Just Desserts by J. M. Gregson Read Free Book Online

looked to him to be able to cope with anything. But the right words wouldn’t come and he said nothing. It was consoling, in a way, that even the man he had come to regard as unshakeable could be affected by something like this.
    Barry Hooper had the sense to say very little during the rest of their break. He was glad he had brought the
Sun
in with him, and he pretended now to immerse himself in its contents. When Fitch eventually stood up, he rose with him, obediently and automatically.
    â€˜Stay where you are, lad.’ Brian Fitch realized how rasping his tone sounded, and made an effort to be friendly. ‘You’re entitled to another ten minutes yet. Stay here and make us another cup of tea, and I’ll go and check on our fire. Just to make sure it’s safe, you see.’
    He wished he hadn’t added the last phrase. It hung unnecessary and artificial in the cold, still air.
    He went outside and over to the fire, which had almost burnt itself out. A thin line of white smoke rose straight and unruffled above the grey-white ashes. He raked in a few stray strands of unburned material from around the edges, checked that Barry had not followed him out, and examined carefully the patch which had been at the centre of his fierce blaze.
    It was satisfactory. There was no sign of the trousers or the shirt he had put there as the fire developed.

Five
    L ambert took Detective Sergeant Bert Hook with him to visit the widow of the dead man.
    It was always difficult, the interview with the spouse of the deceased. You had to be respectful of their grief and try not to intrude more than was strictly necessary into the domestic trauma which follows a violent death. Yet the spouse was always the first suspect to be considered in a suspicious death: the statistics dictated that it should be so.
    Bert Hook with his stolid, village-bobby exterior, his immediate response to what people were feeling, his anxiety to prevent unnecessary suffering, was a reassuring companion in circumstances like this. The fact that his calm exterior concealed a keen intelligence, a profound experience of human folly, a sharp observation of behaviour, was a bonus of quite another kind. Hook often caught people off their guard.
    Lambert had learned long ago not to trust appearances in the aftermath of death. Some people controlled grief better than others. Those who appeared controlled, sometimes even uncaring, could dissolve into paroxysms of anguish when they were afforded the privacy they needed for their mourning.
    Mrs Liza Nayland seemed to be in control of whatever emotions she felt. She wore no make-up and her fair colouring should have readily revealed any extremes of grief. She was forty-four years old, dark blonde, blue eyed, and no doubt in happier circumstances an attractive woman. Now her face was pale and drawn, showing the lines of middle age which cosmetics might have concealed. The skin around her eyes was puffy with the tears she had shed through the night.
    She took them into the lounge of a comfortable detached house, offered them refreshment as if they had been respectable middle-class visitors, not detectives. I’m almost like the vicar, thought Bert Hook, wondering what his boisterous thirteen-year-old twin sons would make of that image. Bert Hook was a Barnardo’s boy; he knew a lot about vicars and well-meaning middle-class ladies: they had seemed in his adolescence to be deciding the path of his life for him.
    â€˜How long had you been married to Mr Nayland?’ said Lambert, when he had got the preliminary apologies for intruding at a time like this out of the way.
    â€˜Ten years. It was a second marriage, for both of us.’ She said it as though it was an unpleasant fact that had best be got out of the way at the outset.
    â€˜Was he in touch with his first wife?’
    â€˜No. Not for years. There were no children from the marriage and the settlement was agreed at the time of the divorce, so