Unlucky for Some by Jill McGown

Author:Jill McGown [McGown, Jill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780345476562
Publisher: Ballantine
Published: 2004-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

They had come into the incident room in dribs and drabs throughout the morning, but the trickle seemed to have dried up, and of the ones who had come in, two had asked what they were selling, and one had asked for directions. So far, none of them seemed to have had any useful information, but at this stage you never really knew what would turn out to be useful.

Gary was looking idly out of the plate-glass window at the casino opposite, wondering if Stephen Halliday really was the Anonymous Assassin. Apparently, he’d been working in Barton last night, and DI Finch had gone over to Stoke Weston to interview him yet again.

“Do you think anyone’s thought of relieving us for lunch, Sarge?” he asked.

“I doubt it,” said Hitchin. “I think it’ll be thee and me until further notice. That’s why I’ve brought sandwiches. See? Experience tells.”

“Do you mind if I go and—” Gary broke off as he saw a familiar figure passing the front of the building. She wore a man’s raincoat, two sizes too big, over a tweed skirt and a cotton shirt. She wore socks and boots. Her gray hair was swept back from her face, and fell straight to her shoulders. It was Dirty Gertie. She pushed a pram that contained her other clothes; unlike some, Gertie washed both herself and her clothes whenever and wherever she could, which made her nickname a little cruel, but Gary thought it had perhaps referred to her morals rather than her cleanliness. Not anymore—Gertie was too old to earn any money that way. But she didn’t beg; she lived on her old age pension. And she wasn’t, technically, homeless; she had an address to which she had occasionally been taken, but from which she always fled at the first opportunity.

“Gertie!” he called, getting up from the desk, and going out to catch her before she walked briskly past. Gertie always walked briskly, as though she had somewhere to go and despite being permanently sozzled. Drinking was so much a way of life that she needed alcohol to function.

She frowned, and pulled her head back slightly to look at him. “I know you,” she said.

“It’s Gary.”

“Gary,” she said, the frown deepening. “Gary.”

“Yeah—don’t you remember? PC49, you called me, but I think maybe you called everyone that. I used to give you your wake-up call. About two years ago?”

“Years,” she repeated, in a faraway tone. “Years mean nothing to me, Gary.”

She spoke like a dame of the British theater, with perfect vowels and no dropped consonants, and only the faintest slurring of speech, except now and then, when a word proved to be too difficult.

Her address was a posh one, Gary knew; she came from a long line of wealthy aristocrats. Apparently, when she had first appeared in Barton about ten years ago and had told stories of her father being the younger son of an earl, everyone had assumed that she was fantasizing, but she wasn’t. And the family, regardless of its makeup at any given time, always took her in if she was taken back to them.

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