Evans Above by Rhys Bowen Read Free Book Online

then, this other man?” he asked.
    â€œStewart Potts,” Sergeant Watkins said with only the ghost of a smile.

    â€œStew Potts? It’s a wonder he didn’t change it. I bet he got teased about it at school,” Evan commented. “Don’t tell me his wife’s name’s Honey?”
    â€œGreta,” Sergeant Watkins said. “Sounds foreign. And she didn’t sound too upset over the phone. Of course it takes awhile to sink in sometimes, doesn’t it?”
    â€œYes,” Evan said. “It does.”
    â€œWell, I suppose we’d better go and take your major to identify the body,” Sergeant Watkins said. “We might as well get this over with as quickly as possible.”
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    Major Anderson’s face was set grimly as he followed Watkins and Evan down to the morgue. Evan noticed that he swallowed hard as the attendant pulled out the drawer containing the body.
    â€œYes,” Major Anderson said after he had stared long and hard at the body. “I think that’s the man who was staying at the Inn. Of course, I can’t be one hundred percent sure in the circumstances.”
    â€œQuite,” Sergeant Watkins said, looking down at the battered and bruised face.
    â€œBut definitely same build, same hair color. Poor chap,” he added. “Rotten way to end, what?”
    â€œDid you know he was a policeman, Major Anderson?” Sergeant Watkins asked as the attendant shut the drawer again.
    â€œWe found out when the constable and I went through his things,” Major Anderson said.
    â€œSo he hadn’t mentioned it before?”
    â€œNo, why on earth should he?” Major Anderson said sharply. He glanced at his watch. “If we’re through here, I really should be getting back. I’ve got important guests arriving at three and I should be there to welcome them.”

    He sat drumming his fingers on his knee and staring out of the window in stony silence as Evan drove him home.
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    â€œThat’s him all right,” Greta Potts said as Evan showed her the photo taken on the mountain. It hadn’t been easy for her to identify the corpse. His face had been pretty well smashed by the fall and she couldn’t bring herself to take a good look. “I’d know those shoes anywhere,” she added in disgust. “I was that mad at him when he came home with them. Almost a hundred pounds for shoes, I said to him when I found the box in the closet. Me and the children could have bought ourselves enough clothes for the summer with that money. But he said he had to have them—I didn’t expect him to go barefoot, did I?” Her accent was an interesting mix of foreign overlaid with the flat vowel sounds of Liverpool. “That was Stew all over,” she added. “He liked to treat himself well.”
    She looked at Evan with her lip curled in a sneer. She was light-haired in a Germanic sort of way with sharp angular features, and she wore far too much makeup. She was dressed in a shiny neon green blouse over a tight, short black skirt and she wore very high heels. As she spoke she got out a packet of cigarettes and nervously tapped one into her hand. “You don’t mind, do you?” she stated, rather than asked. Evan didn’t imagine she’d been very easy to live with.
    â€œSo he didn’t say anything to you about going to the mountains?” Evan asked gently.
    â€œHe never told me where he was going. If he said he was going to climb a mountain, I’d have thought that was just another excuse.”
    â€œExcuse for what?”
    The lip curled again. “My Stewart fancied himself as a ladies’ man. You know how sailors have a girl in every port?
Salesmen are the same. He had a big territory. Sometimes he was gone all week. Who knows what he got up to? I should never have married him and come to this godforsaken country.”
    â€œWhere did you two meet?” Evan