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I half-drained my glass. “Does she have an alibi?”

  “Neither she nor John Farrow have alibis that can be verified for the whole period in question. But there’s nothing to tie either of them to the murder.” He picked up his wine glass. “Still, it’s early days.”

  I went to the drinks cabinet and fetched another bottle of Chablis.

  “Hey, be careful with that. You had most of the last bottle.”

  “That’s okay.” I uncorked the bottle. “You had most of the food, so we’re quits.” I poured myself a large glass.

  I offered Nathan a refill, but he put his hand over his glass and shook his head.

  “I’ll come down to the station tomorrow,” I said, “and look through the files.”

  “In that case, let’s forget about work. We’re supposed to be taking a break.” He raised his glass.

  “I’m not complaining.” I chinked his glass with my own and took a swig before putting it down and grabbing the music centre remote from the coffee table.

  “Might as well make myself comfortable,” I said, and swung around, slung my legs over the arm of the couch and lay back with my head in Nathan’s lap.

  “Much better,” I said, beaming up at him. I pointed the remote at the music centre and hit the play button. A moment later, the dancing melodies and melancholic chords of Tonbieger’s ’Strandgut’ filled the room.

  Nathan grinned down at me and the left side of his cheek dimpled. “I’m glad we had a chance to do this. It’s been a bit strained recently. Pressure of work I guess.”

  And the pressure of having a quick-tempered and obtuse partner who didn’t always stop to think before he opened his mouth. But I kept that to myself. I reached up and stroked his rough stubbled cheek and gazed into those molten green eyes. A rush of emotion swept through me, a surge of elation.

  “I know I can be a pain at times,” I said, “but I do love you. Truly. I know how lucky I am to have found you again.”

  His eyes clouded over and for a moment he seemed to be somewhere else. And then, “It was always you. You were always going to be the right choice.”

  The right choice? Had he ever considered an alternative? There was still so much I didn’t know about him. All those missing years. Those missing wasted years. It was all too easy now to dwell on those happy early days when we still had our lives spread out before us and forget that, once we had parted ways, we had taken such vastly different paths through life, made different choices and lived through experiences that would never be part of our shared memories. And how I regretted it.

  As I gazed into his eyes, he leaned down and pressed his lips to mine. I responded eagerly, returning his kiss, searching his mouth with my tongue, my body aflame.

  He pulled away, breathing hard. “When is Rusty due back?”

  I didn’t need to ask what was on his mind. It was signalled plainly enough in his rapidly beating heart, in the glow of sweat on his forehead, in his husky uneven voice.

  Groaning, I sat up again, turned to face him and pressed a hand to his chest. “Sorry to disappoint you but he didn’t say. He could be back anytime.”

  Nathan matched my groan with one of his own.

  “I could always come back to Charwell with you,” I said, more in hope than expectation. He was still being evasive about my spending time at his place on a regular basis. I suspected he saw it as a step on the way to our living together. And he still wasn’t ready for that.

  He grinned. “That does rather take the spontaneity out of it. And besides, I’ll probably be tired by the time we get back. And I have to be up at the crack of dawn if I’m to get through my work schedule.”

  Excuses all. But I was prepared to let it go.

  “In that case, I’ll have to make do with the wine.” I reached for the bottle and topped my glass up to the brim.

  “Easy with that.” He covered his own glass with a hand to signal he’d had enough.

  “I’m not the one who has to drive home,” I countered.

  We passed the rest of the evening pleasantly enough, filling the time with gossip about local happenings and finishing off the wine. I was already feeling woozy from the effects of drink but, what the hell, I opened another bottle anyway. Might as well make a night of it. I’d hoped Nathan might say something that explained the mysterious phone call I’d overhead, but he didn’t, and I had no intention of raising the subject myself. I had to learn to trust him.

  At ten-thirty, he glanced down at his watch. Rusty still hadn’t returned, but the hour was late and Nathan pleaded the need to set off for home.

