Secrets of Death Read Free

looked equally suspicious.
    The Lion Inn was just up the tram tracks off Shipstone Street and almost overshadowed by the bulk of the old Shipstone’s brewery. They could have gone to the Clock on Craven Road, which was nearer. There, though, the attractions were soul and curry nights or evenings of spiritual mediumship, rather than lunchtime jazz sessions. Worse, they would probably have been questioned by the regulars about who they were.
    When Fry entered the Lion, she found that Mackenzie had already laid claim to a corner of the pub. It had bare brick walls, but comfortable stripy chairs arranged round a low table near an upright piano.
    Jamie Callaghan was at the bar buying the drinks. Oddly, Callaghan reminded her of a Bulgarian police officer she’d known briefly when he visited Derbyshire to liaise on an inquiry a few years ago. Not that Callaghan was Eastern European. There was nothingSlavic about him. It was more the way he moved, the confident swagger, a swing of the shoulders.
    He was definitely the kind of man she shouldn’t be attracted to, especially as he was recently divorced, escaped from a marriage that had only lasted a year or two according to the gossip at St Ann’s. They said his wife had been caught having an affair with a Nottinghamshire dog-handler. That detail might have been invented for the sake of the cruel jokes it provided the opportunity for. Who knew whether it was true or not?
    But then, who knew why any marriage ended? There were always two sides to any story. She had a strong suspicion that Jamie Callaghan would be telling her his side before too long.
    ‘Have we lost him, sir?’ asked Callaghan, setting a round of drinks down on the table. He hadn’t asked Fry what she wanted, but he didn’t have to. Vodka when she needed it. A J 2 O apple and mango flavour when she was driving.
    ‘What do you mean?’ said Mackenzie, accepting a bottle of Spitfire.
    ‘Has Farrell skipped? Left the area?’
    Mackenzie clutched his beer bottle tightly as his face twisted into a grimace of frustration. ‘Someone must have tipped him off, if he has.’
    ‘I suppose it might just be a coincidence. He could have headed out for an evening with friends just when we decided to come for him.’
    ‘We didn’t identify any friends,’ pointed out Fry as she took a chair at the table.
    ‘That’strue. But it doesn’t mean he hasn’t got any.’
    ‘A man like Farrell doesn’t have friends,’ she said.
    Callaghan grinned, looked as if he was about to say something, then stopped. Fry wondered if he’d been going to make some joke about her not having any friends either. It was the kind of sly dig she’d heard often from colleagues during her career. Everyone thought twice now. It was hard to tell when banter crossed the line.
    Instead, Callaghan chose something worse.
    ‘He might have picked someone up in the past few days,’ he said.
    Fry shuddered. ‘No, don’t say that.’
    ‘Well, it’s a possibility.’
    He was right. But it was a possibility that didn’t bear thinking about as far as Diane Fry was concerned. That was what they’d worked so hard to prevent, after all.
    Mackenzie shrugged and took a drink of his beer.
    ‘Well, we’ll just have to find a way of tracking down Mr Farrell,’ he said. ‘He can’t hide from us for very long.’
    Fry’s phone buzzed again. And of course it was Angie. She had waited for her sister to get home, but she was still sitting in the pub. Fry saw that she’d been sent a photo. As soon as she clicked to open it, she knew perfectly well what it would be. The squashed-up Winston Churchill features of a hairless, goggle-eyed baby stared out at her from the screen. Fry flinched. She was finding it really difficult getting used to being an auntie.
    ‘What is it, Diane?’
    Sheput the phone away hastily before Callaghan saw the picture. ‘Nothing important. Just my sister.’
    ‘Oh, okay. I thought it looked like bad news.’
    Fry squinted at him