Dusty Death (13 page)

‘A fortnight?'

‘I know we hadn't planned it. But it's a quiet time at work, as you know. It seems like a good opportunity. Things will pick up from Easter onwards as usual, I expect.'

‘But I thought you didn't want to take the children out of school.'

David could hear the puzzlement in the older man's voice. He forced himself to laugh. ‘I decided I was being an old fuddy-duddy about that! Amy's only two, so it doesn't affect her – she'll be better off abroad at this time, before the sun gets too strong – and the others are only five and seven. They aren't going to miss anything vital, I'm sure, at this stage of their schooling. And with the Ormerod genes, they're bright enough to make up any lost ground in no time! Mens sane in corpore sanum, and all that!'

‘Mens sana in corpore sano,' Stanley Ormerod corrected him automatically.

‘There you are, then! There's the Ormerod genes, you see. Latin had more or less gone out, by my day.'

‘When are you proposing to go?'

Stanley Ormerod wasn't going to make difficulties! David's heart leapt absurdly with the thought. ‘End of next week, I thought. Give me time to clear up everything outstanding at the office. Leave everything shipshape. And there are some terrific bargains available, after the school half term is over!' He was pleased with himself for that afterthought. Economy always appealed to the older generation, even to someone as well-heeled as Stanley Ormerod.

‘All right, if you're set on it. I'm sure we can handle the work side of it. And as you say, it will do Michelle and the children good to get some sun and sea air, at the end of the winter.'

David Edmonds tried to prevent the relief from creeping into his voice. ‘That's great, Stanley! Thank you for being so understanding. The family will really appreciate it. And I shall return to the office bronzed and fit, a giant refreshed, ready to do great things when the new selling season gets under way!'

He put down the phone and prepared to break the news of the wonderful surprise to his wife and family. Better to do it with the children there, he thought. Michelle wouldn't be able to question this sudden change of plans, in the face of their juvenile excitement. He'd better get one or two convincing reasons ready to put to her later; she was sure to question him about it, once the kids were safely in bed and asleep.

David was elated by this release from his immediate problems. Then he realized that he hadn't really solved them. He might merely have postponed a crisis, rather than averted it. He had better put his mind to what he should do to cover his tracks in the longer term, rather than think how clever he was in removing himself from the scene.

But nothing could disguise the fact that this was a good time for him to be out of the country. He'd get something booked for the end of next week, and keep a low profile in the interim.

‘I tell you, this is just what I need!'

After watching Tommy Bloody Tucker on television, Percy Peach felt entitled to a diversion. He needed to forget it all, to convince himself that there were other and better things in life.

Suiting the action to his words, he buried his face dramatically and expertly into the very centre of Lucy Blake's scantily covered bosom.

Lucy said practically, ‘It's too cold in your bedroom in February to cavort about like this in a semi-naked state.' She shivered.

It was a mistake. The shiver agitated her uncontained breasts, and Percy took it for an erotic response to his gesture. He uttered a low, prolonged moan of sexual satisfaction. It was muffled, but exquisitely expressive.

Lucy knew from experience that the man wouldn't be easily dislodged. It would take some remarkable force of nature or some unrefusable offer to do it. She decided on the latter. ‘Never mind these half measures! Let's get into bed and get on with it. At least I'll be warm there and—'

It was an unrefusable offer all right. The face buried between her soft breasts uttered another, more urgent moan of pleasure and agreement, came up briefly for air, and moved his powerful legs purposefully forward. The two of them fell in disarray upon the bed. Percy, so dapper in dress, so orderly in his normal daily life, thought this sensual confusion was a very heaven.

‘I like a woman capable of sexual experiment,' he said appreciatively. ‘I hadn't thought of the effect a moustache might have in tickling up nipples myself, but I must say the effect is quite impressive. Let me just—'

‘Don't just anything!' said Lucy Blake hastily. ‘And I can assure you that any effect you think your moustache might have had is purely accidental.' She tried to examine her nipples surreptitiously in the mirror, but the light was too dim in Percy Peach's bedroom for her to be certain whether his moustache had secured the effect he claimed. You could never be sure with Percy, when he got exuberant.

