‘You’re a policeman?’ The old woman did her best to look down at Sellers, even though she was several inches shorter than he was. She looked about seventy, had fluffy white hair, several prominent moles like lumps of brown putty stuck to her face, a beak of a nose, and about ten times more skin on her eyelids than a person could ever need; each one was like a small, fleshy concertina. ‘You want to know if anyone’s brought in a suit like this?’
‘That’s right.’
‘No. I’d have remembered. It’s got funny lapels.’ She glared at Sellers, daring him to disagree. ‘I don’t think our customers would like it at all.’
‘What about this woman? Do you remember seeing her in the last few weeks?’
‘Yes.’
‘Really?’ Sellers perked up. So far, the response had been a resounding ‘no’. He’d been to every dry-cleaner and charity shop in the Culver Valley and he might as well not have bothered. ‘Did she bring something in?’
‘No.’ The old lady leaned her beak towards him. ‘You asked if I remembered seeing her. I do. She often went into the picture-framer’s opposite. I saw her all the time, getting out of her car right outside the shop-she’d park on the double yellow line, plain as the nose on your face.’ Sellers tried very hard not to look at the nose on her face as she spoke, fearing he might laugh uncontrollably. ‘Usually she’d be carrying some dreadful picture-nothing more than splodges and scrawls, really, obviously by a child. Many a time I said to Mandy, “That woman ought to have her head examined.” I mean, Blu-Tacking them to the fridge door is one thing, but framing them… And why didn’t she wait and bring them in all at once? Didn’t she have anything better to do?’
‘Mandy? Is that your assistant?’ Sellers glanced in the direction of the beaded curtain, but there was no sign of the pretty young girl who’d served him. I’ve already got a pretty young girl, he reminded himself: Suki’s my pretty young girl.
‘If she had the time to take each squiggle of crayon to the framer’s individually then she had time to park her car properly,’ said the old woman. ‘No doubt she thought she’d only be nipping in and out, but all the same, there’s no excuse for parking on a double yellow line. We’ve all got to obey the rules, haven’t we? We can’t go making exceptions for ourselves whenever we feel like it.’
‘Right,’ said Sellers, because he could hardly say otherwise. And he agreed, by and large. Apart from where matters of the heart were concerned. The heart and other equally important organs.
‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’ Folds of skin rearranged themselves around the old woman’s eyes as she looked up at Sellers. ‘I saw it on the news.’
‘Right.’ And you’re still worried about her illegal parking habits? Get a life, you old bat.
‘What time is it?’
‘Nearly seven.’
‘You’d better make yourself scarce. Our evening event’s about to start.’
‘I’ve finished, anyway.’ Sellers eyed the three neat semicircular rows of grey plastic chairs in the middle of the shop. A wild time would be had by all, he didn’t think.
‘You should have come in the afternoon.’
‘I did. You were closed.’
‘Mandy was here all afternoon,’ the old woman contradicted him. ‘We’re open every weekday from nine thirty until five thirty. And, in addition, we have our evening events.’
Sellers nodded. So Mandy had snuck an afternoon off, had she? He was liking her more all the time. He wondered if she would be taking part in tonight’s event, and was about to ask what, precisely, Age Concern in Spilling had to offer him this evening. He came to his senses just in time, thanked the old woman for her help and left.
The Brown Cow pub, where he was due to meet Gibbs half an hour ago, was a five-minute walk away. As he strode along the High Street, smiling at any female with long legs and large breasts who looked as if she might be up for it, Sellers admitted to himself that he’d been thinking about other women a lot recently. Which had to mean he was a greedy bastard. He had two already; wasn’t that enough? And for how long would he be able to stop at thinking? How long before he gave in to the urge that was building inside him?
Sellers wasn’t good at denying himself things he wanted. He yielded to temptation instantly and gladly, and was proud of it. Much better to live for the moment and live it up than to be a puritan like Simon Waterhouse, avoiding anything that might prove to be pleasurable. Trouble was, Sellers didn’t want to be saddled with a third woman who would then feel as entitled to make demands as Stacey and Suki did. His third woman-not that he’d spent much time building a profile-should be obedient, virtually silent, and want nothing from him but sex. Mandy from Age Concern seemed unlikely to fit the bill. Keen as he was to find himself a new ride, Sellers drew the line at spending his evenings in charity shops, sitting on a grey plastic school-chair listening to some bearded vegan loser give a lecture on Africa.
He bumped into Gibbs in the pub doorway.
‘Thought you’d stood me up.’
‘Sorry. Took longer than I thought.’
‘Get a round in, then.’
Sellers ordered two pints of Timothy Taylor Landlord. At least Gibbs’ taste in beer hadn’t changed since his wedding. Everything else had, though Gibbs himself was either unaware of the changes or chose not to mention them. Sellers got his money ready, then glanced over to the small table in the corner to which Gibbs had retreated, never one to keep a mate company at the bar. He sat with two empty pint glasses in front of him, pushing a pool of spilled beer around the table-top with his index finger, trying to change its shape. Okay, so his behaviour was the same as ever but the way he looked… fucking hell, it was like being in the pub with the Madame Tussauds version of Christopher Gibbs-all bright and immaculate. What did Debbie do, put him in the washing machine?
The pub had changed too. Once it had boasted a no-smoking room; now the whole place was free of smoke. And the landlord had fallen for some wide-boy’s flannel about sandalwood logs and wouldn’t dream of putting ordinary wood on the fire any more, so the whole place was as fragrant as Gibbs’ shiny hair.
‘Nothing on the suit,’ said Sellers, putting the drinks down on the table. Deliberately, he trapped Gibbs’ finger under his pint glass before moving it and apologising.
‘I saw Norman this afternoon.’
‘Norman Bates? How’s his mother?’ Sellers quipped.
‘Norman Computer. Geraldine Bretherick’s laptop.’
‘Oh, aye?’
‘If she ordered GHB over the Internet, she did it from somewhere else.’
‘That’s possible. Maybe she went to an Internet café or used a friend’s computer.’ Though come to think of it there were no Internet cafés in Spilling and only one in Rawndesley. There were always the libraries, though.
Gibbs looked uneasy.
‘What?’ Sellers asked.
‘The diary file was created on Wednesday the eleventh of July this year, Norman said. Waterhouse-the arsehole-pointed out that the eleventh of July was the Brethericks’ ten-year wedding anniversary.’
‘Why’s he an arsehole?’ Sellers was confused.
‘He would be the one to spot it. In front of the Snowman.’
‘I wouldn’t have made the connection,’ said Sellers. ‘Water-house has got a good memory for dates.’
‘He never goes on any, that’s why. The original shagless wonder.’
‘So,’ said Sellers thoughtfully. ‘Geraldine put fake dates on the entries. Either that or she wrote them by hand on those dates, then typed them up over a year later.’
‘Why would she do that? And where’s the hard copy? It wasn’t in the house.’
‘She could have thrown it away, save on storage space.’
Gibbs snorted into his pint. ‘You saw the stately home. Could’ve stored a football team of elephants.’
‘All right, so she wrote the entries for the first time on Wednesday, July the eleventh, and put dates on them that were more than a year old. Why?’ Sellers started to answer his own question. ‘I suppose it could have been a way of saying to her husband, “I’ve felt like this for ages and you haven’t even noticed.” But then why only choose dates from a year ago? The first entry was dated 18 April 2006 and the last one 18 May 2006. Not much of a spread. Why didn’t she make the fake dates span three years instead of a month?’