Still Waters Read Online Free PDF Page A

afternoon, after lunch with Mark, she’d talk to Pete Webb about the Mondiale suicide. The only thing she had to do was find an excuse to bomb down to Divisional Headquarters in Folkestone to talk to him. Since Hythe only boasted a police office working fewer than shop hours, any serious crime was dealt with by Folkestone CID.
    As detective chief superintendent, she was entitled to visit and talk to any CID unit in the county to appraise its current performance. Some visits were formal, involving chewing off the ears of recalcitrant officers. Others resulted in her carrying desperate appeals for extra funding, equipment or personnelback to HQ. But she’d like this to be altogether lower key, though she didn’t know Pete Webb well enough to admit that she was simply being nosy on Jim’s behalf. Perhaps Mark would have an idea. Or maybe she’d think of something during the dratted meeting she was about to be late for.
     
    ‘You could say you’re in the area – unspecified reasons – and just thought you’d pop in to congratulate them all on the success of Jim’s leaving do,’ Mark suggested, trimming fat off the ham with his salad.
    She did likewise. At their age flirting with cholesterol didn’t seem an option. ‘Pete only went to the first half.’
    ‘You were in the area and just thought you’d drop in? Come on, Fran, with your seniority and reputation you can do pretty well what you want.’
    ‘I don’t want to acquire a reputation for eccentricity – at least, not yet.’ She felt her chin go up in something like defiance.
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘I don’t want them to think I’m gaga,’ she admitted, chin going down again. ‘Every time I lose my specs, Mark, I think of my parents. And no, I won’t buy one of those cord things to hang them round my neck. It’d be support tights next!’
    ‘So you tell him that you were in the area buying a Zimmer frame and thought…’ He broke off to respond to his beeper. ‘The chief. I’d better be on my way.’

CHAPTER FIVE
    It would have been nice simply to drop into a CID office and see what was really going on. However, that was no longer possible. Obviously, these days unauthorised people off the street must not stroll beyond police station front desks. Moreover, Fran’s rank made her recognisable to most CID officers and a lot of reception staff too. So the element of surprise was lost, and before she was within yards of it a whole CID room could be transformed from a bantering gang of rowdy teenagers to a particularly docile and industrious group of professionals.
    As she popped her head into the office of Folkestone CID, she gave DI Pete Webb the benefit of the doubt. His desk looked as if its owner had been toiling since dawn on a variety of projects, most of them no doubt unrelated and many incompatible.
    Webb struggled to his feet, making a feverish attempt to adjust a non-existent tie. ‘Ma’am.’ He looked older by daylight than in the pub, perhaps forty-five, and decidedly less lecherous.
    ‘Hi, Pete. How’s things?’ She patted the paperwork. ‘There are obviously plenty of them.’ When he didn’t reply, she continued, ‘The new DCC’s making everyone dance, is he?’
    He managed a grin. ‘And Mr Gates has got a very complicated tune, ma’am.’
    ‘Guv. Or, since I’m here not on official business but because of something Jim Champion said, Fran will do. Good party, wasn’t it?’
    He flushed to his ears.
    Dimly Fran remembered a Mrs Webb, who had been big with twins last time they’d met. And Pete was already playing away from home, was he? Fran would have to make sure he was too exhausted at the end of his working day to do anything other than sink into his wife’s arms. Not that it was any of her business, of course, she told herself, moving a pile of files from the visitor’s chair and sitting down.
    Trying to sound casual, he said, ‘Decent bloke, Jim. One of the old school.’
    Whatever that meant. It probably included