Murder Club - Mark Pearson [60]
‘Are you on a promise, Cartwright?’ he said.
‘Sir?’
‘Never mind. But I am guessing you are not dolled up like a tart’s breakfast for Roy’s and my benefit.’
‘You look gorgeous as ever, Sally darling,’ said Roy and started buttering some bread.
‘I don’t want butter on mine,’ said Delaney.
‘Jeez, Jack. How long have you been coming here?’
‘Too bloody long. Next year I’m going vegan!’
Roy laughed as he slipped some bacon into the buttered slices and handed the sandwich over to Sally Cartwright in a paper napkin. ‘Beauty before age,’ he said.
‘Cheers, Roy,’ said Sally, and squirted some tomato ketchup into her sarnie.
Roy Smiley flipped the egg briefly, put three slices of bacon on a slice of unbuttered bread, added the egg, topped it with another slice of bread and handed it over to Delaney, who grunted approvingly.
‘Reckon it’s going to snow?’ asked Sally.
‘Sing we joyous, all together, heedless of the wind and weather,’ sang Roy.
‘Fa la la la la, la la la la,’ added Sally.
Delaney shook his head despairingly and took another bite of his sandwich.
‘So I’ve done a bit of looking into the Reverend Geoffrey Hunt,’ said DC Cartwright.
‘And?’
‘He retired from the church twenty years ago.’
‘About the same time our man was planted in his churchyard.’
‘Give or take, I guess. As you know, Derek Bowman couldn’t be very specific. Could be after Hunt’s time. Could be during, as you say.’
Delaney finished his sandwich and wiped his lips clean with the paper napkin, before screwing it into a ball and handing it over to Roy.
‘How old was Hunt when he retired?’
‘Late forties. Health reasons apparently. And his wife was on a good wage.
‘University lecturers? Wasn’t aware they were well paid …’
Sally looked at him curiously.
‘Yeah, well, I didn’t just go to the pub last night, Sally. I did some research of my own.’
‘Where?’
‘Never mind where.’
‘Anyway Dr Hunt was a publishing academic. She had one book which sold an awful lot overseas as well as here. Particularly in America.’
‘So he could afford to retire.’
‘Yes. Just about.’
‘What else do we know?’
‘Well this is where it gets interesting.’
‘Get on with it then, Sally. For God’s sake. We’ve got a murder to investigate.’
‘I know, sir.’
‘Well?’ added Roy.
Sally smiled. ‘We did a missing-persons check for the area, going back nineteen to twenty-one years.’
‘And?’
‘And it seems that the Reverend Geoffrey Hunt’s brother, Jeremy Hunt, went missing in that period.’
‘And?’
‘And he was never found, sir.’
44.
BIBLE STEVE WAS floating in a sea of mist and fog.
He held his hands fanned in front of him, moving his arms in a slow breaststroke, but the milky light slipped between his fingers and he seemed hardly to be moving at all. His eyes were fogged with the stuff and it filled his lungs with a cold moistness. And then the mist thickened into a cloud and started sliding down his body. And a light overhead grew brighter and brighter. And his feet came forward, and the white stuff around him sank down around his ankles. And the light dazzled, reflecting off the cold steel in his hands, and the blood poured over his hands like hot soup.
Then he opened his eyes and screamed.
Patricia Hunt took the kettle off the stove and placed it carefully on the trivet beside it. Her hand throbbed a little, but she had been quick to run it under cold water, so that it hadn’t blistered and worsened overnight.
She looked across at her husband, who was dressed in pyjamas and a dressing gown and was hanging up the phone.
‘It was the police,’ he said.
Patricia nodded without replying.
‘They’ll be here a little later. I had better get dressed.’
‘Better had.’
‘We have to be very sure of what we say, Patricia.’
‘I know.’
‘Everything’s going to be all right.’ He nodded reassuringly and then his whole body shook again as he coughed and fought for breath. He gestured to the dresser, and his wife hurried across to fetch his inhaler for him, shaking it vigorously. He took a quick breath and, after a few moments, squeezed it again and took a deeper breath.