  I rose when he did but my head swam and I fell back onto the couch. “Oops, I seem to have overdone the wine.” I laughed.

  “I did tell you not to open another bottle but when do you ever listen to me?” He hooked a hand under my arm and helped me to my feet. “Bed for you I think.”

  I laughed again and, swaying slightly, steadied myself against him, my hand on his shoulder. Trying unsuccessfully not to slur, I said, “I suspect I’m going to have a hangover tomorrow.”

  He grunted his disapproval and, taking me by the arm, guided me in the direction of the stairs. “I’ll make sure you get upstairs safely before I leave.”

  “I’m sure I can manage,” I said, falling back against him.

  “Yeah, right.”

  With one hand under my arm and the other against my back, he manhandled me up the upstairs to the bedroom and dropped me with very little ceremony onto the bed. The room was moving around me.

  “And when you wake up in the morning feeling like crap, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  I answered with a groan and tried to concentrate on his features as they swam in and out of focus.

  He glared down at me and, as he turned to go, paused, bent down, and picked something up from the floor. I screwed up my eyes to get a good look at it. A small yellow plastic card.

  He turned it over in his hand. “You dropped one of your cards,” he said, scanning it. “It was under the edge of the bed. A store card for ...” He stopped abruptly, stared at it intently, and then looked down at me, his jaw set firm, his lips pressed into a hard line. Finally, “It’s made out to Rusty Naylor.”

  “What?” I pushed myself up to a sitting position and tried to focus. “He must have dropped it.”

  “In your bedroom?”

  I shook my head, tried to clear my mind. “I must have picked it up by accident thinking it was mine.”

  He nodded briskly and dropped the card onto the top of the bedside cabinet.

  Drunk I might be but I wasn’t so far gone I couldn’t understand how this might look. I stared directly into his face, forced my eyes to focus, and said as slowly and clearly as I could, “Rusty has never been in my bedroom.”

  He stared down at me without speaking for several moments and then he leaned down and brushed my lips with his. “Okay,” he said. And then, “I’ll leave you to get some sleep.” And he was gone.

  I flopped back down onto the bed and let the room spin around me.

  If I had been anyone else, Nathan finding that card would have been no big deal, my explanation accepted for what it was, a reasonable account of what happened. But I wasn’t anyone else. I was me, the man who had betrayed his lover, who had let him down, whose dissolute past had caught up with him and had lost him the trust of the man he loved.

  And no matter how many times he told me we had to trust each other, and no matter his seemingly ready acceptance of my explanation, I still couldn’t shake of those feelings of guilt or convince myself that he had learned to trust me. One thing was for sure, if I wanted to make this relationship work, I still had a long way to go.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The raucous banter of a couple of electricians and the incessant whine of a power drill were the last things I needed first thing in the morning. This morning in particular. My head hurt, and each step down the stairs set my brain to thumping against the sides of my skull.

  No sympathy fr
om Rusty either.

  “You look like shit,” he said with a cheery grin. “Good night was it?”

  Unlike me, he looked hale and hearty and ready to face the world, already groomed and dressed for another hot summer’s day in shorts and a light cotton shirt.

  I glowered at him, pulled my dressing gown around me, and shuffled across the living room floor. “Who’s idea was it to let the chuckle brothers in?”

  Out of earshot, on the far side of the room, one of the two electricians, his back to me, was pinning cable around the frame of the door leading out to the garden. He was whistling a merry tune that set my head spinning. The other, an older man with grey hair, and a ponytail that would have looked better on the pony, poked his head around the door from outside and turned off his drill long enough to shout, “Any chance of another brew?” Catching sight of me, he added, “I hope that’s a hangover you have there, pal. I’d hate to think you look like that every day.”

  His colleague joined in the general laughter.

