Dark Mirror by Barry Maitland Read Free Book Online

and stretched the muscles of his shoulders, and she decided to change the subject.
    ‘How’s Suzanne?’ Kathy wasn’t quite sure what the appropriate word was to describe Brock’s friend.
Lover
seemed intrusive,
companion
made her sound like an elderly helper. They were a couple, their relationship recently recovered from a shaky patch, and not helped, in Kathy’s opinion, by the fact that they lived fifty miles apart; Suzanne ran an antiques business in Battle, near the Channel coast. Kathy sometimes wondered if Brock, on the other hand, believed the distance was the reason their relationship had survived.
    ‘Very well. Very busy of course, with the shop and the grandchildren.’
    ‘She’s still looking after them?’
    ‘Oh yes. There’s Ginny in the shop, of course, and she does a bit of babysitting, but we don’t see enough of each other. Hopefully we’ll get together this weekend. The kids are great though, growing up fast.’
    He gave a little smile to himself, scratching the side of his beard as he recalled some memory, and Kathy thought what an excellent grandfather he would have made.
    ‘Do you mind if I ask you something?’ she said.
    He raised a quizzical eyebrow.
    ‘When we were stuck in that cottage with Spider Roach . . .’
    Brock nodded, remembering the climax of their last big case.
    ‘. . . he said that he’d been responsible for your wife leaving you, to protect the baby she was carrying, because she was afraid of what he might do.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And when we first worked together, you mentioned you had a son in Canada.’
    ‘Maybe.’
    ‘You haven’t kept in touch?’
    He drew in a deep breath. ‘I’m still here, in the same place, doing the same job as when she left. If he wanted to find me it wouldn’t be difficult. I’ve left it to him.’
    ‘So you don’t know if he’s married? If he has a family of his own?’
    Brock frowned, looked down at the remains of pizza on the table, and Kathy realised she’d gone too far and felt sad. She shivered. ‘Sorry. It’s cold down here.’
    ‘Mm, and since we’re in a ruminative mood, have you been keeping tabs on Tom Reeves?’
    She fiddled with her empty bottle. ‘I heard he’s living in France somewhere. Calvi, wherever that is.’
    ‘How is he, do you know?’
    DI Tom Reeves, Special Branch, had also been involved in their last case, and, more personally, with Kathy.
    She shook her head. ‘No, we’re not in contact.’
    ‘He resigned of course. A clean break, according to HR. I imagine that’s how he wants it. Well . . .’ He got stiffly to his feet. ‘Time to go home.’

five
    T hings looked a little brighter the following day. When Kathy got to West End Central she found that the inspector had rustled up another five people from different teams within the borough, and the group that he and Kathy briefed that morning looked almost adequate. They shuffled out armed with clipboards, photographs and report sheets, and the inspector took Pip away to work with the local Rainbow Coordinator on the CCTV footage, while Kathy headed back to the London Library, where she’d arranged to interview everyone that Gael Rayner had been able to track down as having been there on Tuesday when Marion had collapsed.
    It was a slow job. One of the regular readers, a Mr Vujkovic, said that he had picked up Marion’s belongings from the floor, including her phone, which he insisted no one had opened. The others had little to add, and no one apart from Nigel Ogilvie had seen Marion eating her lunch in the square. But several had noticedher out there on other days, and one woman had sat with her for a while, on the same bench, about a week beforehand. She was certain that Marion had been drinking a bottle of juice, because Marion had commented that she usually carried one with her, in case she needed a sugar fix for her diabetes. The woman described the orange bottle and yellow plastic cap, but had no idea where Marion might have bought it.