been lucky she could have got her into the cupboard in a few seconds, but then the waitress had appeared and spoiled that little plan.
Bridger beamed with such sudden amiability at WPC Frayling that she looked over her shoulder expecting to see someone else. She had never seen him so pleased.
‘We’ll have her charged within twenty-four hours,’ he told her.
‘You’re very confident,’ she said. ‘Think you’ve got the evidence, then?’
Bridger performed a drum roll on the table with his fingers. ‘Oh, we’ll get the evidence. I know she’s guilty. I’m a lateral thinker, and I’m talking with ten years’ experience here. Experience and instinct.’
Yes, he had a good feeling about it all. He did not go on to explain to Frayling that although his instincts had let him down in the past, this was different. It was different because this time, and for the first time, Detective Chief Inspector Poole was in complete agreement with his version of the probable course of events.
CHAPTER 9
I VAN AND H ILARY Golightly opened the front door together, looking slightly frightened in the yellow light of the hall. It was raining again, and Ivan stepped aside to usher Andrew in under the dark and dripping doorway. They walked ahead of him down the narrow hall.
Their sitting room had the beige, slept-in look of early Habitat and Andrew noticed as he sat down that there had been more recent and thoughtful ethnic additions to the tweedy three-piece suite: pink and green cotton throws concealing, Andrew was sure, the worst stains on the elderly armchairs. On the back wall was the ubiquitous pine storage system containing a collection of books, plants, tapes, mugs, plates, telephone, pens and other domestic paraphernalia which suggested that much of the couple’s lives were lived in this room. There was original art on the white walls, mainly unframed, abstract oils of which one could imagine people saying that they ‘had something’ and leaving unanswered the question of what. Art postcards in clipframes filled the sides of the modern tiled fireplace. On the mantelpiece and window sill were several cranky attempts at figurative sculpture, some in wire and plaster, others in clay or papier mâché, whichshared the single virtue of being small enough to escape serious notice.
Andrew turned to the couple sitting on the sofa, concluding from the faint pride in Hilary’s eyes that she had been watching his visual scan of the pictures and sculptures, and that they were hers. Ivan and Hilary were holding hands. She looked a good few years older than her husband, in her mid-forties judging by the grey streaks in her long, frizzy dark hair, and much more solid. She had a wide, sensual mouth and very large breasts which Andrew felt sure she would refer to as her bosoms, happier with the notion of maternal safety than of pneumatic sexuality. She was of his mother’s type, women for whom there exist two states of being: very, very busy or very, very tired. Such women look as if they work harder than their husbands, Andrew had noticed, especially if the husband is of Ivan Golightly’s sort: fair, tall and thin, with impractical hands and large, intelligent, frail eyes. Andrew suddenly remembered, in the way that he quite often did when he really should be thinking of other things, a remark of Sara’s. She had said (he suddenly also remembered that at the time she had been naked in bed and sipping a cup of tea, watching him dry himself after a shower) that his body looked as if it had been designed for two things: rugby and sex, and what a good thing he didn’t bother with the rugby. Andrew felt that she might judge Ivan Golightly’s body to be designed for chess and poetry. As if that were relevant. He coughed to signal the start of proceedings.
‘Now, you reported Mrs Takahashi missing at nine-thirty this evening. What made you think she was missing at that time? It’s not terribly late to be out, after all.’
‘Well
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