  I groaned and shuffled my way into the kitchen. Rusty followed me in and leaned against the table, a mug of tea in his hand and a wide-open smile on his face. “Your guy was the one who wanted a security system putting in. Blame him.”

  The sound of the drill started up again, and I winced. “Well, you can attend to their needs. I’m not sure I’m up to service with a smile this morning.” I glanced over at him, puzzled by his sudden rise in spirits. “You’re in a better mood today. Did you win the lottery or what?”

  “Much better than that.” Still grinning, he threw the dregs of his tea into the sink and, after dropping his mug into the washing-up bowl, filled the electric kettle and put it on to boil while he set out four clean mugs. “I’ll make you one too. You look like you could use a good brew.”

  I nodded. “So? What’s better than winning the lottery?” I propped myself up against the worktop and folded my arms.

  He opened the caddy and spooned some tea into the pot. “I found me some entertaining company last night.” The grin widened even more.

  Great. So while he was out being ‘entertained’, I had foregone that particular pleasure for fear of being interrupted by his imminent return.

  “We really must compare schedules in future.”

  “What?” He poured boiling water into the teapot and stirred it.

  “Never mind.” I crossed over to him as he filled the mugs with tea, helped myself to one of them, and took up my position by the worktop again. “I just hope she gave you a good time.” And as an afterthought, “Or was it a he?”

  He laughed as he took up two of the remaining mugs. “This time it was a she. Though it’s nice to have the choice of course.”

  He carried the mugs through to the sparkies and, much to my joy, the sound of the drilling stopped. A moment later he was back.

  I dug into the pocket of my dressing gown, produced his store card, and handed it to him. “This is yours,” I said.

  He took it from me and stared down at it, his brows knitted in puzzlement. “Where did you find it?”

  “I picked it up by mistake.”

  “That’s a stroke of luck,” he said, “I thought I’d lost it some time ago.”

  A stroke of luck. That was a laugh. The only luck it had brought me was to stir up doubts and misgivings about my relationship with Nathan once more.

  I groaned inwardly, suddenly reminded I had promised to meet him down at the station that morning to review the recent interviews. Given my current delicate constitution, I didn’t much relish leaving the house that day, but I guessed I’d just have to grit my teeth and get on with it.

  I excused myself to Rusty and headed back towards the stairs, tea in hand. “I’ll leave you to deal with the gruesome twosome,” I said. “I need to go out.” I made my way, as slowly as possible, to the bathroom.

  Once I was showered, shaved and dressed, I checked my reflection in the bathroom mirror and, satisfied that I could just about pass as human, I headed out to the Elan. By the time I reached the station, the hammering in my head had subsided to a dull ache, a sign I was probably going to live after all. I ignored the desk sergeant’s pitying look as he called through to Lowe, and was soon seated at a desk in Lowe’s office, a pile of files, a monitor screen, and a glass of fizzing Alka-Seltzer in front of me.

  Learning of my over-indulgence of the night before, Lowe added to the growing list of wisecracks. “I know a good cure for hangovers,” he said. “Stay drunk.” And chortling at his own feeble joke, he headed on out for his morning patrol.

  I groaned and drained the glass, pushed it to one side, pushed the files to the other side, and turned on the monitor.

  Soon, despite the troublesome headache, I was engrossed in the visual display of John Farrow’s emotional turmoil.

  He was a rake of a man, all bone and skin with a long narrow face and tufts of wispy grey hair scattered around his balding pate. Despite the summer heat of the previous few days, he had chosen to wear a dark grey suit with a plain white shirt and sober dark-blue tie. Whatever it was Candy Bayliss had seen in him to mark him out as a potential husband, it certainly wasn’t his charismatic appeal.

  What did stand out, however, was his posture. He sat straight, rigid and almost inflexible. It was the posture you would see in an ex-serviceman. But no matter his outward appearance, the emotional rage inside was betrayed by the many small movements that gave him away. The constant clenching and unclenching of his fists when he spoke of his loss, the way he gripped the arms of his chair when explaining how much she meant to him, the many times he tugged at his collar. The more I watched and listened, the more I understood that this was a man struggling to suppress his grief.

