Liars All Read Free Page B

prettily chiming bell inside, slapped down the money and ran.
    He ran into – almost literally – a man he’d known most of his life, and spent the last ten years trying to arrest.
    The curious thing about Jack Deacon and Terry Walsh was not that they had made good careers for themselves on opposite sides of the law. It was that they had more in common now, and even in an odd way liked one another better, than when they were growing up in neighbouring streets in London. Each recognised the professionalism of the other even though it made his own job harder. It was a kind of respect. But it wouldn’t stop Walsh selling Battle Alley Police Station to a gullible developer if he could, or prevent Deacon putting Walsh in Parkhurst if the opportunity arose.

    Walsh was a shorter man than Deacon, his sturdy frame giving him a squarish appearance. The black crinkly hair was salted now with grey, the humorous brown eyes almost lost in a network of laughter lines. A tan that might have meant too many hours on a sunbed in fact testified to his love of sailing – he kept a sleek Camper & Nicholsons sloop called Salamander at the marina on the River Barley. Ostensibly he was in the bulk paper trade. Anyone who didn’t know him well would have thought him a prime example of a self-made man and a credit to the capitalist system. And in a way they’d have been right.
    He wasn’t alone. A young woman, taller than him, dressed in jeans and a rugby shirt, long fair hair pulled back in a rough ponytail, had her arm linked through his and they were laughing together. Deacon’s immediate reaction was absolute astonishment. Nothing he knew about Walsh – and he knew a lot more than he could prove – suggested he was other than a devoted family man.
    His second thought, hard on the heels of the first, was: Caroline will have your goolies…
    Walsh saw Deacon a second after Deacon saw Walsh. He gave him a friendly grin devoid of concern and hugged the girl’s arm closer. ‘Don’t look at her, Jack. She’s not fit to be seen in public. I tell people, She’s not my daughter. My daughter has a respectable job in an art gallery in Eastbourne. She washes and wears clean clothes.’
    â€˜Sophie?’ Deacon wasn’t sure he’d managed to keep the surprise out of his voice. He should have known. She wasn’t going to stay a fourteen-year-old girl on a pony for ever. She’d be…what…in her twenties now.

    â€˜Hello, Mr Deacon,’ the girl said cheerfully. ‘Ignore my dad. He’s still in denial about my new career. He’ll feel differently when I win Badminton.’
    Deacon frowned. ‘You play badminton?’
    Happily, Sophie looked more like her mother than her father, but the grin was pure Walsh – mischievous without malice. Even people who knew what Walsh was capable of had to fight not to like the man. ‘Three-day eventing. I’m a working pupil at an eventing yard. My dad thinks it’s not a proper job.’
    â€˜It’s a proper job,’ admitted Walsh. ‘It’s just not a very clean job.’
    It was a mud-spattered hatchback that Sophie Walsh got into. Walsh waved her off and, after a moment, somewhat embarrassed, Deacon did too.
    â€˜I’d buy her a better car,’ said Walsh, ‘but she wants to pay her own way. Which you have to admire, particularly since she earns a lot less than she did in Eastbourne. I keep the horses for her, and every so often her mother despairs of how she looks and buys her a new outfit. Apart from that she’s self-sufficient. Actually,’ he admitted, ‘I’m rather proud of her. This was her dream and she was willing to make sacrifices for it. Which is more than you can say for a lot of kids.’
    The smile of fatherly contentment froze on his face and he looked at Deacon with concern. ‘Sorry, Jack, I wasn’t thinking. Isn’t Mrs Farrell