reel jacket and black jeans, and her dark hair was pushed behind her ears. Fry could tell by Cooper’s posture and manner that the woman was nothing If) do with the enquiry he was supposed to be on. She could see his ears glowing pink even from here. The-woman was probably some old flame he had bumped into at least, that was the most charitable assumption. If he had arranged to meet her when he was supposed to be on duty, he d crucify him. lie was wasting enough time as it was.
Fry slammed her door and set oil up the street. But the shoes she was wearing weren’t made for walking on frozen snow. She felt herself slithering as soon as she set foot on the slope, and she had to hang on to the iron rail fixed to the wall to pull herself up. She was concentrating so hard on keeping her teet
I o Jo
that, when she looked up again, the woman had gone. Cooper was standing in front of his car, waiting tor her to reach him.
‘Who was that you were talking to?’ she said.
‘Nobody in particular.’
‘Well, you’ve no right to be talking to nobody in particular, Ben. Damn it, you’re supposed to be interviewing potential witnesses.’
‘Yes, I’ve clone that.’
‘And? What did they say?’
‘“We don’t know nothing, and if we did, we wouldn’t tell you.” If you want the expletives, they’ll be in my report.’
Fry took her hand away from the rail to make a gesture at him, but she didn’t quite complete it. The movement shifted her balance and she felt herself beginning to slip backwards. She grabbed at the nearest object, which happened to be the wing mirror of Cooper’s Toyota. It folded in towards the car, but was enough to save her from plummeting headlong down the slope into the road. Cooper stepped forward as if to help her, but she glowered at him, and he dropped his hand.
‘You need to get yourself some shoes with a bit of grip in the soles,’ he said. ‘If you’re not careful, vou’ll be joining the bad back and twisted ankle brigade. We can’t have that. How would we cope?’
Fry bit her lip. ‘Ben, if by any chance you’ve finished chatting
J 1 j j’ J O
up every passing female, perhaps you could shift your snow shoes
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and your four-wheel drive and get yourself up to Kemp’s house. Then I’ve ^ot another job.’
Fry tried to turn, slipped, and had to cling on to Cooper’s car even harder. She stared at the uneven slope ahead of her, which ran down towards the antiques shop and her own car parked on the road below. She felt as though she were facing a two-thousand foot ski slope without any skis.
‘Maybe you should just hang on to the car,’ said Cooper, ‘and I’ll tow you down.’
Vicky Kemp looked like a woman who was never surprised to see the police on her doorstep. She greeted the sight of the detectives’ IDs and the uniforms behind them with a weary gesture of her hand across her face, followed by an invitation to stand in her hallway so that she could shut the door and keep out the cold.
‘He’s not here, of course,’ she said.
‘Your husband?’ said Diane Fry.
‘I haven’t seen Eddie since yesterday morning.’
‘Where has he gone?’
‘All he said was that he was getting out of the way for a bit. He said you lot would be coming back to make trouble for him
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again. He was right, wasn’t he?’
‘We’re not the ones causing trouble, Mrs Kemp,’ said Fry.
‘What? You’ve taken his car away. How is he supposed to keep his business going? How is he supposed to earn a living for us? It’s bad enough as it is. He has me stuffing envelopes all day tor one of those home-working things. I hate it. But there
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wouldn’t be much housekeeping if J didn’t do it.’
‘Do you have a family?’
‘One boy, Lee. He’s twelve years old.’
‘He’ll be at school, then.’
‘Probably.’
Fry raised an eyebrow. ‘You might have heard that we’re looking for a missing baby,’ she said.
‘It was on the local news last ni^ht,’ said Mrs Kemp. ‘Baby Chloe. Only a few weeks old, isn’t she? Poor thing. You never know what’s going to happen to your kids these days.’
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‘Do you have any idea of the whereabouts of that baby?’ said Cooper.
‘Me? Why should 1?’
‘The name of Chloc’s mother is Marie Tenncnt. We understand that your husband lived with her for a while.
‘Oh.’ Mrs Kemp’s eyes flickered from side to side uncertainly, as if she weren’t quite sure how she was supposed to react. ‘It’s her, is it? I thought it might be. It’s a bit of an unusual name for round here.’
