Read Online Talking to the Dead by Harry Bingham - Free Book Online Page B

ending up in Adamsdown, drinking in the kind of bar that will be making work for our uniformed colleagues a little later in the evening. I’m not always invited to those things, but I’ve been to a few. Me and my orange juice. Only later did I realize that Brydon had maybe meant his invitation as a date. Not a big flowers ‘n’ candles date maybe, but as a sort of toe in the water, a deniable date, a drink ready to morph either into a flowers ‘n’ candles jobbie or a simple drink between work buddies. I’m rubbish at decoding these things. I don’t even realize that there are codes involved until it’s all too late.
    Last night was a case in point. Because I hadn’t given the drink any great weight, I turned up late and without letting Brydon know that I was on my way. Result: When I finally arrived Brydon had indeed joined up with a couple of office colleagues, and we all had a faintly tedious but good-hearted coppers’ night out. With hindsight, I think maybe that’s not what he’d originally intended—and now maybe I’ve sent him a signal indicating that I’m not interested in a flowers ‘n’ candles evening with him. I never meant to send any kind of signal, and I’m not sure that I’d have sent that one, if I had meant to.
    “Hey, Fi,” he says.
    “Hey.” I grimace at him. An attempted smile really, except I’ve got my head full of Jackson’s bollocking and my hands full of photos of dead people.
    “All right?”
    “Yes. You? Sorry about yesterday.”
    “That’s okay.”
    “I was in a muddle last night. I didn’t mean to. I wasn’t trying to—”
    “That’s okay, don’t worry.”
    “Maybe we could do it again sometime. A drink. I’ll try my honest best not to make a complete pig’s ear of it.”
    He grins. “Good. Half a pig’s ear would do fine. Definitely. Sometime soon.”
    “Okay. Good. Thanks.”
    I don’t want Brydon poking around my pile of photos, so I put them facedown on the desk and sit on them.
    “You’re okay? You’re not looking your normal relaxed and untroubled self.”
    “Jackson just gave me a bollocking. About, um, seven out of ten. No. Six out of ten.” I try to calibrate the bollocking, benchmarking myself on the assumption that the whole kneecap thing was worth a ten.
    “Oh, who’s in hospital this time?”
    “Very funny. No, listen, could you do me a favor?” I shove some papers at him, the ones I’ve been working on for Penry. “If I get some teas, will you add up this list of figures and tell me what you get?”
    I set him to work with a pencil and calculator, shove the photos in a drawer, and go to get tea. When I come back, Brydon has an answer, the same as the one I had, and about forty thousand pounds higher than it ought to be.
    “Problem?” he asks.
    “No. Not really. Just too much of a good thing.”
    “You know, if you get stuck with this, you should get the accountants in. No reason for you to do all the number crunching.”
    I nod, too lost in my own world to tell him that we’ve already got some accountants involved, and they’re coming in for a meeting tomorrow morning. A shortage of accountants is not my problem.
    “Who the fuck steals from their employer to buy one-sixth of a racehorse?” I say out loud. Brydon probably answers me, but if he does, I don’t hear him. I’m already reaching for the phone.

8
    I work like a bluebottle all that day. At half past twelve, Bev Rowlands passes my desk on her way down to lunch and invites me to join her. I’d like to, but I’ve got a mountain of work to climb if I’m to have half a chance with Jackson, so I tell her that I’m going to eat a sandwich at my desk, and I do. Feta cheese and grilled vegetable. Bottled water. Consumed in a nice little hum of busyness. I don’t even let any chargrilled aubergine slip from the sandwich down into the keyboard, a faultless exhibition of desk-lunching technique.
    I find out lots of things I never knew. Things about Thoroughbred