Grind Their Bones (5 page)

'Please have a seat and tell me what it is that's bothering you?'

He shut the door and manoeuvred himself into a leather, high-backed, swivel chair that was raised up high enough to allow him to look down on me.

'Coffee?'

He gestured towards a shining, silver, Gaggia coffee machine perched on his desk and I nodded enthusiastically.

'Yes please. As for why I'm here, I alluded to it on the phone, but I'd rather be completely blunt if that's okay with you?'

I watched him as he carefully organised my drink, placing the cup on a fancy looking saucer to catch any spills. He's fastidious to a fault, not at all like the kind of person to put out a report that he wasn't entirely happy with.

'I get enough evasiveness from my charges during the course of a normal working day, if indeed you can call any day in Forensic Psychology entirely normal. Be as blunt as you like Detective.'

He smiled displaying slightly stained and crooked front teeth, which were at odds with the rest of his immaculate presentation.

'Okay. I disagree with your psych evaluation of the offender that we're calling the Grey Man. It doesn't concur with the modest amount of other evidence that we've obtained so far, and it seems to run counter to the theories and models that you espouse in your own books.'

I added cream and sugar to my cup and stirred quickly before taking a sip and making eye contact with him.

'Thank you for your honesty at least, but I'd have to counter that assertion by asking you where exactly you obtained your doctorate in the subtleties of behavioural science?'

There was a definite edge in his tone and I sought to clarify my position.

'My qualifications are of the variety that you can only obtain by catching a number of serial offenders for yourself.'

I’d intended to continue but he cut me off before I could do so.

'Perhaps you've decided that there's some sinister hidden agenda here, and that despite a long and illustrious career helping your colleagues up and down the land to solve the unsolvable and catch those responsible for the unthinkable, I'm deliberately misleading the investigation? Or better still, you've been reading the latest crime novel and decided that I'm the Grey Man. Is that it?'

His voice had risen dramatically in volume and he was now visibly in a rage. I stood up to leave, aware that my welcome had been well and truly outstayed and trying unsuccessfully to keep my own quick temper under wraps.

'Your wife assured me that you'd have no problem in assisting a police officer who was following up on their hunch, Doctor Hardwick, and it was not my intention to insult or demean. But I have to say that your behaviour gives me pause for thought. Just why exactly are you selling your house?'

I opened the door and stood my ground, fixing him with a level stare.

'Show yourself out before you cross another line with me, woman. I'll be speaking to Fred Russell before you're off the driveway and you’ll be directing traffic by morning.'

Chapter 15

'I don't know what it is yet, but there's something wrong with Hardwick, and I'm going to find out exactly what that is.'

I stuffed home-made basil and sundried tomato pesto mixed with cubes of tangy feta into the cavity of a plump chicken breast with more force than was strictly necessary, while Lee took care of the salad.

'Hey there Blondie, don't take it out on dinner or we'll prove Hallie right about your lack of cooking prowess.'

He rinsed his hands under the tap and dried them on a tea towel before wrapping his arms around my waist and resting his head over my shoulder to watch me work. He'd saved the day by remembering the dinner party that I was supposed to be throwing for my best friend and her husband tonight, and had turned up with bags of food and alcohol and a set of favourite recipes for us to construct together. If I hadn't been so pissed at the dressing down that had greeted me when I'd arrived back at headquarters following my meeting with the Doctor, then I'd have been overwhelmed with gratitude.

'Russell didn't even have the good grace to do it privately, so now everybody knows that I screwed up.'

I pulled an exaggeratedly unhappy face and he kissed me on the cheek, smoothing back stray tendrils of my hair.

'Here, let me take over with this and you can have a glass of wine while you watch.'

He let go of me and retrieved a bottle of Argentinian Malbec from one of the bags, pouring me a half glass and then rolling up his sleeves to deal with the rest of dinner.

'You should have taken me with you today, you know?'

He slit an incision in a fresh piece of chicken and widened it out with his finger, expertly forming a pocket for more of the fragrant filling. His voice was soft and impassive, but he has a habit of pointedly not looking at you while he talks when he's emotional about something, and he was using the task to hide that fact. I'd been so consumed by my dissatisfaction that I'd gone to run my errand without even thinking about asking him to back me up; now he was hurt.

'I'm sorry. I guess I didn't want to drag you into something that was just based on a niggling doubt. I didn't think for a minute that it was going to go anywhere and I was right.'

I took a mouthful of the wine and let it wash around my mouth before I swallowed it, watching his lack of reaction and trying hard to read his mind.

'You've been around me long enough to know that I don't make any unnecessary demands of you, Zara. Even though I sometimes might want to.'

He looked up and smiled at me with a hint of sadness in his baby blue eyes.

'But I'm going to make a demand of you right now. I need you to promise me that you'll include me at all levels of this investigation. That means mundane door to door crap, crazy hunches and wild goose chases too. We might not yet know much about this one, but from what we do know, he feels enough of an affinity for you to take the time to find out your name and write to you. That gives me a very bad feeling about the whole thing.'

He finished up the last of the preparation and placed the chicken onto a foil lined baking tray sliding it into the hot oven. I opened my mouth to continue the conversation but the doorbell disturbed us. Mike and Hallie had arrived, I could see her dark hair through the opaque glass.

'I promise.'

I said and went to let them in.