She should not have taken her eyes off him. He made a swift grab at her waist, secured it, and allowed his hands to stray downwards, to the accompaniment of a succession of passionate groans which she would have thought was beyond the range of any single human being.

‘Pray leave my pants alone, Sir Jasper!' she said demurely, transferring his hands downward to her knees. It was a game they played from time to time, ever since the night when she had claimed that Percy's moustache reminded her of the aristocratic villain in a Victorian melodrama. The appendage was not long enough for him to twirl in the approved lecherous manner, but he mimed a valiant attempt to do so, then encircled her hips with his arms and began to stroke the front of her thighs appreciatively, with his moustache now clamped hard against the point where her buttocks began their separation. The groans began again, increasing in volume and intensity.

Whatever she did, she mustn't let him know that his moustache was tickling her there, and still less that she found it rather an agreeable sensation. She said as primly as she could, ‘Pray desist from caressing my thighs, Sir Jasper!'

Percy removed his face reluctantly from her rear cleavage. ‘So I'm not to touch your glorious bosom, m'dear, and I'm not to stroke your silk-smooth thighs, eh?' He leered into her face for a second, raising his eyebrows in what he thought a convincingly Victorian fashion. ‘Then I'll just have to settle for the area in between the two, won't I?'

Which he promptly did, clasping her to him with strong containing arms, giving free rein to hands which were suddenly amazingly versatile in the things they could perpetrate. Lucy was giggling too much to put up effective resistance. She eventually extracted herself and slid between the protective sheets of Percy's double bed. Her lover went back to his normal voice and complained that it was totally unfair that a woman so well-rounded should at the same time be as slippery as an eel.

‘You should be grateful that I'm warming the bed for you. It's bloody freezing in here, Percy Peach!'

Another mistake: he sprang upon her with the whoop of an Indian brave and set about warming her up.

Not such a mistake after all, though. When all the joking that passed for foreplay was over – and she liked the fact that she was never quite sure when the laughter ended and the serious business began – Percy was an effective and considerate lover, vigorous and tender by turns. Totally in harmony with her needs and her desires.

Twenty minutes later, she stretched luxuriously and said in the Lancashire accent which was another of their affectations, ‘Eeeeh, that were champion, Percy Peach!'

‘It were that, lass! I'd have a fag and study the ceiling, if I hadn't given up the habit to preserve my perfect body for young women like thee.'

They thee'd and thou'd each other for a while, comfortably intimate in the winter darkness. Then Percy claimed that this too was an aphrodisiac, and added almost apologetically, ‘Sithee, I'll just have to roger thee again, now lass!' and proceeded to do just that, in more leisurely and less urgent fashion than in their first coupling.

She remembered nothing else until Percy was standing by the bed with a mug of tea in the cold grey light of Saturday morning. ‘It's cold out here, lass,' he said pathetically.

It was obviously true. His feet were very cold indeed. And the place where he wanted to warm them up was quite outrageous, but she didn't see how she could complain about it to anyone else.

They drank their tea without haste. They were going to work, with a murder case demanding to be solved, but no one would expect them in at the normal time on a Saturday. It was whilst they were stretching luxuriously, in those last minutes in a warm bed before they braved the world outside it, that Percy Peach said quietly, almost lazily, ‘You'll have to be thinking about making an honest man of me one of these days, Lucy Blake.'

It was Percy who had voiced the thought which had been drifting through her mind, not her. And this was the twenty-sixth of February, almost the twenty-ninth, that day when women were traditionally allowed to propose marriage – 2004 was a leap year.

She was glad that Agnes Blake, so anxious to be a grandmother, had not heard those words from the man she was so determined to see as a son-in-law.

‘There's a nun waiting to see you, sir.'

Peach glared suspiciously at DC Brendan Murphy. ‘Saturday morning isn't the time for jokes, Brendan.' After the night of blissful sexual pleasure he had experienced, the last person he expected to confront in the cold light of a winter morning was a nun. The Catholic upbringing Percy had dispensed with many years ago was suddenly back with him. Sister Bernadette had rapped his fingers with a ruler for any illicit excitements he had enjoyed in his primary school. And the guilt complex built into him by clerics in his youth told him that pleasures as absolute as those enjoyed with Lucy Blake must surely be illicit.

