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By Root 1527 0

able to get out of view of the café in which Fairclough had been meeting with the Scotland Yard woman, so after Fairclough had a few final words with her, all it took was a few more minutes of waiting before she emerged from the café as well. And then it was nothing to see where she was going since where she was going turned out to be the Crow and Eagle at the junction of the main road through Milnthorpe and the route to Arnside. So on this day Zed had parked himself there in the early A.M., in the vicinity of a NatWest, and he’d been skulking round the cash point for hours, eyes on the inn, waiting for the woman to emerge. This garnered him many a look of suspicion from people going in and out of the bank, and a few pointed words from other people using the cash point. He was even prodded once in the chest by an old bag telling him to “move away, laddie, or I’ll have the coppers on you… I know your kind, I do,” so he began to hope that something would happen soon on the Scotland Yard end of things or he was going to get hauled into the nick for loitering with intent.

He’d had his morning phone call with Yaffa, and this was on his mind. She hadn’t returned his kissy noises, the reason turning out to be that his mother wasn’t in the room and a show of affection hadn’t been necessary to keep Susanna Benjamin happy. Plus, it also turned out that there were problems developing with Micah out in Tel Aviv, apparently getting a bit weary with playing Yaffa’s brother Ari. In conversation with Micah, she had said attractive in reference to Zed. It was no big thing for goodness sake, she’d told Micah, but he hadn’t been pleased. And while Zed had been dwelling on the fact that Yaffa had used the word attractive to refer to him, she’d gone on to say that there was, sadly enough, a very good chance that she was going to have to move on soon to other lodgings. Quite beside himself was how she put it in reference to Micah. She was afraid his worry over her commitment to him was going to put him off his studies. For a man in medical school, this was out of the question. But you know how it is when a man becomes uneasy about his woman, Zed.

Actually, Zed had no idea how it was when a man became uneasy about his woman since he’d so far spent his adult years avoiding women altogether.

Yaffa said that she thought she could appease her fiancé for a while longer, but only for a while. Then she would either have to move on or she would have to return to Tel Aviv.

Zed hadn’t known what to say. He was hardly in a position to beg her to stay. He wasn’t even sure why begging her to stay crossed his mind in the first place. Yet that entreaty was what was on the tip of his tongue at the end of their conversation. What was not on the tip of his tongue was have a nice trip home, then, which was something of a surprise to him.

She’d rung off before he could say anything at all. He wanted to ring her back and tell her that he’d miss her terribly, he hadn’t intended her to think from his silence that he wouldn’t, he’d enjoyed their every conversation, in fact she was just the sort of woman… But he couldn’t go that far. Alas and alack, he thought. They’d have to be Keats and Fanny writing tortured letters to each other and there was an end to the matter.

Zed was so consumed with his thoughts about Yaffa and Micah and the great irony of stumbling across a woman who was— let’s face it— perfect for him, only to find her engaged to another man, that when Nick Fairclough turned up at the Crow and Eagle and went inside, the importance of this didn’t register at first. He merely thought, Ah, there’s old Nick Fairclough, and he’d pulled his cap more firmly down on his head and slouched to reduce his size so as to make himself less noticeable. It was only after Fairclough’s visit to the inn was so brief and only after he strode out with a stony expression on his face that Zed realised what one and one amounted to, which was Fairclough plus the detective equals Something Worthy of Note Happening.

Then the detective herself came out. She was on her mobile. A