comparison with your case. Margaret Silkstone.”
“Yes.”
“I thought that was cleared up.”
“It is, but maybe this is a copycat.”
“Mr Isles has considered that. Yes, she was raped vaginally and anally, but I didn’t tell you. We’re not releasing that information.”
“We didn’t release it for Mrs Silkstone, but the UK News got hold of it.”
“Maybe they were kite flying.”
“No, they knew about it. Someone spoke out of turn.”
“So,” he said, pointing to the little bottle on my desk and changing the subject. “What’s with the pills.”
I picked it up and placed it back in the drawer. “It’s nothing,” I said. “I’ve just been staring at that thing for two hours. It’s a bit bright for me. Do you know how to change it?”
“Just alter the contrast,” Nigel replied.
“How?”
“With the contrast control.”
I looked at the blank strip of plastic under the screen. “There isn’t a contrast control.”
“It’s on the keyboard. You alter it on the keyboard.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the contrast on the keyboard,” I argued. “It’s the display that’s too bright. It’s giving me spots before my eyes.”
“What sort of spots?”
“Just, little spots.”
“Do they go away when you stop looking at the monitor?”
“I don’t know. I can’t see them all the time.”
Nigel said: “Turn towards the window and close your eyes.” I did as I was told. “Can you see them now?” He asked.
“Yes.”
“Right. Cover one eye with your hand.” I did. “Can you see them now?”
“I can just see two of the little buggers, close together near the middle.”
“Do they move when you look up?”
“Um, yes. Not straight away. They follow, quite slowly.”
“OK. Now the other eye.”
I swapped hands and the two spots vanished, but now I could see three others, spread about. “I can see three now,” I told him.
“They’re floaters,” Nigel informed me.
“Floaters? What are they?”
“Dead cells, floating about in the fluid of your eyeball.”
“Oh. What causes them?”
“Age. It’s your age.”
“Well how come I have three in one eye and only two in the other? They’re both the same age.”
“It’s not that specific.”
The door burst open and Dave Sparkington was standing there. “What do you want?” he demanded, looking at Nigel.
Nigel faced up to him, saying: “I came to have a conversation with the Big Issue seller, not his
