A Clear Conscience by Frances Fyfield Read Free Book Online

wrong.’
    â€˜Yes,’ she said patiently. ‘I might, you might, we might. And so might an inflexible set of rules. We don’t have a policy written in stone for other kinds of reluctant witnesses; why have one for victimised women? We just have to listen to the police.’
    â€˜Helen, we’re supposed to be independent of police opinion.’ Redwood regarded her warily, waiting to see if she would take such remarks personally. He had a deep suspicion of all policemen and supposed her own view was jaundiced as a result of her misguided, miraculously long-running affair with one of them. Redwood was waiting for Miss West to recover from her strange infatuation with Superintendent Bailey with the same weary patience he had experienced when his daughter was recovering from measles. Partnerships like that were not against the rules, but they were not comfortably within them either.
    â€˜We can’t be independent of their judgement when they’ve met the victim and we haven’t,’ she was saying calmly. ‘Besides, there’s hardly much scope for bribery and corruption in a Domestic Violence Unit.’
    He was silent, then shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I really don’t know how it happens. I thought this was the age of equality. If I hit my wife, it would be the very last thing I’d do.’
    Visualising the bulk of Mrs Redwood, Helen privately agreed.
    â€˜Think about the policy,’ Redwood urged as he found himself, without knowing quite how, being shown out like a visiting window-cleaner.
    â€˜Sir,’ she said sweetly, ‘I think of nothing else.’
    T hesun had flattened itself behind their own building. New offices, nasty furnishings which would not outlive the lease. Men like Redwood promulgated bureaucratic nonsense in the hope of saving their seats from the encroachment of younger, even greyer men. Helen felt a quiet despair, suppressed by the dancing visions of yellow paint now hidden in the bottom drawer along with a supply of make-up, biscuits past their sell-by date, books loaned or borrowed and the ashtray Redwood had failed to discover. Sunshine reflected off the glass frontage of the offices across the way, obscuring her daily surreptitious examination of their lives. She buried her head in work.
    T he light faded, gracefully. The out-tray grew. Shouts of laughter echoed in the corridor outside. Someone ran past her door, yelling, ‘Wait for me!’ in a long and eerie wail. Someone else tripped on the carpet, and then there was only the disturbing descent of silence, penetrating slowly until, with a stab of disappointment, she looked up through the window to find that all the workers in the opposite block had gone. Alas, no chance this evening to see who had lingered and finally left with whom; no chance of an update on the fate of the opposite office Lothario.
    The phone bleeped. A new phone, anchored to the revolving desk.
    â€˜Go home, Helen West. Go home now. Stop whatever you are doing and go.’
    Her heart stopped for a moment: the silence of the building was suddenly oppressive, until the distant sound of traffic restored sanity.
    â€˜Emily, you scared me. What time is it?’
    â€˜Half six, you ninny. Don’t you have a watch, for Gawd’s sake?’
    Somehow those strident patrician tones never struck a discord: hers was a voice inspiring pleasure and confidence; artlessly kind Emily, enviably efficient and, in truth, a bit of a bully.
    â€˜Two things. First, I left the number of the cleaning lady on your answerphone, but I doubted you’d ever get around to organising a meeting, so I did. You’re halfway down the fifty-nine bus route between where she lives and here, and she says it’s no bother. OK? Be with you in an hour, so get your skates on.’ Skates, bikes, Emily drew metaphors from all the impedimenta of her children. ‘And the other thing is, she’s here