Murder in the Meadow by Faith Martin

Author:Faith Martin [MARTIN, FAITH]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joffe Books crime, thriller and mystery
Published: 2018-01-07T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Keith Barrington stared at Gavin Moreland, and could actually feel the colour leaving his face. His cheeks felt suddenly cold, but that was nothing compared to the clammy hand that was twisting around inside his stomach.

Gavin, a twenty-two-year-old recent graduate from the London School of Economics, twisted his square-faced visage into a spiteful grin. ‘Yeah, I thought that might get a reaction. At last. Ever since I found you in that disgusting fleapit you call a bedsit, you’ve been about as responsive as an old tabby cat on Prozac.’ His striking hazel eyes, slightly up-tilted at the end, suddenly shimmered with unshed tears. His voice, upper-crust and just slightly on the nasal side, trembled with tension. ‘Anybody else would be flattered to be chased. But oh no, not you. It’s been nothing but moan, moan, moan, ever since I got here.’

‘That’s not true,’ Keith mumbled, glancing around nervously. The café was a cross between an old-fashioned tea shop and a health food bar, and most of its clientele were young, working, upwardly mobile types, who were taking no notice of the two young men at all. They’d taken a pavement table, but the striped blue-and-white awning kept the sun off, and if everybody wanted to pretend they were on a street café in Paris, Keith didn’t feel like arguing. Besides, he had his back to the street and the worst of the petrol fumes.

Gavin, seeing his unease, smiled grimly again. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said bitterly — and quietly. ‘I know enough not to embarrass you in public. I won’t suddenly reach across and squeeze your hand.’

Keith flushed at the palpable hit. His being in the closet was something they were never going to agree on. Back in the capital it hadn’t been so much of an issue, in their social life at least. They’d been together for nearly three years now, and had always been able to find out-of-the-way pubs, clubs and meeting places.

At first, Gavin, the son of a wealthy businessman, had found the red-haired, working-class copper something of an amusement. It had made him laugh, especially when Keith came home in uniform, to tease and taunt. But he’d never expected the entertainment to last for long though. His previous boyfriends had lasted anywhere from a month to, at a real pinch, six. So he’d been frankly astonished when he’d found himself unable to give up his painfully prosaic, working-class, repressed PC Plod. Worse was to follow. Gavin found himself actually in love.

It was embarrassing.

All his friends were ‘out’ and being with someone so firmly in the closet gave him a headache. He loathed Keith’s job, and was always taking potshots at his so-called ‘superior’ officers, and sniping whenever he had to arrest a black shoplifter or stop an Asian for speeding. The fact that Keith wasn’t in the least a racist only made his vitriol more vicious.

Keith’s final falling-out with his sergeant, which had led to him almost being dismissed, threatened to be the final straw. Oh,

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