  So too, when he spoke of his relationship with his son, the way his voice hardened when he told of the enmity between son and fiancée, the way he pushed hard against the back of his chair, jaw set firm, when he derided his son for the failure he thought him to be.

  This was a family where bitterness and hate and disappointment ran deep.

  In contrast, Carol Farrow’s interview was a more relaxed affair. Under questioning, she appeared confident and assured, no doubt the result of familiarity with police procedures. As an ex-policewoman, she had the advantage of knowing what to expect and would feel more at home in these surroundings, albeit on the other side of an interview.

  She was attractive in a no-nonsense down-to-earth sort of way; natural auburn hair, sprinkled with grey, cut in a practical bob; minimal makeup and a simple gold chain around her neck matched by a pair of gold earrings with inset amber stones. She wore a simple cornflower-yellow shift tied at the waist with a plaited rope belt in a darker ochre shade, and open sandals.

  This was not a woman to be easily fazed or caught off guard. I noted the giveaways in the body language when she calmly lied about calling her husband at work, the fiddling with the earrings at the precise moment of the lie, the subsequent pacifying action when she pressed a hand to her throat. But, other than that, there was nothing in either her statement or her demeanour to suggest she was lying about her own movements over the past few days. What did strike me was how loyal she was to her husband. Not someone I would have thought warranted such loyalty. But then there’s no accounting for taste.

  I was getting towards the end of Carol’s interview when the door opened behind me. I turned, expecting to see Lowe returned from his patrol. It was Nathan.

  The stony reception I’d expected wasn’t forthcoming. Instead, his usual stern expression melted into one of compassionate concern, and he said, “Are you okay? You look like—”

  I cut him off. “You don’t need to say it. I feel like it too.”

  He crossed over to the desk and dropped into the chair at my side, the look of concern still etched on his face. “We can always leave this till later if you like.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m done here. I was just about to drive home.”

  “You didn’t drive over?” His tone had h
ardened.

  “Sure I did.”

  “That wasn’t very clever, Mikey. There’s probably still enough alcohol in your blood to put you over the limit.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “No, you won’t. And you’re not driving back.” He rose from his seat. “Come on. I’ll give you a lift.”

  I tried to protest, but he was having none of it. In the end, I dutifully followed him out of the door.

  “You can give me your thoughts on the interviews on the way back,” he said as we reached the car park.

  “And do me a favour,” I said. “Next time I try to open a third bottle of wine, take it off me and give me a good slapping instead.”

  He snorted. “If I’d thought that was ever going to work, I’d have done it a long time ago.” He opened the doors of the Astra.

  I answered with a grin as we both climbed into the car. Instead of the morose distant Nathan I’d expected to greet me after the excesses of the previous night and his less than enthusiastic acceptance of my denial of Rusty’s presence in my bedroom, he was in a surprisingly affable mood. Looks like I’d misjudged him after all. Something I was grateful for.

  Not that my good mood was to last long. The call that came through on the radio as we pulled out of the car park soon put paid to that.

  Nathan answered the call, dropped the receiver back in its cradle, and swung the Astra around. “Here we go again,” he said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Marcus Farrow, it seemed, had never learned to leave well enough alone. Here he was, yet again, the centre of a public debacle at the Fairview. This time in the bar, with Rusty.

  By the time we reached them, the argument was going full throttle. Rusty was backed up against the bar, a younger woman, blonde and buxom, seated on the bar stool at his side, cowering. Marcus Farrow, standing toe to toe with him, chin thrust forward, was shouting into his face, with Carol Farrow standing behind her husband, a restraining hand on his shoulder.

  Several people hurried from the bar as we arrived, eager to get away. Those that remained watched the scene with grim fascination from a safe distance, seated at surrounding tables.