More Deaths Than One Read Online Free PDF Page B

including the uniformed branch, were so busy that worries about Lois were forced to the back of her mind.
    It was the finding of Fleming’s body, and the need to inform his next of kin, which was now propelling Mayo towards the town. It was part of his job and he’d lost count of the times he’d had to perform this particular task, but he still detested it, especially where children were likely to be involved. He hated the thought of the trouble and anguish in store and the thought of being the instrument of it didn’t do much for his self-esteem. The ancient Greeks, when they had killed the bearer of bad tidings, might have had a point, he reflected sardonically.
    In an effort to avoid thinking deeply about what would never cease to be an ordeal for him, he sat back in the car as he was driven towards Baxendine House and let his thoughts drift. But rather than concentrating themselves on the case, as they should have done, he found them floating towards Alex. He blamed the scent W.P.C. Jenny Platt was wearing, delicate but disturbing in the close confines of the car, reminiscent of one Alex sometimes used. They’d stopped to pick her up at the station in case she should be needed and she sat in the back seat, pretty, curly-haired, young and smelling delicious. Tough as they come, in spite of that, a capable young woman who expected no favours because of her sex.
    Alex had the same sort of attitudes – and yet he at least knew how vulnerable she really was. Especially in that one area that was closed to him, the subject Alex was disinclined to discuss, knowing how he felt about it. It never ceased to amaze him that she could sort everyone else out but couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do the same for herself. Especially when it concerned that Irishman, that Liam, he thought bitterly, the ex-lover in her life, who wouldn’t remain ex. A man who wouldn’t let an old love die a decent death and yet wouldn’t do anything to resolve the situation hadn’t got much going for him in Mayo’s book. Lately, however, he’d had a feeling, quite unsupported by any evidence, that Liam might finally have quitted the scene. Why, Mayo didn’t know, because Alex certainly wasn’t saying. Nor where to, either. He could have jumped in a lake, flown to Australia or gone to the devil. All three for all Mayo knew, or cared.
    â€œYes?”
    The woman who answered the bell regarded the three of them unsmilingly, suspiciously eyeing W.P.C. Platt’s uniform.
    â€œWe’d like to speak to Mrs. Fleming, please,” Kite said.
    â€œI’m Georgina Fleming.”
    She wasn’t the woman in the photograph.
    She was taller for one thing, and where the other woman had been dark and full-figured, with her hair in a curling mass on her shoulders, this one was slender to the point of thinness, a narrow, taut figure, her light brown hair fashionably bobbed and crimped and frizzed like a rag doll’s. She was wearing a belted cream silk tunic with a high neck over a short, straight black skirt that revealed long slim legs in sheer black tights. Also, an impatient expression.
    â€œWhat is it you want?”
    Mayo explained who they were and that he wanted to speak to her about her husband, and at last she seemed to understand that she would have to let them in. Abruptly, she told them to follow her.
    She lived in one of the smart new warehouse conversion flats that had been built overlooking the river, on land that had once been heavily industrialised but was now cleared and landscaped with groups of young trees and flowering shrubs and flowerbeds at present filled with crocus. Winding through it was a man-made stream fed by the Stockwell itself, that you crossed by means of little bridges and which gave to the complex a feeling of being built on an island, and perhaps to the residents a superior feeling of insulation from the busy everyday life of the town which went on behind them. The