The Janus Stone (25 page)

TWO

D
ETECTIVE CHIEF INSPECTOR
Harry Nelson is sitting by a pool with a glass of beer in his hand thinking dark thoughts. It is evening and fairy lights have been strung in the trees, twinkling manically in the still water. Nelson's wife Michelle is sitting beside him but she has her back turned, carrying on an intense discussion about highlights with the woman at the next table. As Michelle is a hairdresser this is her area of expertise and Nelson knows better than to expect a pause in the monologue. His own area of expertise—murder—is less likely to prove a promising starting point for conversation.

When Nelson informed Michelle that he had a week's holiday left owing, she suggested that they go somewhere 'just the two of us.' At the time, Nelson had quite liked the sound of this. Their eldest daughter, Laura, had left for university in September and their seventeen-year-old, Rebecca, was unlikely to want to spend an entire week with her parents. 'Besides,' said Michelle, 'she won't want to miss school.' Nelson had grunted sceptically. Rebecca hardly ever seemed to go to school, her life as a sixth-former apparently consisting entirely of mysterious 'free periods' and even more mysterious 'field trips.' Even her A-level subjects are incomprehensible to Nelson. Psychology, Media Studies and Environmental Science. Psychology—he's seen enough of that at work, thank you very much. Every so often his boss, Gerry Whitcliffe, will wheel out some weedy psychologist to give him an 'offender profile.' The upshot of this always seems to be that they are looking for an inadequate loner who likes hurting people. Well, thanks and all that but Nelson reckoned he could have worked that out for himself, with no qualifications except a lifetime in the police force and an O level in metalwork. Media Studies seems to be another name for watching TV and what the hell is Environmental Science when it's at home? It's about climate change, said Michelle knowledgeably. But she couldn't fool him. They'd both left school at sixteen; as far as higher education was concerned, their children had entered a different world.

Nelson had fancied Scotland, or even Norway, but he had to use up his week before the end of March and Michelle wanted sun. If you didn't go for a long haul, the only sun in March seemed to be in the Canary Islands, so Michelle had booked them a week's full board in a four-star hotel in Lanzarote.

The hotel was nice enough and the island had a strange ash-grey charm of its own but, for Nelson, the week was purgatory. On the first night, Michelle had struck up a conversation with another couple, Lisa and Simon from Farnborough. Within ten minutes, Nelson had learnt all he had ever wanted to know about Simon's job as an IT consultant or Lisa's as a beautician. He learnt that they had two children, teenagers, currently staying with Lisa's parents (Stan and Evelyn), that they preferred Chinese take-aways to Indian and considered George Michael to be a great all-round entertainer. He learnt that Lisa was allergic to avocadoes and that Simon had Irritable Bowel Syndrome. He learnt that Lisa went to salsa on Wednesdays and that Simon had a golf handicap of thirteen.

'How many children do you have?' Lisa asked Nelson, fixing him with an intense short-sighted stare.

'Three,' said Nelson shortly. 'Three daughters.'

'Harry!' Michelle leant forward, gold necklaces jangling. 'We've got two daughters, Lisa. He'll forget his own name next.'

'Sorry,' Nelson turned back to his prawn cocktail. 'Two girls, eighteen and sixteen.'