The Wychford Murders by Paula Gosling

Author:Paula Gosling
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK
Published: 2018-06-11T12:37:29+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

Jennifer and Luke dined on roast beef and memories, with local crime forgotten in the pleasure of catching up on the life of someone who mattered – on both sides. However they had come to be what they were, what roads taken, what joys and sadnesses encountered on the way, they were pleased with the result and the moment they were sharing, too jealous of the time to waste it.

Carefully, they juggled the silences, keeping them high and light so neither could tilt them with a wrong reference, an unfortunate allusion, and drop reality back into their evening.

They were clever people. They managed the trick for quite a while. But Luke faltered, in the end, his duty too much a part of the man he was to be ignored. Their after-dinner walk in the crisp autumn evening inevitably led down the High Street and on to the river path. At first Jennifer didn’t notice, too enchanted was she with Luke’s soft laughter and tall elegant presence. Alone, and away from the investigation, she found he had retained his wicked sense of humour, as well as the athletic grace of his adolescence, so he moved easily beside her, gesturing widely to outline the shadowy figure of a pickpocket he’d encountered in his first months on the force.

‘He said I was interfering with his right to work,’ Luke chuckled. ‘Said I was an example of the Establishment’s determination to stamp out the liberties of the common man. It was quite a speech.’

‘And what did you say?’

‘I said, “I agree with you totally, but you’re still nicked, because that’s my work, and I have a right to pursue it.” He suggested that we had reached a stalemate and wondered if we could perhaps come to some amicable arrangement.’

‘And did you?’

‘I’ve always been a reasonable man. I said I’d let him escort me back to the station, and then he could let me book him. Seemed a fair division of labour. He took exception. And about four inches of skin off my left shin. I still have the scar.’

‘You’re a hard man,’ Jennifer laughed.

‘So they say. I don’t think so, myself, but then I wouldn’t. Paddy says I’m like a steam-roller, full of hot air and inexorable, so I flatten them all in the end,’

‘And do you still cry at sad movies?’

He stopped and looked at her, smiling in the faint light that came over the rail of Martyr’s Bridge on to the towpath where they stood. ‘Yes,’ he said, softly. ‘I still do. Know where to stick the pin, don’t you?’ He lifted her chin with a finger and kissed her, once for yesterday, and again for today, and then, harder, for tomorrow. ‘Damn you, Jenny,’ he whispered into her hair. ‘Why couldn’t you have grown up ugly like you promised?’

Stunned by the warmth and sudden hunger of his mouth, she could only stammer, ‘Did I promise that?’

‘Yes. Up on the hill, one summer afternoon, the week before your family moved away.

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