Upon a Dark Night (Peter Diamond Book 5) by Lovesey Peter

Author:Lovesey, Peter [Lovesey, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2005-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

Twenty-one

It was “Be Nice to Julie” day. “In case you’re waiting for me, I’m afraid I’ve got to work through,” he thoughtfully told her. “But you can go off as soon as you like. Take your time. You’ve earned it twice over.”

Julie suppressed a smile. She knew why the old gannet couldn’t face lunch. She’d heard about his belated arrival at the mortuary only to discover that the autopsy on Hildegarde Henkel had been rescheduled, forcing him to watch the whole thing.

“So don’t let me stop you, if you want to go down to the . . .”

he said, the voice trailing off, unable to articulate the word “canteen.”

She told him she’d eaten earlier. She asked if there was anything new on the case.

“Depends which case you mean.” The awkwardness between them was not only due to his nausea.

She said, not without irony, “I was under the impression we were working on Hildegarde Henkel.”

“No progress there.”

“Nothing came out of the postmortem?”

“Nothing we don’t know already.”

He was unwilling to say more than the minimum and she had no desire to pump him for information. People of his rank were supposed to communicate.

She waited.

Finally he felt compelled to speak. “We ought to put things right between us, Julie. Some straight-talking. That wasn’t very professional yesterday.”

“Do you mean your sexist remark, or my reaction to it?”

“Sexist, was it?”

“No more than usual. The difference was that you made it personal.”

“I can’t even remember what I said.”

“I’ll tell you, then,” she said. “I made some sympathetic remark about the dead woman and you said I was being a shade too sisterly for your taste, which I thought was bloody mean considering how much I take from you without bitching.”

“Hold on,” he said. “It was a light-hearted comment. I wasn’t attacking you.”

“It was sarcasm.”

“Yes, and I know what they say about that, but I thought you had enough of a sense of humor to take it with a smile.”

“Spare me that old line, Mr. Diamond.”

He gave a twitchy smile. “Look, it was only because you’re not one of those die-hard feminists that I made the remark. You call it sarcastic: I meant it to be ironic. I didn’t expect to touch a raw nerve. You and I know better than to fall out over a word, Julie.”

She said, “We’d have fallen out long before this if I’d objected to words. It’s the assumption behind them. You make snide remarks about my so-called feminist opinions as if I ride a broomstick and put curses on men. I’m another human being doing a job. I don’t ask for any more consideration than the men get. It’s about being treated as one of the human race instead of a lesser species.”

“I’ve never thought of you as lesser anything,” he told her.

She rolled her eyes upward and said nothing.

“Look at me,” Diamond went on. “Would a fat, arrogant git like this choose anyone less than the best for a deputy? I rate you, Julie. I’m not going to turn

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.