“How d’ye know ...” he began, then smiled, “So – you checked me out then?”
“Umm …”
“That’s O.K. – Absolutely right in fact. I would have done exactly the same thing. You can’t be too careful nowadays ... what’s your name by the way?”
“Sergeant Holingsworth, Sir.”
“Sergeant?” he said teasingly. “Funny name for a girl.”
“It’s Samantha, Sir.”
“My daughter’s Samantha ...” he began, then asked, concernedly. “Are you on your own?”
“This isn’t London, Sir. Anyway, I’m a Sergeant – obviously there are some places I wouldn’t go without back-up, but ...”
“Here ... get in a minute,” he said opening the passenger door. “It’s chilly with the window open.”
The graveyard shift, he thought as she walked round the back of the car, recalling his years as a uniformed constable when he’d been glad of almost anyone’s company to help pass the night.
“Thanks,” she replied slipping in beside him. “I’m on suicide patrol – this is a favourite place along here,” she continued, wiping a patch of fog off the windscreen and sweeping her eyes along the dark beach as if expecting to discover a body. “We usually find the car in the morning, a pile of clothes, an empty pill bottle and a note. The corpse washes ashore in a day or so when the crabs and dogfish have chewed off a few bits. The sea gulls usually get the eyes once the body’s on the beach. We’ve had half a dozen this year already – not good for the tourist trade.”
“I’m working on the murder over at Westchester,” said Bliss as if to reassure her she wasn’t the only one dealing with gruesome scenes.
“The old Major?”
“The very old Major as it turned out.”
“I heard – been dead for years they say.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“You can,” she laughed. “But I’ll warn you, the last inspector who said that to me in a parked car ended up with a slapped face.”
“No. It’s nothing like that. I just wanted to know if you’ve ever believed something that you later realised wasn’t true.”
She laughed again, “Like all the slime-bags who’ve put on a soppy voice and said, ‘I love you, Samantha – of course I’ll leave my wife.’”
“That’s an occupational hazard.”
“Of being a W.P.C.?”
“No. Of being a woman.”
“I never thought of my gender as an occupation, Inspector.”
“Please – It’s Dave. At half-past three in the morning nobody can cling to a rank with any dignity ... and don’t get huffy. A lot of women make careers out of being useless. ‘I can’t do this ... can’t touch that ... I’ll be sick …’ They say it in a girlish little voice and all the blokes go running. ‘Oh let me do that for you.’”
“I know the type. We’ve got a few,” she admitted.
“I meant – have you ever been convinced of something so fully, so absolutely, that when it unravels and you see the truth it leaves you totally gob-smacked.”
“I believed in Santa Claus when I was a kid ...” she began, but he cut her off.
“That’s not the same – every child believes in Santa Claus, even those who never get anything at Christmas still cling to the belief for as long as they can.”
“But I still believed when I was about ten – my friends called me crazy, but I suppose I didn’t want to believe my parents would lie to me. So – why did you ask?”
“I did something a long time ago that went pear-shaped ...”
“Pear-shaped?” she laughed questioningly.
“Yeah. It should have been as round and translucent as a crystal ball, but it got warped out of shape ... Anyway, last night an incredible old lady, with more guts than I’ll ever have, made me realise that what I did was the right thing.”
“So you’ve been blaming yourself.”
“That’s very astute of you.”
“And why did you blame yourself?
“I suppose I confused regret with remorse.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes passing telepathic messages – shall I tell you; if you want to; I want to; then tell me; I don’t know if I should.
“Are you going to tell me?” she asked eventually, knowing that he would, that he was only waiting to be asked.
Thinking about it afterwards he realised there were many reasons why he had told her about Mandy’s murder after concealing it from so many others. Cocooned in the dark and comfortable car he’d felt secure; Samantha had a warm persuasive voice and she had filled the car with the clean scent of pure shampoo and honest soap – nothing fancy or expensive. The sort of woman you could trust, he thought.
“I can’t understand why you ever blamed yourself – I think you were very brave,” she said, after he described the imbroglio in the bank.
“It was nothing ... ” he began, then quickly switched subjects, conscious he had not told her about Mandy’s pregnancy, nor the fact that he was being stalked by the killer. “What does your husband think of you working nights?”
“I’m not married.”
“Oh,” he said, confused, “I noticed the ring.”
“This?” she said, deftly slipping it off. “Just a curtain ring, it saves having to fight off a bar-full of drunks – they all want to marry me – so they say. ‘I’ll get my husband onto you,’ I tell ’em. It usually works.”
“That’s the trouble with pubs.”
“Actually,” she laughed, “I was talking about the blokes in the police canteen. What about you, Dave – married?”
“Nope.”
“Let’s have a look then,” she said, grabbing his left hand off the wheel and holding it against the faintly luminous dashboard. “Well there’s no ring mark, but that doesn’t prove anything.”
“You don’t believe me,” he protested, aware she still had a tender hold on his hand.
“I’ve been shafted by married men too many times,” she said. They both laughed. “I didn’t mean that ...” she cried, letting go and giving him the friendliest of nudges.
“I know what you meant. Anyway, believe it or not, I’m not married.”
“Divorced?”
“Correct.”
“And she got pissed off with the screwy hours; the week-ends; nights; bank-holidays ...”
“How did you guess?”
“Why d’ye think I’m still single – how many spouses will put up with it?”
“My ex-wife used to tell people she’d been widowed by a murderer – I suppose it wasn’t entirely untrue – Anyway, I got some very funny looks from one or two people. ‘Are you Sarah’s second husband?’ one snooty woman asked, her eyes sort of scrunched in confusion. ‘No, I’m her lover,’ I said, straight-faced. Sarah was furious.”
An hour passed in no time: the wonders of London; the horrors of the country; the horrors of London; the wonders of the country.