‘We’ve done nothing wrong,’ Brad said.
Wendy, not unfeeling, could see that Brad and Rose were decent enough, although Rose’s clothes were more upmarket than Brad’s pair of blue jeans and dark blue shirt.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to say any more about it, but the law is clear. Rose is underage.’
Over to one side, a crowd was forming, a man pressing forward, trying to get under the crime scene tape.
‘Your father?’ Wendy said, looking at Rose.
‘I had to phone him. He doesn’t know I’m with Brad.’
‘At a girlfriend’s? A sleepover, watch a few movies, but instead finding a quiet spot with Brad and settling down for a spot of romance, is that it?’
‘We’re old enough,’ Brad said, remembering his mother’s lectures on the subject when he’d been younger, not that she could talk. What with the unfamiliar face at breakfast occasionally, his mother insisting that he was a friend of his father’s and he had spent the night in the spare room.
‘Before your father gets here, Rose. Legally you’re underage, and Brad would have been guilty of a crime. Not the most serious, seeing that he’s young too, but he would have had to answer for it.’
‘We didn’t do anything.’
Wendy removed the bottle of wine from Brad’s bag and put it inside the large bag that she always carried.
‘You two are in enough trouble already. It might be better if neither of you mentions the wine,’ she said.
‘Thank you,’ Brad said. ‘Rose’s father?’
‘Wait here. I’ll go and talk to him.’
Wendy moved away from them and walked over to the crime scene tape and the irate father. She told the constable to let him through.
‘Rose is helping us with our enquiries,’ she said.
‘She should have been at her friend’s house, not here,’ Rose Winston’s father, Tim, said. He had obviously been in bed when he had received the phone call, and under the tee shirt and an old pair of jeans Wendy could see his pyjama top.
‘There’s been a murder in the cemetery. Rose and her friend are witnesses,’ Wendy said, conscious of the man’s concern and undoubted anger. The crime would take precedence, but she could be sensitive as to the situation.
‘I know who he is. He’s no friend, just another rampant male, wanting to brag about it in school the next day, put it on social media. I’ve seen it all before.’
Wendy knew he probably had. The man was in his mid-forties, and his teen years were before social media and instant communication. He was, however, a good-looking man, hair greying at the temples, and judging by his physique, he was an active sportsman, and in his youth, another Brad Robinson. The man’s memory was selective because it was his daughter. How many daughters of equally concerned men had Winston in his youth tempted and succeeded with? Wendy knew the answer, also thought that he wasn’t the sort of man to talk about it afterwards. And if she was a judge of character, she suspected that Brad Robinson wasn’t either.
‘Mr Winston, your concerns aside, I need to interview them first. How you deal with it afterwards is up to you, but we may need to speak to your daughter after tonight. She’s had a fright, and there may be delayed shock. I would advise against you and your wife talking to her tonight. Get her home, put her to bed and let her sleep it off.’
‘I’ll take your advice, Sergeant. As long as she’s at home. She’s a good girl, but she’s still young, and the Robinsons are known in the area. You’re aware of his brother and sister?’
‘I am, but young Brad seems decent enough.’
‘A difficult age,’ Winston said.
Wendy walked the man over to his daughter; neither spoke, only hugged tightly. Brad tried to talk, only to receive a look of disgust from Rose’s father.
‘Now, Mr Winston, if you don’t mind, could you please leave me alone with the two of them,’ Wendy said.
Winston took Wendy’s advice and walked over to a shop across the road; he purchased a bar of chocolate and a hot drink out of a machine.
‘My father, he’s angry, isn’t he?’ Rose said as Wendy sat down beside them again.
Wendy, her two sons now grown up and married with children, could sympathise with the father and with Brad and Rose. She had been young once, and she had done what these two had; and then, older and not necessarily wiser, she had had to be what her parents had been, doting and concerned, attempting to instil wisdom and experience into teenagers, with their hormones, their peers, their belief that the older generation was out of touch.
‘He has every right to be, and you’re likely to get an ear-bashing.’
‘Not from Dad, he’s a softy really, but he doesn’t like Brad, not any boy.’
‘You’re both finding your way in the world. You’ll both make mistakes, tonight for instance. Let’s start at the beginning, and what you were doing in Kensal Green Cemetery.’
Brad told how they had been going out for a few weeks; how the two of them felt about each other. Wendy thought it was sweet that the young man had intended to take her to Hyde Park and to find a secluded spot. She wasn’t about to tell them that you didn’t buy the cheapest bottle of wine if you intended to wake up the next morning without a throbbing headache and a parched throat.
‘You’re outside the cemetery, on Harrow Road,’ Wendy said. ‘It’s a shortcut, I know that, but what else?’
‘I didn’t want to, not at night,’ Rose said. ‘All those gravestones.’
‘Do you believe in ghosts?’
‘It was Steph; she wanted to watch a zombie movie, I didn’t, but it was her house, and she was covering
