On Beulah Height

‘So what kind was it?’

‘Saab 900 cabriolet.’

‘Did you notice the number?’

‘No, but it was the latest model.’

That was that. She thanked the boy and his mother, who had been holding the twins apart like a pair of over-psyched contenders in a title fight, and now she continued dragging them towards the school entrance.

‘Clever,’ said Mrs Shimmings.

‘Lucky,’ said Novello. ‘I could have got a boy whose sole obsession was football. So why did Mrs K dump the kids on Gran all day yesterday, I wonder? Nothing to do with the case, just idle curiosity.’

‘Boyfriend,’ said Mrs Shimmings laconically. ‘Kendrick took off last year. Joy’s got herself a man, but Simon hates him. And you can’t have good sex with a protest meeting going on outside your bedroom door, can you?’

‘Never tried it,’ said Novello with a grin.

She went back to the Hall. Still no sign of Wield. No reply yet from Control to her query about the Discovery. She ought to give someone what she’d got, but she couldn’t see anyone she altogether trusted to make sure the credit stayed with herself. Many of her male colleagues, even those not quite so chauvinist as to think a woman’s place was in the kitchen, had no problem with thinking it was in the background. What man, complimented on his appearance, says, ‘My wife chose the tie, ironed the suit, washed the shirt and starched the collar and cuffs?’

Anyway, she was hot, she was on a roll. Two down, one to go.

She went in search of Geoff Draycott of Wornock Farm who’d seen the blue estate speeding up the Highcross Moor road.

FOUR

There were two men scrubbing away at the BENNY’S BACK! graffiti on the railway bridge as Pascoe drove beneath it.

They didn’t seem to be making much progress. Perhaps they would scrub and scrub till finally they wore out the solid stonework and nothing remained but the red letters hanging in the air.

An idle fancy, or a symptom? Reading the Dendale file earlier that morning, before his mind took refuge in sleep, he had found himself reluctant to engage with the facts as presented, or indeed any facts as presented, preferring to slip sideways into surreal imaginings. There had been a time when life seemed a smooth learning curve, a steady progress from childish frivolity through youthful impetuosity to mature certainty, which would occur somewhere in early middle age, whenever that was, but you’d recognize it by waking one morning and being aware that you’d stopped feeling nervous about making after-dinner speeches, you really believed the political opinions you aired at dinner parties, you no longer felt impelled to tie your left shoelace before your right to avoid bad luck, and you didn’t have to read the instruction book every time you programmed the video.

Well, that was out, that was a sunlit plateau he knew now he was never going to reach. This, for what it was worth, was it

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