“Because you phoned,” she said.
“I wouldn’t have come if you hadn’t phoned. God, you’re arrogant. They come two a penny like you in London, you know.”
His eyes narrowed dangerously.
“Then offer your money to them,” he said, ‘and stop patronising me.”
Tight-lipped, they took their leave of Mr. Richards with false promises of phoning the next day, and drove off up the narrow coast road towards Wareham. Hal, all too conscious of the darkening clouds and the reduction in speed that wet tarmac would enforce on him, concentrated on his driving. Roz, crushed by his hostility which, like a tropical storm, had blown out of nowhere, withdrew into hurt silence.
Hal had been gratuitously cruel, and knew it, but he was gripped by his own certainty that this trip had been engineered to get him out of the Poacher. And God was Roz good. She had every damn thing: looks, humour, intellect, and just enough vulnerability to appeal to his stupid chivalry. But he had phoned her. Fool, Hawksley! She would have come back, anyway. Someone had to offer him the stinking money.
Shit! He slammed his fist against the steering-wheel.
“Why did you want me to come with you?” he demanded into the silence.
“You’re a free agent,” she pointed out caustically.
“You didn’t have to come.”
It started to rain as they reached Wareham, slanting stair-rods that drove in through the open windows.
“Oh, great!” announced Roz, clutching her jacket about her throat.
“The perfect end to a perfect day. I’ll be soaked. I should have come on my own in my own car. I could hardly have had less fun, could I?”
“Why didn’t you then? Why drag me out on a wild-goose chase?”
“Believe it or not,” she said icily, “I was trying to do you a favour.
I thought it would be good for you to escape for a couple of hours. I was wrong. You’re even more touchy away from the place than you are in it.” He took a corner too fast and threw her against the door, grazing her leather jacket against the buckled chromium window strip.
“For God’s sake,” she snapped crossly.
“This jacket cost me a fortune.”
He pulled into the kerb with a screech of rubber.
“OK,” he snarled, ‘let’s see what we can do to protect it.” He reached across her to take a book of road maps out of the dashboard pocket.
“What good will that do?”
“It will tell me where the nearest station is.” He thumbed through the pages.
“There’s one in Wareham and the line goes to Southampton. You can take a taxi back to your car at the other end.” He fished out his wallet.
“That should be enough to pay your way.” He dropped a twenty-pound note into her lap then swung the car on to the road again.
“It’s off to the right at the next roundabout.”
“You’re a real sweetheart, Hawksley. Didn’t your mother teach you any manners along with her little aphorisms about women and life?”
“Don’t push your luck,” he growled.
“I’m on a very short fuse at the moment and it doesn’t take much to rile me. I spent five years of marriage being criticised for every damn thing I did.
I’m not about to repeat the experience.” He drew up in front of the station.
“Go home,” he told her, wiping a weary hand across his damp face.
“I’m doing you a favour.”
She put the twenty-pound note on the dashboard and reached for her handbag.
“Yes,” she agreed mildly, “I think you probably are. If your wife stuck it out for five years, she must have been a saint.” She pushed the door open on its screaming hinges and eased round it, then bent down to look through the window, thrusting her middle finger into the air.
“Go screw yourself, Sergeant. Presumably it’s the only thing that gives you any pleasure. Let’s face it, no one else could ever be good enough.”
“Got it in one, Miss Leigh.” He nodded a curt farewell, then spun the wheel in a U-turn. As he drove away the twenty pound note whipped like a bitter recrimination from the window and fell with the rain into the gutter.
Hal was cold and wet by the time he reached Dawlington, and his already evil temper was not improved to find her car still parked at the end of the alleyway where she had left it. He glanced past it, between the buildings, and saw that the back door of the Poacher stood ajar, the wood in splinters where a crowbar had been used to wrench it free of its frame. OH, Jesus! She had set him up. He knew a moment of total desolation he was not as immune as he thought himself -before the need to act took over.
He was too angry for common sense, too angry to take even elementary precautions. He ran on light feet, thrust the door wide and weighed in with flailing fists, punching, kicking, gouging, oblivious to the blows that landed on his arms and shoulders, intent only on causing maximum damage to the bastards who were destroying him.
