could sneak in and steal anything. Don’t go away,’ he said, and backed out of the room.
Susan put her hand over her mouth and laughed when he had gone. How shy and clumsy he seemed. But he did have charm and a sense of humour.
‘Right,’ he said, peeping around the door a couple of minutes later. ‘Ready.’
They left the community centre by the back door, locked up and made their way down the alley to York Road. There, midway between the bus station and the preRoman site, stood the Crooked Billet. Luckily it wasn’t too busy. They found a table by a whitewashed wall adorned with military emblems, and Conran went to fetch the drinks.
Susan watched him. His shirt hung out of the back of his trousers, under his sweater, he had rather round shoulders and his hair could have done with a trim at the back. Apart from that he was presentable enough. Slim, though more from lack of proper diet than exercise, she guessed; tall, and if not straight at least endearingly stooped. Very artistic, really. His eyes, she noticed as he came back, were two slightly different shades of blue-grey, one paler than the other. Funny, she had never noticed that at school.
‘Here,’ he said, putting a half of mild in front of her and holding out his pint. ‘Cheers.’ They clinked glasses.
‘How’s the investigation going?’ he asked.
Susan told him there was nothing to report on the vandalism. ‘I’m sorry about Caroline Hartley,’ she went on. ‘I noticed how upset you were when the Chief Inspector mentioned her death.’
Conran looked down and swirled the beer in his glass. ‘Yes. As I told you on Christmas Eve, I can’t say we were great friends. This was her first role with the company. I hadn’t known her very long. Obviously, I didn’t know her at all, really. But she was a joy to have around. Such childlike enthusiasm. And what talent! Untrained, but very talented. We’ve lost an important member of the cast. Not that that’s why I was upset. A Maria can easily be replaced.’
‘But not a Caroline Hartley?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Are you sure you weren’t in love with her?’
Conran started as if he’d been stung. ‘What? What on earth makes you ask that?’
‘I don’t know,’ Susan said. And she didn’t. The question had just risen, unbidden, to her lips. ‘Just that everyone says she was so attractive. After all, you are a bachelor, aren’t you?’
He smiled. ‘Yes. I’m sorry. It’s just that, well, here we are, having a drink together for the first time – our first date, so to speak – and you ask me if I was in love with another woman. Don’t you think that’s a bit odd?’
‘Maybe. But were you?’
Conran smiled from the corner of his mouth and looked at her. ‘You’re very persistent. I’d guess that’s something to do with your job. One day you must tell me all about it, all about your last ten years, why you joined the police.’
‘And the answer to my question?’
He held his hands out, as if for handcuffs, and said in a Cockney voice, ‘All right, all right, guv! Enough’s enough! I’ll come clean.’
The people at the next table looked over. Susan felt embarrassed, but she couldn’t help smiling. She leaned forward and put her elbows on the table. ‘Well?’ she whispered.
‘I suppose every man’s a little bit in love with every beautiful woman,’ Conran said quietly.
Susan blushed and reached for her drink. She didn’t consider herself beautiful, but did he mean to imply that she was? ‘That’s a very evasive answer,’ she said. ‘And besides, it sounds like a quote.’
Conran grinned. ‘But it’s true, isn’t it? Depending on one’s sexual preference, I suppose.’
‘I think it’s disgusting, the way she lived,’ Susan said. It’s abnormal. Not that I mean to speak ill of the dead,’ she blustered on, reddening, ‘but the thought of it gives me the creeps.’
‘Well, that was her business,’ Conran said.
‘But don’t you think it’s perverted?’
‘I can think of worse things to be.’
‘I suppose so,’ Susan said, feeling she’d let too much out. What was wrong with her? She had been so hesitant about going out with him in the first place, and now here she was, exposing her fears. And to him, of all people. Surely, being in the arts, he must have come across all kinds of perverts. But she hadn’t been able to help herself. The image of the two women in bed together still tormented her. And it was especially vivid as she had just come from talking to the cool, elegant Veronica Shildon. Slow down, Susan, she warned herself.
‘Do you have any idea who the killer is?’ Conran asked. Susan shook her head.
‘And what about your boss?’
