Blood Never Dies by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles Read Free Book Online Page B

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, seemed present in the set of her shoulders.
    ‘Everything all right?’ he said quietly, not to startle her.
    She jerked anyway, coming back from a long way away, half-turned her head to him, then stood up to kiss him hello. ‘George was restless. Couldn’t get to sleep for the heat, poor lamb. I got him off eventually – he’s quiet now.’
    It struck him that the answer, like the embrace, was an evasion. Freeing herself from him she moved past him into the house. ‘Hard day? Shall I get you a drink? Beer? Gin and tonic?’
    ‘I’ll have a cold beer, thanks,’ he said, making to follow her.
    She heard the movement without seeing it and said, her back still to him, ‘No, no, you sit down and watch the sunset. I’ll bring it out to you.’
    She seemed gone rather a long time. He sat, pulled off his tie and undid his top button, and still had time to remove his shoes and socks before she came back. His feet wriggled gratefully in the open air like puppies shown affection at last. The concrete felt delightfully cold to his soles after a day shut inside. The air was just beginning to cool off and the night was pleasingly quiet with so many families away and the traffic at summer neaps.
    ‘Here we are,’ she said, appearing with a tray. ‘Supper’s cold, so we can take our time.’ She had brought a small bowl of cashew nuts as well, cold beer for him, a glass of wine for her. She put everything on the small table in front of him, and sat beside him – a seamless performance, except that she hadn’t once met his eyes since he got home.
    He took a long drink from his glass first, then put it down and said, ‘What’s the matter?’
    ‘Matter?’ she said vaguely.
    ‘You seem out of sorts.’
    ‘I told you, I had trouble with George. It’s tiring when you can’t do anything for them. How was your day?’
    Oh well, he thought. If she doesn’t want to say . . . So he told her about the case.
    ‘And you think it’s murder?’ she said when he’d finished.
    ‘I’m sure of it. Just instinct, really.’
    ‘Instinct can be the reaction to a lot of little clues collected subliminally,’ she said.
    ‘Is that you comforting me?’ he said, amused.
    ‘Just telling you I trust your instinct more than Jim’s,’ she said with the first smile of the evening. ‘So what do you think happened?’
    ‘God, I don’t know! But it has a nasty look about it. Too tidy and organized. People aren’t generally that good at murder.’ He finished the beer. ‘Not that I’m advocating the frenzied attack, you understand. That’s nasty, too.’
    ‘But a bit more human?’ she suggested.
    He looked at her. ‘Animals just follow instinct. It’s only humans who perform calculated acts of vileness.’
    There was nothing to say to that, and he realized he had cut conversation off at the pass. And yet he could feel his twanging nerves begin to settle just at being here, and with her. He had a moment of intense sympathy for all the policemen (some in his own team) who couldn’t go home after a beast of a day and relax with the one they loved. The Job took a lot out of you, and if you couldn’t refill the tanks in your off time . . . Well, they all knew burnt-out cops.
    They sat on a while in silence, but he could feel her easing, too. He ate the last cashew and stood up. ‘Shall we have something to eat?’
    They sat opposite each other at the kitchen table and ate the chicken, bacon and avocado salad, and finished the wine she had opened, and though they talked, it was about humdrum, household things. He had hoped she would open up but she didn’t; and, loving her, he let her alone. She would tell him in her own time, he supposed; though he hated to think of her having a troubled mind. But probably she felt the same about him, and there was nothing she could do to help him with his.
    Freddie Cameron rang Slider in the morning, sounding fresh and restored. ‘The couple next door have taken the children out for