Brendan Murphy had lived all of his twenty-four years in Brunton, despite his name, but his Irish background gave him a fair idea of the thoughts racing through his Chief Inspector's mind. He grinned. ‘It's true, sir! She said she'd wait for you. She's complete with habit and wimple. Probably using her rosary beads to fill in the time while she waits. Can't think what you've been up to, sir, to bring a sister in here, asking for you personally.'

‘Find out what she wants and get rid of her, please, Brendan.'

‘She says it's connected with the Sunita Akhtar case, sir. Asked to speak to the man in charge. I didn't think she deserved Tucker.'

‘Then I'll see her in my office. Immediately.'

She was a squat figure, made to seem even squatter by the black dress which reached almost to the floor and the white starched linen which encircled her forehead, making it seem broader than it would normally have done. When Murphy ushered her in, Peach stood up, moved awkwardly towards her and then stopped. He had been about to shake hands with her, but he hesitated to touch a nun.

‘I'm Chief Inspector Peach. I believe you wanted to see me.' He slid a chair carefully behind her, anxious to avoid the accidental desecration of brushing against a nun's bum.

‘Sister Josephine. And I won't break if you touch me. I'm not usually dressed like this.'

He realized that she was even more nervous than he was, and forced a smile. ‘Childhood stays with you, Sister. I had some unfortunate experiences with a certain Sister Bernadette, a long time ago in another life.'

She smiled at him, a reaction which lit up her face all the more because he could see so little of it. ‘We've most of us had experiences like that, if we grew up as Papists, Chief Inspector. If it's any consolation to you, wearing the habit comes almost as strangely to me as interviewing a nun does to you. I never wear it at work. Most of the people at the hospice don't even know I'm a nun. Not the patients, anyway. But the order still like us to wear the habit when we go out for any length of time. And it did get me a seat on the bus on the way here.'

He found it difficult to guess how old she was. He hadn't realized until now how much he relied on the lines in the forehead in assessing age. He said, ‘DC Murphy tells me that you want to speak to me about the Sunita Akhtar case. Though I can't imagine what—'

‘I was in that squat, Mr Peach.' She looked happy to have got that fact out, as if she had taken the first and most demanding step in what was going to be a difficult process.

‘At twenty-six Sebastopol Terrace.'

‘That's the one. I was surprised you could still pinpoint the house when I saw how everything had been flattened.'

‘The forensic people can do that. They identify even tiny fragments of wood as coming from a common source. And number twenty-six still had a front door and a number.' He did not know why he was telling her this. Perhaps they were both still a little embarrassed with each other.

‘I see. Well, I heard your Chief Superintendent asking for people to come forward, and like a good citizen I came.' She smiled wanly at the idea of herself as a good citizen. ‘I told you, I was in that squat.'

‘You mean you visited it. When exactly would—'

‘I mean I lived there. At the same time as Sunita Akhtar.'

With the experience he had by now, nothing should have shocked him any more. But he found the thought of this demure nun living in a squat hard to take in. She had mentioned working in a hospice, and he realized now that he had conjured up a Victorian picture of a charitable religious woman visiting the homeless in that squat, probably dispensing soup, with the New Testament in her other hand. He reached for a pad and a ball pen, giving himself time to come to grips with this strange idea. ‘Forgive me, Sister, but I find the idea of you living in a squat rather difficult.'

‘I wasn't a nun then.' Despite her nervousness, a smile came unbidden to her lips at his discomfiture, and he saw her for the first time as an attractive woman.

A phrase from Matthew Hayward came back to Peach, nagging at the edge of his consciousness – ‘The women were called Jo and Emmy'. Was this that Jo, whom the pianist had remembered as a buxom girl in her early twenties, sitting in front of him now as the staid and sturdy Sister Josephine? He wracked his brain for any further details the man had given to him. Strong nose, he'd said, a good-looking face in a striking sort of a way.