Share
18
We entered the imposing circular dining room, and stood for a few moments at the wide double-doored entrance. I casually looked around and could almost smell the affluence in the room from the few guests already seated for lunch.
The room was filled with round tables, covered with immaculately white tablecloths and fresh flowers in the centre of each, beneath bright crystal-like chandeliers. Even the gleaming cutlery appeared to be silver.
The head waiter greeted us and led the way to one of the smaller tables in a comparatively quieter part of the dining room. Once we were seated the head waiter barely waved a hand and a waitress dressed in a creamy white blouse and a slim black skirt with dark tights arrived with the menus and I ordered a large bottle of sparkling mineral water.
We perused the menus in silence until the waitress returned with the water and poured two glasses.&
Related chapters
COUNTER MEASURES 19
The day after I returned from Onehouse Island, Maria Ashe, was waiting for me in my outer eight by ten office and I motioned her into the room with the door marked “PRIVATE,” and shut the door behind me. She was an attractive red-head in her early thirties and she had hired me to find out if her husband was having an affair. We had first met at the café, Julie’s Place. She had been nervous about hiring me. A newbie. Some could get cold feet. Others had feet of clay. They wanted someone to peek behind the curtains, but they are frightened of what they might find. She had used the phrase “seeing someone else” which sounded politely courteous coming from her lips. Most spouses tended to voice their mistrust in cruder terms. &nb
COUNTER MEASURES 20
Mortuaries were places where the dead stopped being people and turned instead into being bags of meat, offal, blood and bone. I had never been sick at the scene of a crime, but the first few times I had visited a mortuary the contents of my stomach had fairly quickly nearly been rendered up for examination. Eventually, the body bag was brought into the post-mortem room and the corpse of Vasily Kutziyez was laid out on the autopsy table, beneath the hum and glare of powerful halogen lighting. The room was antiseptic with a stinging aroma of chemicals. Voices were kept muffled, not so much out of respect but from a strange kind of fear. The mortuary, after all, was one vast memento mori and what was happening to Vasily Kutziyez’s body would serve to remind each and every one of us that if the body were a temple, then it was possible to loot the temple and scatter its treasures and reveal its preciou
COUNTER MEASURES 21
Professor Stephen Baker took almost another two hours to complete the autopsy after breaking for lunch. He ate a vegetarian curry consisting of organic mushrooms and potato’s, washed down with a slimline tonic at The Grinning Rat, before rejoining us at the Oxmarket Police Station to tell us what he’d had for lunch and of course his findings. “Not all the relevant tests have been completed yet.” He began, as we gathered in DI Silver’s small cramped office. “Time scale?” DI Silver asked abruptly. “A few more days, I’m afraid.” the pathologist replied. “I think you’ll find not only did he drink two bottles of red wine but he also snorted a line of cocaine as well.” &n
COUNTER MEASURES 22
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.
COUNTER MEASURES 27
Charlie barked and Kimberley took her time opening the door. I heard her struggling to make him get back into his basket, but eventually the door opened and she was standing there. She was wearing a bath robe, fresh out of the shower and the light behind her haloed her hair. The corridor of her apartment looked warm and inviting. “You’re early,” she said. “Sorry,” I said as I stepped inside. “What time is the film on?” “Not until a quarter-to-eight.” “Gives me enough time to get ready then,” she said. “Certainly does,” I said, cupping her face in my hands. I pushed my fingertips into her
COUNTER MEASURES 23
I went back to my tiny second-floor suite of offices, sat behind my desk and turned on my laptop computer. I logged on to the internet and checked my e-mails, many of which were junk from various finance firms offering payday loans with extortionate interest well above the norm and details of how to claim back wrongly sold PPI. Nestled amongst the trash were three e-mails from the local Oxmarket solicitors, Hogbin, Marshall and Moruzzi: one confirming my fee for the Ashe case that I had just completed, one asking me to research a local health insurance fraud and the third was to check on the security of a local stables that housed the favourite for the Grand National. I replied to each e-mail separately before entering the Google search engine and typing in ‘Junior Ballroom Dancing Champions’ but this turned up numerous
COUNTER MEASURES 24
Standing at the window, I stretched and gazed at the view outside my apartment. Clear winter skies and snow covered Suffolk fields. I could see the grey buildings of Oxmarket expanding out before me, but the bright sunlight turned the tired old fishing community into a quaint picture postcard seaside village. The winter made living in Oxmarket worthwhile and tourists didn’t visit at this time of the year, so it felt like I had the place to myself, a private view of a bygone age. Yet, it had character. My mind flashed back to the London rush, the wrestle onto the underground and I smiled at the memory of the north-easterly sea breeze ruffling through my hair the night before when I had walked hand in hand with Kimberley and her dog Charlie, along the beach in the darkness. I heard a noise behind me, the shuffle of small feet in my slippers. I didn’t need to look round. I felt sleepy lips brush my neck as Kimberley wrapped her arms a
COUNTER MEASURES 25
The Waggoner’s’ Rest was mid-evening quiet. I was seated in the back room with a pint of Gunner’s Daughter and the latest edition of the Oxmarket Chronicle when DI Silver arrived. He asked me if I wanted a refill. “Have I ever been known to refuse?” He retreated and returned with a couple of pints of the same. “What do you make of the Fuentes case?” He asked me, raising the glass and taking a gulp, exhaling noisily afterwards. “Interesting to say the least,” I said. “Especially the suicide note. Why didn’t she sign it Monique, or at the very least Mother?” “Yes, that was odd,” the Detective Inspector agreed.
Latest chapter
