Read Online Shadow Play by Frances Fyfield - Free Book Online Page A

door slam at three in the morning, another sees a man in a street soon after; a third person mentions someone he met in the local earlier that evening who looked the same; a fourth mentions, by chance, a possible motive. By the smallest and most innocent innuendos brother betrays brother. A network of facts, individually irrelevant. You need this cement if you do not have enough of the bricks alone. Like bloodstains and fingerprints.’
    â€˜Confessions?’ Helen asked, vastly amused. ‘Are they direct enough evidence to make into bricks?’
    â€˜Oh, certainly,’ Dinsdale said airily. ‘Finest kind of brick, but in this generation, it has a tendency to crumble. What you must tell this audience, of course, is that the only evidence which can be used in the construction of a case is evidence that has been properly obtained. Thus if you make the defendant shit the brick, you cannot use it to build the wall around him. Will that do?’
    â€˜Certainly. But your recitation has taken precisely two minutes. What shall I do for the other eight?’
    â€˜Tell them stories. The taller the better. Another drink?’
    Â 
    H elen was about to refuse, responding to the automatic pilot-light which ignited inside her head some time before eight in the evening to remind her it was time to go home. Then she remembered there was no Geoffrey Bailey at his home or her own, hadn’t been for a week. There’d been no trailing around a supermarket in her inefficient pursuit of their needs. The thought of her own relief brought into her throat an indigestible lump of guilt which she decided to swallow. She might well love Geoffrey Bailey, she was usually well aware that she did, but freedom from the routines of the relationship, from the sheer time it took to be with another, felt like a prize she had worked towards for months. Especially if the privilege included sitting with a man of Dinsdale’s distinguished ease, warmed by his admiration and his sheer ability to talk. It made a change from the barks and grunts of familiarity.
    â€˜Well yes, why not? Aren’t you due home, or something?’
    Dinsdale shrugged noncommittally. Helen could not imagine his life to be unaccompanied by less than a select harem, but his domestic loyalties were his own concern and she did not have to consider them. She did not, at this moment, have to consider anyone or anything at all apart from the state of her digestion.
    â€˜Speaking of evidence,’ said Dinsdale, returning from the bar with a napkin which he used to wipe the table clean in small, fastidious movements, ‘is what I see over there evidence of anything at all? Or is it a figment of my over-fertile imagination?’ Helen looked and whistled softly.
    The Swan and Mitre was a pub with little to recommend it apart from proximity to a thousand offices and a heavy sense of age created by sherry casks hung above the bar. The grime was unfeigned and the crowds stumbled their way through raucous gossip in the artificial gloom. Smoking was mandatory: scores of men and women had been released from work to indulge a number of bad habits before retiring to the rigours of their homes. The wooden booths lining the walls gave some scope for intimacy: for the rest, the assignations were as public as a meeting in a telephone kiosk. In one booth, selfishly occupying space enough for four, prohibiting invasion by the cunning placement of coats which made it look as if someone else was expected, sat Rose, flanked by a young man. The size of him, the uniform shirt and the short haircut betrayed him as a policeman or a security man or suchlike, but there was no need for guesswork.
    â€˜Don’t look so obviously, Helen, you do stare so. Is that PC Michael? He of boxing fame?’
    â€˜I think so. Why shouldn’t I look? My God, they’re actually talking to one another …’
    â€˜Well, so were we, it’s a natural consequence of human