Fireflies Read Free Page A

address?’
         ‘You expect correctly’ said Jeff. ‘We’ll also need the names and contact details of all the staff, especially those who were on duty last night and those who started work this morning before the discovery of the body’.
         Helen sighed. ‘Very well’.
         ‘Now DC Wright will be leading the team here at the hotel’ said Jeff. ‘I don’t want to hear from him that you’ve been anything less than fully co-operative with our enquiries. Is that clear, Mrs. Curzon?’
         She glared at him with a look that said if she could stamp on him she most certainly would. ‘I don’t waste my energy fighting decisions over which I have no choice’. 
         ‘I’ll take that as a yes then’ said Jeff. ‘Do you live on the premises?’
         ‘Heavens, no! My husband and I live in a converted stables over in Saddleworth’.
         ‘Is he there now?’
         ‘Yes’ said Helen. ‘It was my turn to do the early start. Our property is worth a considerable amount of money which we might need if this does have a downward impact on the business’.
         Jeff sighed irritably. ‘Does he know about the body yet?’
         ‘No. I don’t know how he’ll take it. He’s been worried enough about the business as it is. This is the age of the consumer and everybody wants to cut costs. Everybody wants to spend twenty pounds on a level of service that costs a hundred to deliver. One’s margins are being squeezed all the time. That’s why this couldn’t have come at a worse time for us and furthermore I have tickets for Joan Collins and her one woman show tonight. I’m a great admirer of her. They don’t make real stars with talent like her anymore’.
         Talent? That’s not a word Jeff would put in the same sentence as Joan Collins. He’d only ever seen her play herself.
         ‘Like I said before Mrs. Curzon’ said Jeff, testily. ‘We expect your full co-operation’. 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    FIREFLIES TWO
          Andrea Kay cursed the bloody weather. On her way into work she’d been drenched in a downpour that could’ve signified that November had swapped its weather for that of the current month of May.
    ‘It’s the first of June on Thursday’ said Andrea as she and her friend Tina hung their coats up in the staff room. Everybody who worked at the super store liked to cover up their uniform when they were going to and from work otherwise they were accosted on the bus by elderly women who wanted to know if cat food was on special offer this week. ‘And it feels like bloody winter out there’.  
    ‘It’ll start rolling down the street soon if it carries on as heavily as this’ Tina remarked. ‘Traffic will come to a standstill, the heavens will descend on us, the world will stop spinning and all life as we know it will come to an end’.
    Andrea laughed. ‘You’re such a fucking drama Queen. By the way, how did you get on with that fit bloke from the Paradise club on Saturday?’
         ‘Oh, fine’ said Tina who really didn’t want to go into it. The fact was the whole situation had been an absolute disaster but she wasn’t about to tell Andrea that. ‘Anyway, nobody owns me and variety is the spice of life. You should try it’.
    Andrea smiled. She and her friend were so different .  Tina was outwardly confident, some would say loud and brash. She could walk into a pub anywhere on any night of the week and find a man to pull but she made damn sure she didn’t get pregnant. She was only twenty-two and she didn’t want a husband or even a sniff of kids until she was at least thirty which she admitted made her unusual amongst her family and some of her other friends on the estate where she came from where it wasn’t unusual to be a Grandmother at the age of thirty.    
    ‘ But I never see anyone I really fancy’ Andrea moaned.
    ‘ There are plenty of men out there who are