Chapter 16

The evening was proving to be the perfect antidote to my day. Mike and Lee had hit it off right away and were already loudly conspiring about golf weekends and football matches while gesticulating with their bottles of Budweiser, and me and Hallie were already  well into our second bottle of red wine and giggling like school girls over everything and nothing.

'So I'm taking it that this delicious dinner wasn't entirely your doing, Webby?'

Hallie was grinning and looking decidedly inebriated. She'd been dieting hard for the past three months and looked great tonight in a fitted red dress with matching, chunky, costume jewellery bangles. Earlier in the evening she'd surprised me by asking if she could join me on my evening run a couple of nights a week, making me promise to take it easy on her to begin with, and I'd enthusiastically agreed to the idea.

'The recipes were all Lee's doing, but I did stuff the chicken breasts.'

Lee stopped talking and raised an eyebrow at us across the table.

'Okay, okay! I stuffed one and a half of the chicken breasts before he took them off me for being ham-fisted! I did turn the oven on unaided though!'

We all laughed and Mike raised his glass.

'I propose a toast to agreeing to do this more often.'

We brought bottles and glasses together with a clink and drank our approval to the suggestion.

'So, are you going to make an honest woman of her any time soon, Lee?'

Hallie was trying to look innocent, but mischief sparkled in her dark brown eyes as she dodged away from the good-natured slap that I aimed at her bare arm.

'Hals! Leave the poor guy alone, we've only just taken this first step towards going public and you're already booking the reception!'

I felt Lee's eyes resting on me and I beamed at him to let him know that I wasn't appalled by the idea, feeling heat rising in my cheeks.

'I think Zara's easily the most wonderful woman that I've ever met. I can't imagine wanting to have anybody else in my life. Once we've ironed out her reckless streak of course!'

They all laughed together and I made a show of giving them a mock scowl before relenting and joining in.

'I'll take that answer for now,' Hallie replied and shared a knowing look with her husband.

'Moving swiftly on. Who'd like dessert?'

I stood up and started to collect in the empty plates, with Lee following suit.

'It's okay, I'll get these. You can stay and entertain for a minute while I plate up,' he said, reaching out to take them from me.

'Definitely a keeper.'

Chimed in Hallie, loudly enough for him to hear as he headed for the kitchen, starting to giggle and taking another sip of wine to hide her amusement. Mike put his arm around her shoulders and leaned in to kiss her gently on the neck.

I'd watched him playing with their twin boys for hours on end in the back garden at summer barbeques, and admired how natural he was around children. I liked children a lot, but had somehow never seemed to manage to make time in my life for anything besides the job until Lee came along. Now I knew that the clock was well and truly ticking for me if I ever wanted to be able to chase children of my own around without the use of a frame.

Lee appeared to applause from our guests, carrying plated up individual chocolate mousses topped with cape gooseberries.

'They look wonderful, I can see I'm going to have to up my game for the return match at our place.'

I knew that was high praise indeed coming from Hallie. Any doubt that had ever existed about whether she would approve of my choice of partner was now well and truly gone.

A persistent knocking at the front door disturbed me before I could try a spoonful, and I waved Lee back down into his seat and went to answer it, glancing up at the clock to see that it was after eleven at night. Who the hell turns up for an unannounced visit at this time of the day?

I opened the door to see my sister Emily leaning heavily against the porch wall; she was clutching a half empty bottle of vodka in her hand and black tears streaked down her cheeks where her eyeliner had run.

'You're not supposed to arrive until tomorrow.'

Was the best I could manage, stepping aside to let her in.

'I thought I'd surprise you…surprise!'

She slurred, and then started to cry.

Chapter 17

'She's the human equivalent of a black hole. Everything that's around her gets sucked into her problems time and time again.'

I lay on Lee's chest in bed, with Emily passed out and snoring fit to raise the dead in my guest bedroom at the opposite side of the landing. I was absolutely furious with her for disrupting our perfect evening, but at least Mike and Hallie had been incredibly gracious about the intrusion. They’d stayed for long enough to finish desserts and a digestif before deciding to walk back to their own home half a mile or so away, and left us to the unenviable task of sorting out my staggeringly drunk baby sister.

'I don't know that much about the history between you, other than the little that you've told me tonight, but she's obviously going through a rough time at the moment. Don't you think you might be being a bit hard on her?'

He ran his fingers through my unruly curls, straightening them out and letting them spring back again.

'Believe me when I say that I've gone above and beyond the call of duty in letting her stay at all. We all warned her about David when he first arrived on the scene. He's all charm and smarm on the surface, but look beyond that and there's pure selfish egotism running right the way through to the other side.'

I kept my voice down, even though there was next to no chance of us waking up sleeping beauty.

'It's not a crime to be selfish and arrogant. There are plenty of people who would level the same accusations at me if they were asked.'

I hesitated before I replied, questioning the wisdom of sharing the next part for a split second before I spoke.

'There's more. But you'll have to promise to keep it to yourself after I tell you.'

I manoeuvred myself around so my chin was resting on the pillow beside him and I was looking into his eyes, which appeared to be as dark as my own in the absence of light.

'You have my word.'

I couldn't read his expression, but he sounded interested.

'Last time they fell out, Emily turned up at my parents with bruises on the tops of her arms, which she said were just from being clumsy, and they rang me immediately. I decided to confront him first instead of talking to her about it and tracked him down to his parents place.'