Shadow Play Read Online Free PDF Page B

year she’s been here and we’ve only got an old one on the file. The Chief Inspector’s worried: he says the section house is in a state of riot. Youthful jealousy, all that. Could we have a word with her? Oh Lord, what do we do?’
    He spoke with the weariness of a man who has lost sight of youthful lust and jealousy; on that account alone, Helen sympathised. She was silent. Redwood went on.
    â€˜The CI is politely concerned because he says he’s got six young bloods on one relief who are at one another’s throats, though God knows why, they don’t apparently have to compete for her favours, which are priced at roughly three drinks and a packet of crisps—’
    â€˜You mean that’s all they offer,’ said Helen angrily. ‘Mean bastards. They aren’t badly paid.’
    â€˜I mean that’s all she seems to ask,’ said Redwood. ‘The Chief Inspector says of course there’s nothing new about the situation, girls will be girls and boys will be boys, but they haven’t had a man-eater from the Crown Prosecution Service before. Doesn’t exactly engender respect from the constabulary for our service, does it?’ he finished lamely.
    â€˜And what did you say to the Chief Inspector?’
    â€˜I said I wasn’t responsible for the private lives of our case clerks, or lawyers for that matter.’ He looked at her meaningfully. Helen’s ongoing love affair with a police officer was still the subject of comment. ‘I asked him if he had had a word with the lads themselves, since it takes two to tango.’
    Helen, approving of this response, nodded.
    â€˜But he was insistent,’ Redwood went on. ‘Would someone have a word with our Rose? Well, it can’t be me. She’d spit in my eye.’
    â€˜And in mine,’ said Helen.
    â€˜But you seem to get on with her best.’
    â€˜Best doesn’t mean well. How can I stop her, if this is really what she’s doing? Perhaps I wouldn’t want to, perhaps she’s having fun …’
    â€˜I doubt it,’ Redwood volunteered with surprising wisdom. ‘I doubt it very much. I’ve always thought the height of sexual pleasure lay in monogamy.’ Helen looked at him in one of those rare moments when they understood one another. He was not, after all, a man devoid of compassion and he did have daughters. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said. ‘If you don’t mind me taking her under my wing rather more than I do, perhaps we could offer her alternative stimulus? Like better quality work? prospects of promotion?’ Redwood winced and smiled wanly. Helen always exacted a price.
    He watched her get up to leave, recovering her shopping as she went. Only Helen West, always in a hurry, would be shameless enough to dash into a meeting late, armed with groceries, as if she was trying to make some kind of point. He forgot she had come in from outside and it was a long haul to her own room.
    â€˜You look as if you’re about to feed the five thousand,’ he grunted.
    â€˜No,’ said Helen, suddenly embarrassed by the weight of what she carried. ‘Only one. But I need a wife.’
    The groceries bounced against her legs as she wandered down the endless corridor to Room 251. What on earth had possessed her to stop at a market stall and buy kilos of fruit and vegetables when she still had to do the supermarket on the way home? Oh yes, my turn to apologise for being so mean yesterday; my turn to cook and I hate cooking, why didn’t I just say we’d go out? But, poor soul is a bit embarrassed about being seen in public with an enormous black eye which I wasn’t qualified to kiss better.
    Tapping down the corridor over the lumpy carpet, rustling as she walked, Helen forgot Rose Darvey. Rose could wait until tomorrow. Waiting, like everything else, until Geoffrey Bailey with his black eye (worse this morning than the night