Cambridge Blue - Alison Bruce [131]
She snapped off another row of squares from her half-eaten bar of Dairy Milk. Thank God for chocolate.
Behind her the door opened and she knew, without looking, that the footsteps belonged to Michael Kincaide. She’d avoided him for two days and had hoped that if she ignored him sufficiently, he’d go away, but now she felt him sneak up on her. He planted a ticklish kiss on the bare skin at the back of her neck, making goosebumps.
She swung her chair around and stared up at him. He was wearing a suit which made him look all of his twenty-seven years. Was that an age gap big enough for him to be a father figure?
His aftershave was Calvin Klein, and it used to smell good to her, just a splash too strong, but still good. She wasn’t sure when she’d gone off it.
‘I’m sorry if I’ve upset you, Mel. I’ve really missed you,’ he said. ‘Why not meet me later and we can talk?’ He was so sincere that he was starting to remind her of the double-glazing salesman who had persuaded her mum to replace a perfectly good set of windows.
‘I’ve grown out of you, Michael. Go and find someone else.’ She sounded more assertive than she felt, and was pleased when he didn’t hang around to argue. Off he went, banging the door open with the heel of his hand.
It was caught by Goodhew coming the other way. ‘Have you upset him?’ he enquired.
‘I’ve ended my date-a-married-man phase.’
‘Oh, I see. And how about Toby?’
‘I’ll see.’ She changed the subject. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Early finish today, I’m meeting someone at the pub.’
Then it was her turn to say, ‘Oh, I see.’
He left through the back door of the station and she watched him until he disappeared from view.
Bryn O’Brien sat on the bench seat in his workshop making a pointless examination of the end of his five-eighths spanner.
For a while he had felt he was in the direct path of the police investigation. It had been like a juggernaut thundering towards him, headlights blazing, horn blaring. And he had been transfixed, seemingly unable to step out of the route that lined up with its front grille. But now it had passed him. It had thrown up dust and confusion and buffeted him with its slipstream, before he realized that he was back in his usual quiet spot at the side of the road. He guessed he’d hear it rumble on for some time yet as it manoeuvred across town.
The whole experience had introduced him to the unfamiliar territory of deep thought, definitely not somewhere he wanted to linger for long, but he gave a few minutes to Willis and Lorna and Victoria. Death had never touched him before, and now, as if to prove things came in threes, they’d all died in the space of weeks.
He didn’t know how he was supposed to feel. He’d had an experience of passing closeness to each of them but, in reality, he knew less than nothing about any of them. And that was kind of how it was with everyone he knew. Therefore his deep thought for the day was really to ask himself if that was enough.
He wondered then about Gary Goodhew. Perhaps just the knowledge that they’d been classmates gave them something of a bond, or maybe he’d only imagined that they’d been, to some extent, on the same wavelength.
Bryn gave a small chuckle. He was hardly going to track Gary down and ask if they could be friends. What next, swapping football cards? Besides, a mate in the police force – it didn’t seem likely.
But, even so . . .
Bryn threw the spanner back in the toolbox and grabbed his jacket. It wouldn’t hurt to ask Gary to meet him for a drink, then they’d see.
There was one more thing that Goodhew knew he needed to do before the end of the day. The Avery pub stood on Parker’s Piece, at the opposite end to Parkside police station, and a few hundred yards from his own flat.
Inside the pub his grandmother was waiting for him with two halves of lager. ‘I thought champagne would be inappropriate for the occasion – besides, I