Murder... Now and Then Read Online Free PDF Page A

remembered, not the man. A scar, running from just under the left ear almost to the corner of his mouth. An irregular pale line through the grey, formally trimmed beard. Lloyd had seen it before. The beard hadn’t been grey then. He looked away quickly as Holyoak’s eyes met his across the room. Even that was familiar; he had done that before.
    â€˜The minister’s here,’ said Anna Worthing, as the official car pulled up outside, and she moved slightly closer to Lloyd, almost as if for protection. Lloyd checked the impulse to put his arm round her, and brought his thoughts firmly back to the here and now, the tangible and real. A moment’s déjà vu , that was all.
    He saw the nervous glance she gave as Holyoak and the reception party moved towards the glass doors to meet their guest of honour, and laughed. ‘He won’t eat you,’ he said.
    â€˜I know.’ She smiled. ‘But he’s important.’
    â€˜So what’s your job?’ Lloyd asked.
    She looked a little uncomfortable as she answered. ‘I’m in public relations,’ she said.
    It sounded like a lie, but for the life of him Lloyd couldn’t imagine what reason she would have for lying. It was, he supposed, a hazard of his at times antisocial occupation. You couldn’t simply make small talk if half your life was spent interviewing suspects. ‘It’ll all go without a hitch,’ he assured her, employing more Welshness than was necessary in his accent. ‘You’ll see. If the sniffer dogs say there aren’t any bombs, I’m quite happy to take their word for it.’
    She cast one last look towards the foyer, across which had been hung an outsize white ribbon. A pair of gold scissors lay on a small table. ‘It’s not bombs I’m worried about,’ she said, looking up at Lloyd.
    This pleased him, since most of the ladies of his acquaintance were colleagues, and virtually as tall as he was; his lack of height had over the years been joined by a lack of hair, and both these inadequacies were less noticeable when someone had to look up at him. ‘Don’t worry about him,’ he said. ‘He’s not important. None of them is. They’re all just candidates in a general election.’
    But she wasn’t impressed by this piece of wisdom. ‘He’s important enough to have armed police crawling all over the building,’ she said.
    Lloyd sighed. ‘ That’s just a sign of the times,’ he pointed out. ‘Not of his importance.’
    â€˜He’s a cabinet minister ,’ she said.
    â€˜Not until he and his party are re-elected,’ Lloyd said in a stage whisper. ‘Maybe not even then. He might find himself on the back-benches. But Holyoak’s quite a big wheel himself, isn’t he? Back in Amsterdam or wherever?’
    â€˜Not just there,’ she said, a note of irritation finding its way through her general nervousness. ‘I’d forgotten how cut off Britain is. Everyone in Europe knows Victor Holyoak. The papers here might not find him newsworthy, but they do abroad, believe me.’
    Lloyd accepted the rebuke with a smile. ‘Well then,’ he said. ‘You don’t get the jitters just because he walks into a room, do you?’
    â€˜Not always,’ she said, with a half-smile. Then it went, and the little worried frown that Lloyd found very attractive came back. ‘But this is very important to him,’ she said.
    The minister walked towards the open doors followed by the sitting MP, two bodyguards, two TV news cameras, and a staggering number of press photographers, interested in the election, not – as the girl had pointed out – in some entrepreneur of whom their readers had never heard. Stansfield, with its marginal status, had become the place to be seen, and to be seen to care about very deeply, in the three-week scramble to Election Day.
    â€˜Is there a collective