‘I’m never sure I know what he thinks,’ Susan said. She laughed. ‘He’s an odd one is Chief Inspector Banks. I sometimes wonder how he gets the job done at all. He likes to take his time, and he seems so sensitive to other people and their feelings. Even criminals, I’ll bet.’ She finished her drink.
‘You make him sound like a wimp,’ Conran said, ‘but I doubt very much that he is.’
‘Oh no, he’s not a wimp. He’s…’
‘Sympathetic?’
‘More like empathetic, compassionate. It’s hard to explain. It doesn’t stop him from wanting to see criminals punished. He can be tough, even cruel, if he has to be. I just get the impression he’d rather do things in the gentlest way.’
‘You’re more of a pragmatist, are you?’
Susan wasn’t sure if he was making fun of her or not. It was the same feeling she often had with Philip Richmond. Her eyes narrowed. ‘I believe in getting the job done, yes. Emotions can get in the way if you let them.’
‘And you wouldn’t?’
‘I’d try not to.’
‘Another drink?’ Conran asked.
‘Go on, then,’ she said. ‘On two conditions.’
‘What are they?’
‘One, I’m buying. Two, no more shop talk. From either of us.’
Conran laughed. ‘It’s a deal.’
Susan picked up her handbag and went to the bar.
FOUR
I’ve told you,’ Detective Sergeant Jim Hatchley said to his new wife. ‘It’s not exactly
‘But what if I didn’t want a night out?’ Carol argued.
‘I’m buying,’ Hatchley announced, as if that was the end of it.
Carol sighed and opened the door. They were in the carpark at the back of the Lobster Inn, Redburn, about fifteen miles up the coast from their new home in Saltby Bay. The wind from the sea felt as icy as if it had come straight from the Arctic. The night was clear, the stars like bright chips of ice, and beyond the welcoming lights of the pub they could hear the wild crashing and rumbling of the sea. Carol shivered and pulled her scarf tight around her throat as they ran towards the back door.
Inside, the place was as cosy as could be. Christmas decorations hung from beams that looked like pieces of driftwood, smoothed and worn by years of exposure to the sea. The murmur of conversations and the hissing of pumps as pints were pulled were music to Hatchley’s ears. Even Carol, he noticed, seemed to mellow a bit once they’d got a drink and a nice corner table.
She unfastened her coat and he couldn’t help but look once again at the fine curve of her bosom, which stood out as she took off the coat. Her shoulder-length blonde hair was wavy now, after a perm, and Hatchley relished the memory of seeing it spread out on the pillow beside him that very morning. He couldn’t get enough of the voluptuous woman he now called his wife, and she seemed to feel the same way. His misbehaviour at the reception had soon been forgiven.
Carol spotted the way he was looking at her. She blushed, smiled and slapped him on the thigh. ‘Stop it, Jim.’
‘I weren’t doing anything.’ His eyes twinkled.
‘It’s what you were thinking. Anyway, tell me, what did Chief Inspector Banks say?’
Hatchley reached for a cigarette. ‘There’s this bloke called Claude Ivers lives just up the road from here, some sort of highbrow musician, and he parks his car at the back of the pub. Banks wants to know if he took it out at all on the evening of December twenty-second.’
‘Why can’t he find out for himself?’
Hatchley drank some more beer before answering. ‘He’s got other things to do. And it’d be a long way for him to come, especially in nasty weather like this. Besides, he’s the boss, he delegates.’
‘But still, he needn’t have asked you. He knows we’re supposed to be on our honeymoon.’
‘It’s more in the way of a favour, love. I suppose I could’ve said no.’
‘But you didn’t. You never do say no to a night out in a pub. He knows that.’
Hatchley put a hand as big as a ham on her knee. ‘I thought you’d be used to going with a copper by now, love.’
Carol pouted. ‘I am. It’s just… oh, drink your pint, you great lummox.’ She slapped him on the thigh.
Hatchley obliged and they forgot work for the next hour, chatting instead about their plans for the cottage and its small garden. Finally, at about five to eleven, their glasses only half full, Carol said, ‘There’s not a lot of time left, Jim, if you’ve got that little job to do.’
