A Bed of Scorpions Read Free Page B

kind you use if you’re being audited. Or, in this case, if the CID are telling you not to leave town.’
    CID. I sat up. ‘I don’t understand. If the police think there are money issues …’ I was circling around the words I didn’t want to use, fraud, tax evasion, money-laundering, or – or what? ‘Are you saying the police are looking at this as … as not suicide?’ Now I was circling around the big word I didn’t want to use. But otherwise, why CID, why not Revenue and Customs? I was hazy on the division of labour at the police, but this didn’t sound right for embezzlement and suicide.
    More importantly, it sounded worryingly close to home. ‘Um, I can’t remember if I told you, when I last saw you …’ I stalled, started again. ‘Do you know about my …’ This was absurd. ‘Do you know I’m seeing a policeman?’
    Aidan stared me dead in the eye. ‘Why do you think I’m here?’
    Aidan had been looking at me as if I were an idiot forthe simple reason that I was an idiot. I hadn’t wondered why he was there at all. We were having lunch because we’d planned to have lunch. But that made no sense. If I’d found a colleague dead in my office – I flinched even at the thought – if I had, wouldn’t I have cancelled everything that could be cancelled? And lunch with a friend I saw every couple of years plainly fell into the ‘could be cancelled’ category.
    ‘What are you thinking? I’m not sure I’d know where to begin. I don’t know who does what at Scotland Yard.’ I was burbling, I knew, but I couldn’t stop. ‘Jake doesn’t talk about his work. Sure, he moans about the office, or his colleagues, but nothing else. Not ever. I don’t think he can – how can the details of violent death be conversation? And you know that’s what he does, don’t you? Murder, not fraud, or tax, or …’ I steadied myself ‘Or embezzlement.’
    Aidan was grim. ‘Of course I know that’s what he does. He’s doing it. In my gallery. Now.’
    The breath left my body. I opened my mouth. And closed it again. Then I did it again. Until, ‘Jake is in the gallery,’ I repeated. Of course that was why Aidan was here. And of course that was why Aidan was here. ‘You cancelled our lunch when you found Frank. And then, when the police arrived, and you realised Jake was …’ I waved a hand. ‘That Jake was Jake, you reinstated.’
    He nodded.
    I closed my eyes briefly, trying to gather my thoughts. Then, ‘I have no idea what to do or say. All I can think is that I need to stay as far out of this as possible. Far.’ If I’d been standing up, I think I would physically have been backing away. As it was, I felt myself pushing againstthe banquette, my hands rigid on the edge of the table. I tried to loosen my grip. Nothing. Because even as I said the words, I knew they weren’t realistic. How could I possibly stay out of this? And whose side was I on? Jake’s? Aidan’s? He and Frank had been my friends my whole adult life.
    I stopped short. Why was I thinking there were sides? Why did I assume Aidan’s side was different from Jake’s? If someone had killed Frank, then we were on the same side. Obviously. I said this to myself twice, to make sure I recognised how obvious it was. The bile sitting at the bottom of my throat replied that perhaps it wasn’t so obvious at all.
    And Jake. Jesus. That he wasn’t going to be happy was an understatement of epic proportions. Even calling it an understatement of epic proportions was an understatement of epic proportions. We had met when he was investigating the death of a courier. First I was simply someone he interviewed for background, and then, involuntarily, I had become more deeply involved. And he had hated that. That I’d been in danger had made him furious, not with me, but with himself for letting it happen. That I knew Aidan and Frank, that Aidan was having lunch with me even as Jake was opening an investigation, wasn’t going to get a five-star