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14
She came immediately and I studied her attentively in view of DI Silver’s revelations. She was certainly beautiful in her white dress with a rosebud on the shoulder. She was holding a matching clutch bag that was covered in silk rosebuds.
I explained the circumstances that had brought me to Chandos Avenue, eyeing her very closely, but she showed only what seemed to be genuine astonishment, with no signs of uneasiness. She spoke of Captain Godden indifferently with tepid approval, it was only at the mention of John Kately did she approach animation.
“That man’s a crook,” she said sharply. “I told the Old Man so, but he wouldn’t listen – constantly investing money for his plumbing business.”
“Are you sorry that your father is dead?”
She stared at me.
“Of course. But over the years I’ve learnt to keep my emotions in check, so I don’t indulge in sob st
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COUNTER MEASURES 18
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Kimberley moved against me in the dark and put her mouth on the thin skin somewhere just south of my neck. I tightened my arms round her and buried her nose in her clean, sweet-scented hair. It was a shame, I thought hazily, that the act of sex had got so cluttered up with taboos and techniques and therapists and sin and voyeurs and the whole commercial ballyhoo. Two people fitting together in the old design should be a private matter and if you didn’t expect too much, you’d get on better. One was as one was. Even if a girl wanted it, I could never have put on a pretence of being a rough, aggressive bull of a lover, because, I thought sardonically, I would have laughed at myself in the middle and it had been all right, I thought, as it was. “Kimberley,” I said. No reply.
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