There's a thousand possible explanations."
"I suppose so," I admitted, but I knew different. It had all started at that party to watch the Apollo 13 mission on television. Kingston had been awful to Melissa, Janet had told us, and chased another girl.
She'd been that other girl, as sure as Satan made female Morris dancers. Why should Melissa have all the fun? she'd thought, and Melissa had reacted by taking a tilt at Mo, which was what Kingston had intended all along. I'd been to a few parties like that myself. Then it was back to the bed sit and the Leonard Cohen records.
"It was a long time ago," Dave said. "She was young. We all make mistakes."
Daniel came out of the open doorway, saying: "I've logged off, Uncle Charlie. Thanks for letting me play on it. We ought to be off, Dad, before it gets dark."
"Kids," Dave muttered to me, standing up. "Who'd have 'em?"
I watched them pedal away in an impromptu race, and thought: I would.
Chapter 12
Thursday morning Manchester airport told me that Delta flight number DL064 from Atlanta was delayed two hours, which suited me just fine. I had long sessions on the phone with Les Isles and Tregellis, and a progress meeting with Mr. Wood. I was working for three bosses and it was hard to juggle things so everyone was equally informed and no feelings were hurt. Fortunately, Tregellis was a long way away, Les trusted me and regarded me as an extension of his team, and Gilbert gave me a free hand, so I was able to do what I wanted.
One of our motorcyclists was waiting for me when I returned from Gilbert's office. He was nursing two videos. "Ah, well done," I said as I took them from him.
"My pleasure, sir," he replied with a grin.
"Nice little ride, was it?"
"Smashing." His helmet and leathers were shimmering with the carcasses of dead flies.
"Well, take it steady, and thanks."
The old idea of an identity parade, with the suspect lined up alongside seven other short, bald-headed men, is rapidly fading. They were always a pain to organise and expensive in time and money. Video film and links are taking over. We can use recordings of the suspect, mixed in with images of similar looking characters off the files, and let the victim examine them at his or her leisure. They don't even have to be in the same city. The security cameras in Kendal nick had captured Kingston's likeness on tape during his two visits, helped by a little careful manipulating of his position. The ID team had produced a video for me showing several stills of him, together with an assortment of similarly built policemen in civvies, visiting solicitors, and various friends, relatives and villains. I posted one straight off to Tregellis, via the internal mail, and watched the other in the main office. It was good.
I'd intended to take Annette with me to Manchester because I wanted her to be our contact with Melissa and her boyfriend, but Gilbert had asked her to produce some figures for a survey about overtime and sick leave.
The Home Secretary had been given warning of a question he was about to be asked in Parliament, so everything had to stop until we had an answer. The sun was still shining, but the temperature had dropped by quite a bit. It was bright and pleasant, rather than oppressive. I gave myself plenty of time and stopped for a chicken burger at the services. As usual, when I used the loo I found that someone with pubic alopecia had beaten me to it.
I was still early. I called in at the Immigration office and they confirmed that Melissa was on the flight, which was a pleasant surprise. Piers had told me that she didn't seem to realise that once she had left the USA it was unlikely that they'd let her back in. He hadn't tipped her off about this small point and we were looking forward to breaking it to her after she'd given us what she wanted.
I wandered up to the spectator's gallery to watch the big jets taking off, and caught myself humming "In the Early Morning Rain'. There's a shop up there that sells aviation magazines, spotters' guides and plastic models of famous crashes. Hanging in a corner was a sheepskin flying jacket, circa WWII, marked down from 300 to 199. Wow! I thought, this'll work wonders for my image. I'd wear it to the office tomorrow, regardless of the weather.
But the sleeves were miles too short. The rest of it fitted, but I held my arms forward to demonstrate the problem and exchanged disappointed smiles with the sales lady. I went back to Arrivals and stood with the blank-faced straggle of people waiting for flight DL064.
Shifty-looking taxi drivers held boards under their arms with scrawled names across them, and a well-dressed elderly man in a chauffeur's cap stood patiently to attention. Once he'd been the terror of the parade ground, and now he was someone's lackey. That'd be me soon, I thought.
The rest were bleary-eyed sons-in-law or parents, come to pick up their loved ones after yet another holiday of a lifetime.
I'd have recognised her at half a mile, but she still took my breath away. I stepped forward in front of them, and the immigration official shadowing them gave me a nod and peeled off. "Miss Youngman?" I said.
"The former Miss Youngman," she said, almost smiling. "Now I'm Mrs.
Slade. Meet my husband of twenty-four hours, Jade Slade." "How ya doin'?" he said.
"Fine," I lied. "DI Priest." Shit fuck bugger, I thought. She's done us.
The extravagances of the seventies had been toned down, and of course, our tastes have developed over the years. Her hair was red again, cropped short and carelessly styled, but nothing that you wouldn't see any day in any small town. She wore a nose ring and extravagant eye make-up not heavy lashes and shadow, but paint and speckles all around them with black lipstick. Underneath the muck was one of those faces that can launch a young girl to fame and fortune or blight her life with a string of wrong men because the decent ones don't think they stand a chance. She was beautiful, and ageing well, and I could understand anybody falling for her. Nancy Spungeon had become Zandra Rhodes.
He was something else. Short, pot-bellied, with one of those hillbilly beards that looks as if it's just been shampooed. He wore faded denims held up by a broad belt heavily inlaid with silver and turquoise. She was in a brown leather suit. I led them to my car and told them about the Station Hotel, in Heckley, where we'd booked them a room for the week.
"Do they have a pool?" he asked.
I apologised for the lack of a pool.
On the motorway I said: "I understand you write poetry, Mr. Slade."
"That's right," he replied.
"Will I have heard any?"
"Do you read redneck poetry?"
"No."
"Then you won't."
I told Melissa that she was booked into Heckley General Hospital tomorrow at about four thirty, to have her teeth fixed. Then, if she was up to it, we'd do a taped interview with her the following day, Saturday. All leave was cancelled for the first team. She mumbled responses in the right places and we rode the rest of the way in silence. He said: "Jeez!" under his breath when he saw the Station Hotel, and that was the sum total of our conversation. I didn't mind;
I had no desire to be on first-name terms with either of them. I wrote Annette's name and number on a page of hotel notepaper and left them to unpack.
Back at the nick I rang Tregellis but had to settle for Piers. "The eagle has landed," I said. We talked for a while about tactics and when he'd hung up I rang Les Isles and had the same conversation all over again.
Agent Mike Kaprowski wasn't in his office but a colleague introduced himself and told me that he was familiar with the case. "I just met Melissa Youngman off the plane," I told him, 'except that she's not called Youngman any more because she's got herself married. To this poet feller, Jade Slade."
"Aw, shit!" he exclaimed. "You know what that means?"