‘Do you have any idea who the killer is?’ Conran asked. Susan shook her head.

‘And what about your boss?’

‘I’m never sure I know what he thinks,’ Susan said. She laughed. ‘He’s an odd one is Chief Inspector Banks. I sometimes wonder how he gets the job done at all. He likes to take his time, and he seems so sensitive to other people and their feelings. Even criminals, I’ll bet.’ She finished her drink.

‘You make him sound like a wimp,’ Conran said, ‘but I doubt very much that he is.’

‘Oh no, he’s not a wimp. He’s…’

‘Sympathetic?’

‘More like empathetic, compassionate. It’s hard to explain. It doesn’t stop him from wanting to see criminals punished. He can be tough, even cruel, if he has to be. I just get the impression he’d rather do things in the gentlest way.’

‘You’re more of a pragmatist, are you?’

Susan wasn’t sure if he was making fun of her or not. It was the same feeling she often had with Philip Richmond. Her eyes narrowed. ‘I believe in getting the job done, yes. Emotions can get in the way if you let them.’

‘And you wouldn’t?’

‘I’d try not to.’

‘Another drink?’ Conran asked.

‘Go on, then,’ she said. ‘On two conditions.’

‘What are they?’

‘One, I’m buying. Two, no more shop talk. From either of us.’

Conran laughed. ‘It’s a deal.’

Susan picked up her handbag and went to the bar.

FOUR

I’ve told you,’ Detective Sergeant Jim Hatchley said to his new wife. ‘It’s not exactly work. You ought to know me better than that, lass. Look at it as a night out.’

‘But what if I didn’t want a night out?’ Carol argued.

‘I’m buying,’ Hatchley announced, as if that was the end of it.

Carol sighed and opened the door. They were in the carpark at the back of the Lobster Inn, Redburn, about fifteen miles up the coast from their new home in Saltby Bay. The wind from the sea felt as icy as if it had come straight from the Arctic. The night was clear, the stars like bright chips of ice, and beyond the welcoming lights of the pub they could hear the wild crashing and rumbling of the sea. Carol shivered and pulled her scarf tight around her throat as they ran towards the back door.

Inside, the place was as cosy as could be. Christmas decorations hung from beams that looked like pieces of driftwood, smoothed and worn by years of exposure to the sea. The murmur of conversations and the hissing of pumps as pints were pulled were music to Hatchley’s ears. Even Carol, he noticed, seemed to mellow a bit once they’d got a drink and a nice corner table.

She unfastened her coat and he couldn’t help but look once again at the fine curve of her bosom, which stood out as she took off the coat. Her shoulder-length blonde hair was wavy now, after a perm, and Hatchley relished the memory of seeing it spread out on the pillow beside him that very morning. He couldn’t get enough of the voluptuous woman he now called his wife, and she seemed to feel the same way. His misbehaviour at the reception had soon been forgiven.

Carol spotted the way he was looking at her. She blushed, smiled and slapped him on the thigh. ‘Stop it, Jim.’

‘I weren’t doing anything.’ His eyes twinkled.

‘It’s what you were thinking. Anyway, tell me, what did Chief Inspector Banks say?’

Hatchley reached for a cigarette. ‘There’s this bloke called Claude Ivers lives just up the road from here, some sort of highbrow musician, and he parks his car at the back of the pub. Banks wants to know if he took it out at all on the evening of December twenty-second.’

‘Why can’t he find out for himself?’

Hatchley drank some more beer before answering. ‘He’s got other things to do. And it’d be a long way for him to come, especially in nasty weather like this. Besides, he’s the boss, he delegates.’

‘But still, he needn’t have asked you. He knows we’re supposed to be on our honeymoon.’

‘It’s more in the way of a favour, love. I suppose I could’ve said no.’

‘But you didn’t. You never do say no to a night out in a pub. He knows that.’

Hatchley put a hand as big as a ham on her knee. ‘I thought you’d be used to going with a copper by now, love.’

Carol pouted. ‘I am. It’s just… oh, drink your pint, you great lummox.’ She slapped him on the thigh.

Hatchley obliged and they forgot work for the next hour, chatting instead about their plans for the cottage and its small garden. Finally, at about five to eleven, their glasses only half full, Carol said, ‘There’s not a lot of time left, Jim, if you’ve got that little job to do.’

Hatchley looked at his watch. ‘Plenty of time. Relax, love.’

‘But it’s nearly eleven. You’ve not even gone up for a refill. That’s not like you.’

‘Trust me.’

‘Well, you might not want another, though that’s a new one on me, but I do.’

‘Fine.’ Hatchley muttered something about nagging wives and went to the bar. He came back with a pint for himself and a gin and tonic for Carol.

‘I hope it’s not all going to be like this,’ she said when he sat down again.

‘Like what?’

‘Work. Our honeymoon.’

‘It’s one-off job, I’ve told you,’ Hatchley replied. He drained about half his pint in one go. ‘Hard work, but someone has to do it.’ He belched and reached for another cigarette.

At about twenty past eleven Carol suggested that if he wasn’t going to do anything they should go home. Hatchley told her to look around.

‘What do you see?’ he asked when she’d looked.

‘A pub. What else?’

‘Nay, lass, tha’ll never make a detective. Look again.’

Carol looked again. There were still about a dozen people in the pub, most of them drinking and nobody showing any signs of hurrying.

‘What time is it?’ Hatchley asked her.

‘Nearly half past eleven.’

‘Any towels over the pumps?’

‘What? Oh…’ She looked. ‘No. I see what you mean.’

‘I had a word with young Barraclough, the local lad at Saltby Bay. He’s heard about this place and he’s told me all about the landlord. Trust me.’ Hatchley put a sausage finger to the side of his nose and ambled over to the bar.

‘Pint of bitter and a gin and tonic, please,’ he said to the landlord, who refilled the glass without looking up and took Carol’s tumbler over to the optic.

‘Open late, I see,’ Hatchley said.

‘Aye.’

‘I do so enjoy a pub with flexible opening hours. Village bobby here?’

The landlord scowled and twitched his head towards the table by the fire.

‘That’s him?’ said Hatchley. ‘Just the fellow I want to see.’ He paid the landlord, then went and put the drinks down at their table. ‘Won’t be a minute, love,’ he said to Carol, and walked over to the table by the fire.

Three men sat there playing cards, all of them in their late forties in varying degrees of obesity, baldness or greying hair.

‘Police?’ Hatchley asked.

One of the men, sturdy, with a broad, flat nose and glassy, fish-like eyes, looked up. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘What if I am?’

‘A minute of your time?’ Hatchley gestured to the table where Carol sat nursing her gin and tonic.

The man sighed and shook his head at his mates. ‘A policeman’s lot…’ he said. They laughed.

‘What is it?’ he grunted when they’d sat down at Hatchley’s table.

‘I didn’t want to talk in front of your mates,’ Hatchley began. ‘Might be a bit embarrassing. Anyways, I take it you’re the local bobby?’

‘That I am. Constable Kendal, at your service. If you get to the bloody point, that is.’

‘Aye,’ said Hatchley, tapping a cigarette on the side of his package. ‘Well, that’s just it. Ciggie?’

‘Hmph. Don’t mind if I do.’

Hatchley gave him a cigarette and lit it for him. ‘Yon landlord seems a bit of a miserable bugger. I’ve heard he’s a tight-lipped one, too.’

‘Ollie?’ Kendal laughed. ‘Tight as a Scotsman’s sphincter. Why? What’s it to you?’