A Wreath for my Sister Read Online Free PDF Page A

room. One other officer busy at his work. She sat on the edge of Mike’s desk. ‘All right, Tarzan,’ she said. ‘What’s the problem?’
    He leaned right back in his chair and stared at her, with something very like hurt at the back of his eyes.
    â€˜Hobnobbing at the Legal Ball,’ he said, looking at her.
    â€˜Mind your own business,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing to do with you.’
    His eyes gleamed. ‘Have a good time?’
    She nodded. ‘It was all right.’
    He looked at her, eyebrows raised.
    â€˜I met Tom’s senior partner,’ she said. ‘He asked me to look into the disappearance of his daughter. She vanished two years ago. Do you remember the case?’
    â€˜Women are always going missing,’ he said, scowling. ‘What was her name? I’ll dig out the file.’
    â€˜Deborah. Deborah Halliday. Her maiden name was Pelham. It was roughly two years ago. She disappeared leaving a child behind – a little boy. He was only eight months old.’
    She hesitated, then put her hand on his arm. ‘Mike,’ she said awkwardly, ‘don’t make things difficult for me.’ She weighed up whether she could confide in him and decided against it. He would not be sympathetic. He had never liked Matthew. So she sighed and said nothing about having seen him. Instead she concentrated on the missing girl.
    â€˜Her father seemed a nice man,’ she commented, ‘if a trifle forceful. Still very upset at his daughter’s disappearance.’ She stopped. ‘I’d like to help him.’
    Mike said nothing.
    â€˜Please,’ she said.
    Mike nodded briefly and pushed past her. ‘I’ll get the file, then,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t want your legal friends disappointed.’
    Her temper, already stretched by the tensions of the night before, snapped. ‘Oh, for God’s sake ...’
    And, unpredictable as ever, Mike grinned. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing much doing here this morning. Not unless you count shoplifting. I suppose we may as well open up an old case.’
    She made a face. ‘No, I do not count shoplifting. One of the PCs can sort that one out.’
    â€˜Don’t you mean one of the WPCs?’
    â€˜Why? What’s been stolen?’
    He looked at his pad. ‘A dress,’ he said. ‘A red evening dress.’
    Then he grinned again. ‘What did you wear last night, Inspector?’
    â€˜A red evening dress.’
    â€˜I don’t think that would impress your solicitor friends.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Wearing a stolen dress.’
    They laughed together then, and the tension that had begun the morning was over.
    Mike returned ten minutes later with a thick manila file and handed it to her.
    â€˜Did you deal with the case?’ she asked.
    â€˜Yeah.’
    Joanna looked up at him. Matthew had once given Korpanski the nickname of Tarzan, mocking his stolid attitude combined with extraordinarily well-developed muscles. Matthew had a keen if cruel wit, but as usual it was spot on. The nickname suited Detective Sergeant Korpanski. Prickly, sometimes quite obtuse, with a huge chip on his shoulder, but ... She smiled. She had grown used to working with him. They were a team – even if it was sometimes an uneasy team ...
    She stopped dreaming. Mike was speaking to her:
    â€˜As Dad was something of a mouthy bigwig,’ he said, ‘we did a pretty fair job of hunting for Deborah.’
    He produced a picture of the girl, a copy of the one Joanna had seen pulled from Randall Pelham’s pocket.
    â€˜These are the facts. She left her husband in Saudi Arabia six months before she disappeared, taking with her her baby son, Sebastian.’
    Joanna gave Mike a questioning look and he nodded.
    â€˜Yes,’ he said. ‘You’ve guessed it. There was something going on in Saudi. At least there was a rumour –