Evil Turn (Nathan Hawk Mystery) Read Online Free PDF Page B

resources.”
    I nodded. “No spare box of coppers lying around.”
    I asked him to give me twenty-four hours to think it over, which would involve putting the matter to Laura Peterson. He understood my wish to do so completely. She came to my house far too often to be left out of the loop. Besides, he added with a smile, it would give him a day to check on her, the gardener and Jean Langan, my lady who does.
    As we drank our coffee he spoke wistfully about his dead son, the things he hadn’t done for him and with him. It wasn’t self-pity, but in the space of twenty minutes he beat himself up so badly that a decent referee would’ve stopped the fight after the first round. When he was done he gave me a couple of chances to backtrack, to say no to the whole dumb safe-house project. I didn’t take them. I had an uncomfortable feeling he’d known all along that I wouldn’t.

- 2 -
     
    I took Laura to The Thatch in Thame that evening and we sat in a corner of the old restaurant, all low beams to crack your head on and sudden mirrors to record the passage of time. It was both the right and the wrong place to have chosen: good because the noise from other customers muffled what I had to say, bad because their conversation tested my legendary tolerance.
    The clientele was largely mid-thirties, middle-incomers, and a dozen or so were celebrating a birthday at the next table. One of the women caught my attention immediately with her harsh, painful face, blonde hair framing it on three sides. She wore a black, silky dress that had seen younger, slimmer days, but her defining feature was the rapid gunfire laughter, ten degrees louder than anyone else’s, and the more she drank, the more easily it was triggered. I looked at her critically once or twice until I realised that her friends also found her annoying; indeed they were doing their best to sideline her, a fact which gradually made me change sides in this undeclared battle of wills. At eight o’clock, shortly after we arrived, I could have killed her; by nine I would have laid down my life for her. I digress...
    Laura was intrigued to know why there’d been a departure from our normal routine on busy days of a quick supper at the pub in Winchendon. I told her that, much as I loved Annie McKinnon’s home cooking, a private conversation in The Crown always became public knowledge within twenty-four hours. Nobody knew how it happened; it was something to do with English village life being made that way.
    She’d had a long, hard day at the surgery and was still concerned about one of her younger colleagues who’d had a lump removed from her breast a month ago. Laura was keen to support this newcomer to the practice and, rather than bring in a locum, she was sharing Doctor Sheila Bright’s workload with another partner. I’d voiced my opinion, in spite of it not being asked for, that the seventy-, eighty-hour weeks couldn’t go on for much longer. Laura said they could and would until Sheila’s health was restored.
    Though tired she was looking pretty good, better than some of the birthday crowd close by. She’s one of the few middle-aged women I know who look decent in jeans anyway, and that’s mainly to do with the long legs. Above the waist she was wearing a black velvet jacket and a mass of her favourite silver jewellery.
    Over one of the house specialities, devilled kidneys on toast, I told her about the murder of the two trawlermen, then explained what Tom Blackwell had asked for and I’d virtually agreed to. She blinked at me, troubled by some new contact lenses.
    “You mean his star witness is coming to stay at Beech Tree along with two police officers for a whole month?”
    I couldn’t work out if she was troubled or thrilled by the prospect but opted to assume the latter.
    “What sort of chap is this Tom Blackwell? If he’s an old friend, presumably you can trust him?”
    I corrected her quickly. Blackwell wasn’t a friend, he was an acquaintance, a