Read Online Name To a Face by Robert Goddard - Free Book Online Page B

problem. But now it looks as if… he might be yours too.”

NINE
    Hayley had met Darren while shopping at Morrison’s. He had broken off from shelf-filling duties to chat her up and ask her out. She had found him instantly and profoundly resistible and had turned him down. But Darren had not taken no for an answer, then
or
later. He had become first a nuisance, then a plague on her life, haunting the route she walked into town, materializing in her path when she emerged from a shop and now, it appeared, harassing any man he deemed to be a rival for her affections.
    “He must have been at Heartsease yesterday afternoon and seen you come and go from my flat, then followed you to the Turk’s Head.” Via Morrab Gardens, Harding silently calculated. “I can only imagine he stole your phone to see if there were any messages from me on it.”
    “He’ll have been disappointed, then.” Or maybe not, Harding reflected grimly. What use might Spargo seek to make of evidence, as he saw it, that Harding was two-timing Hayley?
    “Unfortunately, seeing us together today will only make him more suspicious, however little he learnt from your phone.”
    “Has he followed you before like this?”
    “Not quite like this, no.”
    “Have you reported him to the police?”
    “No.”
    “Maybe I will.”
    “You can’t prove he stole your phone.”
    “What do you suggest I do, then?”
    “The same as me. Ignore him.”
    “How long have you been ignoring him?”
    “Quite a while.”
    “Maybe it’s time to try something different, then.”
    “Like what?”
    “Do you know where he lives?”
    “Yes.” Hayley looked solemnly at him. “But I don’t think I’m going to tell you.”
    “Why not?”
    “I don’t want to be responsible for anything… extreme.”
    “You wouldn’t
be
responsible.”
    “Let me talk to him. Ask him to see reason. Return your phone. Leave me alone. Call a halt to this before it gets out of hand.”
    “Seems to me it already is.”
    “Let me
try.”
    Harding sighed. “All right. But if it doesn’t work…”
    A ghost of a smile crossed her lips. “Then I’ll tell you where he lives. Meanwhile…” Her smile strengthened. “I have a question for you that may take your mind off Darren. Did you speak to anyone while you were at the Turk’s Head-such as Ray Trathen?”
    It was Clive Isbister who had alerted Hayley to Harding’s interest in Ray Trathen. She had spoken to him at the end of viewing and he had mentioned Harding’s enquiries about where Trathen could be found. There seemed no point in denying it, nor in holding back anything Trathen had told him. Hayley had probably heard it all before anyway. She certainly did not react as if any of it was a revelation. She did warn him not to trust Trathen, however, a point she returned to later in the afternoon.
    They had visited the Turner exhibition at the Tate by then and retreated to the gallery café for tea. Harding had found it impossible to focus his mind on art and was surprised to discover Hayley had been similarly distracted.
    “I didn’t take much of that in,” she freely admitted.
    He grinned ruefully. “Neither did I, to be honest.”
    “I’m not sure Ray Trathen isn’t a bigger pain than Darren.”
    “You don’t mean that.”
    “Conspiracy theories are self-replicating, you know. They’re like a virus. That diving accident’s become Ray’s private little Paris underpass, with Kerry Foxton standing in for Princess Di.”
    “Maybe so. But I can’t pretend I wouldn’t like to take a look at Metherell’s video.”
    “Ray’s got you hooked. First the video. Then some other titbit. You’d do better to trust your instincts. For example, is Barney Tozer capable of murder?”
    “I imagine we all are. In the right circumstances.”
    “You really believe that?”
    “Yes. I think I do.”
    She nodded solemnly. “You’d better ask Metherell to show you the video, then. And see what you make of it.”
    The afternoon was