‘What are you going to do?’
She thought for a moment and mustered a sardonic grin. ‘Let you get back home to your chief inspector.’
‘Is that what you want?’
She took a stride towards him and dropped a kiss on his cheek. Her lips were chilly, but for a moment he felt her slim, hard body press against him, before she withdrew.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. Thanks for the lift, I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Showdown time.
Hannah was checking her lipstick in front of the hall mirror as Marc banged the door shut. She was due to see Daniel in half an hour, and she didn’t want to keep him waiting. But she didn’t mean to delay questioning Marc until she arrived back from The Tickled Trout.
‘I didn’t expect you to be this late.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t realise I needed to seek permission.’
She groaned inwardly. Sounded like he’d had a bad day at the bookshop. Maybe he’d heard about Stuart Wagg. He couldn’t afford to lose too many good customers.
‘There’s food in the kitchen.’
‘Thanks.’ He eyed her suspiciously. ‘Going out?’
‘Sorry, I didn’t realise I needed to seek permission.’
‘Ouch.’ For an instant, she glimpsed the grin that had attracted her so much the first time they met, all those years ago. But it faded as fast as the gold and silver cascades of fire they’d watched at Crag Gill, and was replaced by an expression both watchful and sardonic. ‘Meeting a source?’
‘Not exactly.’ She was about to tell him she would be seeing Daniel Kind, but something stopped her. Maybe she just didn’t want the conversation to digress. ‘You know Stuart Wagg is dead?’
‘Uh-huh.’ He sighed. ‘So, two people I know have died in mysterious circumstances.’
He’d gifted her with an open goal. ‘Three people, surely?’
‘Three?’
‘There’s Bethany Friend as well.’
‘What makes you think I know Bethany?’
‘Do you deny it?’
‘Deny what?’
‘Deny knowing Bethany?’
She recognised his expression: she’d seen it a thousand times on the faces of politicians playing for time while they groped for a form of words that avoided the lie direct.
‘No, I never have denied it.’
‘You never said she worked for you. Not at the time of her death, not even when we discussed her on New Year’s Eve, when we walked to the Serpent Pool. Are you telling me it slipped your mind?’
‘I was sad about what happened to her, it depressed me. She was a nice girl. I preferred to remember her as she was, not dwell on her death.’
‘For God’s sake, Marc! I’m reinvestigating her death, and it was asking too much to expect you to tell me what you knew about her?’
‘Nothing to tell.’
‘She fancied you.’
He gritted his teeth. ‘You have been doing your homework.’
‘Did you shag her?’
‘No!’
They stared at each other. His gaze didn’t waver. She decided that probably he was telling the truth.
‘OK. So what did you make of her?’
‘What else do you want to know? She was a sweet girl and I don’t have a clue either why she might commit suicide or why someone might kill her. Satisfied?’
‘Why weren’t you straight with me?’
He wagged a forefinger at her. ‘Don’t push your luck. Everyone has secrets, even you.’
Her spine chilled. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Where are you off to this evening? You never wear lipstick to office briefings. Anybody would think you were scuttling off for a tryst with some man.’
Hannah strangled a cry of anger and snatched her jacket from the stand near the door. The zip stuck, and as she fumbled, it broke. Bloody typical. Everything was falling apart.
She took in a gulp of air. ‘I’m meeting Daniel Kind, if you want to know. It’s no secret. He and his sister found Stuart Wagg’s body.’
‘Don’t try to tell me you’re investigating Stuart’s death.’
It felt as though he’d kneed her in her weakest part, but she fought for calm. ‘There may be a connection between the deaths of Saffell and Wagg, and what happened to Bethany Friend.’
‘A woman who died six years ago?’ His voice rose. He was a skilled exponent at phoney outrage and used it as a weapon whenever they had a row, but she didn’t think his astonishment was feigned.
‘She worked for both Saffell and Wagg. Did she sleep with them, too?’
‘Don’t be stupid. Bethany was confused about her own sexuality, she wasn’t some sort of slapper. It’s madness to think anything could link those three deaths.’
Wanda Saffel is one link, she thought. And there are bound to be others. But she buttoned her mouth. She’d already said more than she should. The snag was, he took her silence as a sign she had a chink in her armour. He was determined to seize back the initiative.
‘Go on, Hannah. Admit it.’
Her gaze settled on the hall ceiling. It still needed plastering. The way she and Marc were heading, it would be a job for some other couple.
‘Admit what?’
‘This is your second cosy get-together with Daniel Kind inside twenty-four hours. What did he want to talk about last night? Not prophesying Stuart’s death, I bet.’
Shit, shit, shit. The spasm of guilt was like stomach cramps. For a moment she wished the ground would open up beneath her. Why hadn’t she come clean about last night, when there was nothing to hide? She couldn’t guess how he’d found out. Maybe one of his customers had spotted Daniel and her at The Tickled Trout.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she muttered.
‘Touched a nerve, have I? Of course, Daniel is Ben’s son.’
She spun round. ‘Meaning what?’
‘You had the hots for Ben.’
‘We were colleagues, it never went further than that. Now I’m going out. Not sure when I’ll be back.’
‘Take as long as you like.’ She knotted the scarf in silence. Resisting the temptation to wrap it around his neck.
‘Oh, and Hannah?’
‘What?’
‘Your lipstick smudged. Better wipe up if you want to look your best for Daniel Kind.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The route from Undercrag to The Tickled Trout took Hannah past a trendy bar at the end of a terrace row. Outside it were roadworks and a temporary traffic control, and as she waited an age for the lights to change, a couple of people spilt out of the bar. A man and a woman, arm in arm. Their unsteadiness suggested they’d each had a skinful. As they sank into an embrace, Hannah thought they looked familiar, even though she couldn’t make out their faces. The woman put her back to a brick wall as the man pressed up against her. His hands moved behind her, as if to lift her skirt. Hannah stared with shameless curiosity. Sometimes a detective must become a voyeur.
A furious tooting from the next car in the queue jerked her attention away from the lovers. The lights had changed to green. As she wavered, reluctant to move off, the light switched to red again. She imagined a cry of disgust from the driver in the car behind, and raised a hand in apology, but it was too dark for him to see.
At the sound of the horn, the couple sprang apart. Perhaps they thought the salvo was aimed at them. In a moment, they vanished into a shadowy passage that ran behind the terrace. For a split second, their faces shone in the glare of light from the street lamp. Hannah’s instinct was spot on.
Nathan Clare and Wanda Saffell were back together again.
She put her foot down the moment she escaped the thirty-mile limit, but arrived at The Tickled Trout ten minutes later than promised. The car park was crowded, but she saw Daniel’s Audi and squeezed into the marked space next to it. As she raced across the asphalt to the pub’s front entrance, raucous cheering broke out from the locals’ end of the lounge bar. Nothing personaclass="underline" this was quiz night, and the home team had taken the lead with two rounds to go.
Daniel leant against the counter, scanning the crowd. Her heart lurched as their eyes met. Absurd: the last thing she needed was to start behaving like a seventeen-year-old on a date. She pushed through the mass of drinkers, envying Daniel’s cool. Nobody had the right to look so laid-back, hours after discovering a tortured corpse. Like his father, he took disasters in his stride. He’d lined up two glasses of Chablis for them. His knack of reading her mind meant she must take care; she’d die of embarrassment if he could read her most private thoughts.