The Wood Beyond by Reginald Hill

Author:Reginald Hill [Reginald Hill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007386772
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 1996-08-17T04:00:00+00:00

iii

Wield usually got on well with women. After they got over the twin barriers of his looks and his profession, they found his presence so unthreatening that even the most nervous were able to relax, though only the most perceptive, such as Ellie Pascoe, got beyond the face and the job into the penetralium of his mystery, and worked out the cause of their comfort was his gayness. Like sometimes cancels out like, however, and it soon became apparent he wasn’t going to get anything out of the first two ANIMA women he interviewed, Meg Jenkins and Donna Linsey, who ran a pet shop and their lives together. He doubted if they’d have sold him a goldfish and was glad to put their musty, musky premises behind him.

The next three were much more unbending but not to any great effect other than a consensus that what Wendy Walker did outside the group was a mystery. This in itself was not uninteresting, in that to keep yourself to yourself within any group of Yorkshire women required an act of will beyond the reach of all but the most dedicated. But Wield had been too long at his last to cobble significance out of secrecy. He knew better than most that the habit of discretion was harder to divest than the reasons for it. Like the old adage said, once a nun, always a nun.

Annabel Jacklin happily was as unnunlike as you can get without starring in The Sound of Music. This was Jacksie, the buxom blonde whose descent into the crater had prefaced the discovery of the buried bones. Previously Wield had only glimpsed her sodden wet, mud streaked, and deeply shocked. Fully recovered from her experience, she now made the most of a not-too-distant resemblance both in looks and bounce to Marilyn Monroe at her peak in Some Like It Hot, a movie which an old partner of Wield’s had once made him sit through three times. This was not an experience likely to be repeated in the company of Edwin Digweed who was fervent in his belief that the only good films ever made were square-shaped, grainy, and usually silent, which left Wield nothing to do but shrug and say, ‘Nobody’s perfect.’

But any hint of flirtatious flaunt at finding a strange man on her doorstep vanished the moment Wield identified the reason for his visit.

‘I nearly fainted when I realized who it was they’d got in Intensive Care,’ she said. ‘First time it’s happened to me, someone I knew personally I mean, and it’s a real shock, you know. You’re in a kind of different mode when you’re at work, sort of detached – you’ve got to be, in our job – and seeing someone you know sort of jolts you back to what you are normally, do you know what I mean?’

‘Yes,’ said Wield. ‘Same in my line.’

‘I can imagine. How is she, do you know? It’s my day off but I was going to call round and see how she was doing.

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