Untimely Graves Read Online Free PDF Page B

comfortable and appealing, and now that she’d opened up its possibilities, she hoped that prospective buyers wouldn’t be slow to see its further potential. It would be a wrench, leaving it, but there were other houses.
    Oh, but the garden, that she’d so lovingly created, that she loved almost more than the house!
    And then there was Ben. Well, yes, Ben.
    The truth was, let’s face it, she thought, leaving both house and garden would be more traumatic than leaving Ben. Mainly because she wouldn’t really be leaving him at all, only moving
a bit further away – Hurstfield wasn’t far. It might be better for both of them to be further apart, in the circumstances. They’d never quite got it together, the idea of sharing a home. It suited them, living separately, as they did. Especially now, when they were not exactly seeing eye to eye, or to put it more bluntly, in the middle of a major row. Words had been bandied, unforgivable things said, words like ‘lack of integrity’ and ‘bloody ambitious females’ hurled between them. It was time for distancing, at least until tempers cooled.
    And in any case, Ben had never had any scruples about abandoning her in the past, when some more exciting job prospect had presented itself … Now it was her turn, Abigail told herself, feeling childish but unrepentant.
    On the whole, however, more adult feelings prevailed, that it was time to put to the test a theory she’d had for some time: she’d railed against their enforced separations in the past but perhaps that was what kept their relationship alive. It wasn’t the first time she’d thought this, but it was the first time she’d thought it seriously.
    She closed the file and shifted on her seat. She looked at Mayo. Should she, or shouldn’t she?
    Then, with an impetuosity worthy of her fellow inspector, Martin Kite, she blurted out: ‘That leak, to the press. I’d just like to say that – it didn’t come from me.’
    He put down the pen he’d been clicking and regarded her steadily. ‘I never for a moment thought it had, Abigail.’
    Whether he was speaking the strict truth or not, it sounded genuine – at least indicated he wasn’t saving anything up for some future occasion. She felt a rush of relief, unnecessary, for since when had Mayo ever been one to hold a grudge? You might get a right bollocking at the time, if you did the wrong thing, but he never bore malice. Bluntly north country, he said what he thought, and then forgot it. ‘Nothing more we can do here tonight. Go home, and have an early night, while you’ve got the chance.’
    She heard herself saying, ‘No rush, Ben’s away at the moment.’
    She hadn’t been fishing, honest she hadn’t, but now was the chance for him to suggest that since Alex was too, they could
grab a meal together, but he merely said, with a smile, ‘An even earlier night, then.’
    She could have suggested the meal herself, of course she could, but she was, as always, wary that it might have been construed wrongly. The thought that she could easily, if she let herself, find him very attractive, was intermittent, but never all that far away. Nor was the thought that he was her best chum’s man. Rubbish! A quick meal with a colleague, what was wrong with that? Nothing, if the colleague wasn’t Mayo.
    He said kindly, ‘You’re looking tired, lass. Do as I suggested, and get off home. And that’s an order.’
    They just didn’t have any idea, did they, men?

3
    ‘I know the house is going to rack and ruin, my lovey, I know it is, but what can I do?’
    Eileen Totterbridge poured Sam a mug of her thick, bracing tea, added milk, sweetened it the way she knew he’d always liked it and passed it across the kitchen table. Sam leaned his broad shoulders against the high-backed kitchen chair, raised his mug to her and sipped. Nectar! He never felt he was really home again until he’d been rejuvenated by Mrs Totty’s tea and entertained by her conversation. She was just