again, has he?'
Millington shook his head.
'Mark? No, nothing I've said. Just off up the canteen, most like, have a good sulk.'
What about? '
Millington's best malicious smile slid out from under his moustache like a ferret on the loose.
'Course of true love, never did run smooth.'
Kevin Naylor took two mugs of tea over from the counter, two sugars in Divine's, one in his own.
'Here. Drink that.' Divine continued glowering at a sausage cob, which sat encircled on his plate by a moat of brown sauce. Two tables away, three uniformed constables and a civilian clerk were arguing the merits of the present Nottinghamshire side.
'Give this lot a white ball with a bell in it, and they'd not top three figures against a blind school.'
'What's up?' Naylor asked.
'Lesley?'
Lesley Bruton was a staff nurse at Queen's Medical Centre. Divine had met her during the course of an enquiry and been immediately attracted. Nothing in itself unusual in that. Divine in the vicinity of an attractive woman was like a water diviner in overdrive. What had been unusual was that, despite her early indifference, he had stuck with it.
Months it had taken him to wear Lesley Bruton's patience down to the point where she would even talk about going out with him. Divine, week after seemingly thankless week, just chancing to be driving past the entrance to the hospital as she was coming off shift, more often than not still wearing her staff nurse's uniform beneath her outdoor coat. When finally he caught her at a weak moment and she conceded a quick drink, he had surprised her by making her laugh; surprised her more by not making a play for her when he dropped her at the house she shared with two housemen and three other nurses. Though she could see in his eyes it was what he was set on.
Since then she had put him through a series of arbitrary tests, from keeping him waiting one hour and forty- nine minutes due to an emergency admission, to holding a handful of her damp Kleenex as she sobbed her way through the sentimental bits of Mrs Doubtfire. Last night it had been an ordeal by association: Lesley had organised a leaving do for one of the other nurses on the ward and made it clear to Divine she wanted him along. It had all been fine until he'd lost count of his lagers and graphically propositioned one of Lesley's friends.
'Jesus!' Naylor said, hearing the story.
'Don't believe in asking for trouble, do you?'
'All I said was, one into two, how many times d'you reckon it'd go:' Pillock!'
Divine dipped his head and savaged the sausage cob. 'Wasn't as though I was trying to have it away behind her back.'
'Might've been better if you were.'
'Yes, happen you're right' And then, eyes brightening: ' Got to admit, though, can't beat a threesome to get your hormones in an uproar. Remember those sisters whose caravan caught fire out at Strelley. '
But Naylor had other things on his mind, more compelling than his colleague's compulsive sexual shenanigans. Now that the baby was up and toddling, walking really, baby no longer, Debbie was only making noises about trying for another. As if eighteen months of postnatal depression had never happened. Perhaps blowing what little they'd saved on a trip to Florida would be worth it after all, shift her mind on to a different tack.
'I hope we're doing enough, Charlie, that's my concern. I'd not be happy coming out of this with egg all over our faces.'
Skelton held the milk carton up questioningly and Resnick merely shook his head; as it was, calling the superintendent's coffee black was asking to be summonsed by the Race Relations Board.
'If anything should happen to her, you know what I mean.'
Resnick set cup and saucer on the floor beside his chair. 'Watching brief, that's what I thought. Public appearances 78 and the like. There's a dinner tonight, just informal, I thought I might go along.'
Skelton looked at Resnick with interest before fidgeting with the papers on his desk.
'No follow-up on that stabbing in Alfreton Road?'
Resnick shook his head.
'We've done a check of the hotels. Nothing.
Bloke's likely off home, thanking his lucky stars, shooting a line to his wife about where the scar came from. '
The photograph of Skelton's wife, Resnick noticed, had still not found its way back on to his desk.
'Nothing else I should know about?' the superintendent asked.
'Advisory meeting's tomorrow.'
'Maybe just get some advice,' Resnick said.
'Like how are we supposed to increase the percentage of successful investigations when there's a ban on overtime.'
'Remember the old story, Charlie,' Skelton said, 'the one about the rabbit and the hat. '
Sixteen Lynn had no trouble recognising Cathy Jordan. Red hair tied back with green ribbon, blue denim shirt, pale cord three-quarter skirt, tan boots, she stood, relaxed, alongside a table on which copies of her books had been piled high. A glass of red wine in her hand, she was chatting amiably to a pleasant-faced man in a dark suit whom Lynn took to be the Waterstone's manager. There were quite a few people already hovering in the general area of the table, glancing almost surreptitiously in the author's direction, waiting for the official business to begin.
Lynn stood by this month's best-sellers, making sure she had the layout of the shop clear in her mind: the main doors onto Bridlesmith Gate were at her back, a second entrance, from the foot of Bottle Lane, was in the corner of the travel section, several steps up to her left; around the corner at the far end, she remembered, were children's books and what? gardening? something like that, yes, gardening. Lynn moved through the steadily growing crowd and introduced herself.
Cathy Jordan took half a step back to look at her Lynn with her newly short hair almost flat on her head, navy cotton jacket and dark skirt, black low-heeled shoes.
'Resnick, you work with him?'
'Inspector Resnick, yes, that's right.'
'Sent you along to hold my hand.'
'Not exactly.'
A line was beginning to form now, curving its way back between the other tables; those at the front coughing a 80 little nervously, wondering how it was Lynn had somehow got in before them.
'You're not armed or anything?'
Lynn shook her head.
'Should I be?'
'God, I hope not' Cathy Jordan smiled.
'Just, if someone's standing behind my back with a gun, I like to know.'
'Don't worry,' Lynn said.
'I probably won't be at your back at all.'
'Prefer to merge into the crowd, huh?'
'Something like that.'
'Good.' Still smiling.
'Good.' And, turning back towards the manager: 'Shall we get to it?'
Derek Neighbour had made sure of getting there in plenty of time.
Parking, he knew to his cost, was always a problem after mid-morning, so he had left his home in Newark shortly after eight, called in briefly at the antique shop he ran with his partner, Philip, and arrived in plenty of time to find a space on the third floor of the Fletcher Gate multi-storey. From there it was only a short walk down the steps on to King John's Chambers and Water- stone's was just to the right which was as well, considering the weight of what he was carrying.
Derek hadn't discovered Cathy Jordan until Shallow Grave, which, of course, was her fourth, the fourth Annie Q. Jones, and, even then, he had almost never read it at all. For at least six weeks it had lain on the nice Victorian
