didn't.'
'What are you talking about?'
'I want you to tell me what happened. You've never spoken about it, have
you? Not to me. And I want to know!' Her upper lip was suddenly tremulous.
'So before we do anything else, you'd better ' ' Better what? ' He snapped
the words and his voice seemed that of a different man.
'Listen, my sweetheart! The day you tell me what to do, that's the day we
finish, OK? And if you don't get that message loud and clear' (paradoxically
the voice had dropped to a whisper) 'you'd better bugger off and forget we
ever met.'
There were no tears in her eyes as she replied: 'I can't do
THE REMORSEFUL
DAY
that, Frank. But there's one thing I can do: I'm going, as you so delicately
put it, to bugger off! '
In full control of herself she turned the catch on the Yale lock, and the
door closed quietly behind her.
41
chapter nine He looked at me with eyes I thought I was not like to find
(A. E. Housman, More Poems, XLI) it had been the previous day, Thursday,
when after collecting her boss's mail Barbara Dean had walked along the
corridor, white blouse as ever perfectly pressed, flicking through the eleven
envelopes held in her left hand. And looking with particular attention
(again! ) at the one addressed with a scarlet felt-pen, in outsize capital
letters, to:
STRANGE (SUPER! ) POLICE KIDLINGTON OXFORD
The execution of this lettering gave her the impression of its being neither
the work of a particularly educated nor of a particularly uneducated
correspondent. Yet the lower-case legend along the top-left of the envelope
'Private and Confidencial' (sic) - would perhaps suggest the latter.
Whatever the case though, the envelope was always going to be noticed by
whomsoever. It was like someone entering a lucky-dip postal competition with
multicoloured sketches adorning the periphery of the envelope; or like a
lover mailing off a vastly outsize Valentine.
What would her boss make of it?
Barbara had been working at Police HQ for almost six years now, and had
enjoyed her time there especially these past three years working as the
personal secretary of Chief Superintendent Strange; and she was very sad that
he would be leaving at the end of the summer.
'Strange by name and strange by nature' - that's what she often said when
friends had asked about him: an oddly contradictory man, that was for sure.
He was a heavyweight, in every sense of the word; yet there were times when
he handled things with a lightness of touch which was as pleasing as it was
unexpected. His was the reputation of a blunt, no-nonsense copper who had
not been born with quite the IQ, of an Aristotle or an Isaac Newton; yet (in
Barbara's experience) he could on occasion exhibit a remarkably compassionate
insight into personal problems, including her own. All right (yes!) he was a
big, blundering, awkward teddy-bear of a man: a bit (a lot?) hen-pecked at
home until recently of course; a man much respected, if not particularly
liked, by his fellow officers; and (from Barbara's point of view) a man who
had never, hardly ever, sought to take the slightest advantage of her . . .
well, of her womanhood.
Just that once, perhaps?
It had been at the height of the summer heat-wave of 1995. One day when she
had been wearing the skimpiest outfit the Force could ever officially
tolerate, she had seen in Strange's eyes what she thought (and almost hoped?
) were the signs of some mild, erode fantasy.
'You look very desirable, my girl!'
That's all he'd said.
Was that what people meant by 'sexual harassment'?
Not that she'd mentioned it to anyone; but the phrase was much in the
headlines that long, hot summer, and she'd heard some of the girls talking in
the canteen about it.
'could do with a bi' o' that sexual harassment! ' confessed Sharon, the
