Crowner and Justice by Barrie Roberts

Author:Barrie Roberts [Roberts, Barrie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2015-08-10T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

We had the row in the car on the way home. I don’t like rowing with Sheila, partly because I usually lose and partly because my ex-wife could take a difference of opinion about a TV programme and parlay it into an epic row, which would run for weeks.

I suppose I started it.

‘You shouldn’t have told her that Sean was murdered,’ I complained, when we were only just out of Tom’s drive.

‘Why not?’

‘Because he wasn’t.’

‘Was too,’ she said.

‘What do you mean? I thought we agreed that he died by accident?’ I protested.

‘No, cobber. You and John Parry and the Doc agreed that he died by accident, but not one of you can explain how that accident happened.’

‘Oh, come on,’ I said. ‘He and Sylvia were making love in the car. We know that, right?’

‘Right,’ she agreed.

‘It was a chilly evening. Perhaps they had the engine running, to keep warm.’

‘They were teenagers,’ snorted Sheila. ‘They didn’t need to run the motor to keep warm. They’ll do it in three feet of snow when the urge moves them. Anyway, she never said the engine was running.’

‘We never asked her,’ I pointed out.

‘You never asked her, Sherlock — so we don’t know.’

‘OK, so maybe they didn’t. But, anyway, she leaves to catch her bus and shuts the garage door behind her...’

‘Yair,’ Sheila interrupted, ‘and an experienced mechanic — an experienced mechanic who’s worked in that garage with the door shut — sits in his car and turns on the engine to keep himself warm and accidentally kills himself!’

‘Right!’ I said. ‘That’s exactly it. He’s relaxed after sex. The cold air gets to him and he switches on the engine. Then he just sits there and passes out. It’s odourless, you know, carbon monoxide. That’s why so many people get lumbered by it.’

‘You,’ she said, ‘are lumbered with a theory that won’t stand up, and you know it. Sean McBride was murdered. Sylvia knows it.’

‘She thinks she knows it,’ I complained. ‘But that’s because you told her so.’

‘I told her so because it’s bloody true, but she already knew it. She just didn’t know that she knew it.’

‘That’s about as clear as the philosophical mixture of guesswork and mathematics you were trying on John Parry the other night,’ I said.

‘If,’ she said, ‘you had been listening to what Sylvia Wellington said, and remembering what we know about Sean’s death, you might have caught on.’

I didn’t understand that, so I changed my attack.

‘Don’t you think that you should have kept your opinions from the girl?’ I asked. ‘She’s screwed up enough about Sean’s death, anyway.’

‘Don’t come the raw prawn with me, cobber! It was you who thought she’d be better off knowing that he didn’t top himself. Now she knows that she wasn’t responsible in any way, that it wasn’t even a stupid accident. Now she knows that some bastard killed her bloke and she can get angry. That’s got to be better for her.’

‘If it’s true,’ I said.

‘Of course it’s bloody true!’ she snapped.

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