Read Online After Effects by Catherine Aird - Free Book Online Page A

clinic.’
    â€˜For lunch?’ Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby had not eaten yet.
    â€˜I understand,’ she said, ‘it was to discuss the progress of the Cardigan Protocol over a meal.’
    â€˜All right. A working lunch.’
    The secretary indicated an empty in-tray on her desk. ‘He always took the computer printout of the results home with him at night.’
    Sloan didn’t like computers.
    â€˜You see,’ she hesitated, ‘he’s always very careful about confidentiality.’
    â€˜Yes, miss.’ Sloan could have wished, though, that Dr Meggie wasn’t being a quite so secretive about his own whereabouts today. He, Sloan, had promised an old gardening friend that he would drive over to Cullingoak tomorrow to admire his friend’s new greenhouse rose.
    The rose was called ‘Celeste’. It was in full flower now and it wasn’t even the middle of May yet, and its scent was said to be quite memorable.
    At the present moment the disappearance of Dr Paul Meggie had a less attractive smell and distinct overtones of the Marie Celeste; which was something very different.
    He made a note of the doctor’s home address. ‘Come along, Crosby.’
    Just as a single twist of a kaleidoscope changes the picture but keeps the same constituents, so the death that day of old Abel Granger at Willow End Farm, Larking, brought about a new arrangement in the dispositions of his immediate family.
    Old Mrs Granger, who had encountered death before, folded her husband’s hands across his still chest, closed his eyes and drew her best Egyptian cotton sheet over the face that had been her constant companion for the best part of fifty years. Simon, the elder son, went off to telephone Dr Angus Browne and Morton & Sons, the Berebury undertakers, while the daughter tried to persuade her mother to rest.
    Christopher Granger, the younger son, to whom death so far had been a stranger, drew on his boots, whistled for his dog and went outside. It was more breathing space than fresh air that he felt he needed but the land makes its own demands on those who live by it and he set out to make a conscientious—if rather overdue—survey of the family’s acres. There were some bullocks being fattened in the Thither field which always needed a weather eye kept on them. If they could find a way out of their pasture, then find it they would.
    The further he walked the better Christopher began to feel. He’d have to face his mother later on, of course. He half hoped she wouldn’t break down when she saw him and he half hoped she would—he didn’t really know what to hope. What he did know was that he wasn’t in any hurry to go back indoors. His sister would be bustling about and Simon would be busy doing all the right things. All he wanted to do was to have a quiet think.
    He called his dog and decided to walk home along the lower—the longer—path, the one that ran alongside the stream and through the willow copse.
    That was when he saw the car.
    It was on the track that led to the gate and he thought that he could hear the engine running.
    He quickened his pace. Someone coming up to the farm—the undertaker, perhaps—it looked a smart enough car to be the undertaker’s—they made a lot more money than farmers did these days—must have taken the wrong track at the fork. A lot of drivers did that if they didn’t know the way to the farmhouse. He’d go down and open the gate. You couldn’t turn a car there otherwise; not with the stream on one side and a drainage leat on the other.
    As he got nearer he was more sure still that he could hear the car’s engine running so he waved to the driver. He must have only just come that way.
    â€˜Wait there,’ he called out. ‘I’ll have to open the gate for you.’
    The man at the wheel made no response. He seemed to be leaning forward