Tainted Ground Read Free

fashion.
    â€˜Absolutely,’ Carrick replied with a grin. ‘And back at work terrorizing the ungodly in this lovely city of ours. Is your father well enough to see folk?’
    â€˜Yes, but he’s tired so we didn’t stay very long,’ I said.
    â€˜Know the feeling,’ he said and with another smile for us both was gone.
    â€˜What did you think about James?’ I asked Patrick when we were in the car.
    â€˜I’m not at all happy about him. Scots are only jolly like that when they’re putting a brave face on things. I have an idea he’s finding it a struggle to regain fitness.’
    A reply to Patrick’s application for a place on the pilot scheme came very quickly, almost uncannily so, making me wonder if my suspicions were correct. His own conditions or no, he was told to present himself, the day after next, at an address in London for a week-long course that would amount to a suitability test. Elspeth would have none of his reservations about leaving us, for as she said, John would be in hospital for at least another week after that and meantime she and I would have a ball. She ended up, when the time came, by practically shooing him out of the door.
    This too, of course, was brave talk for John was not a young man and by no means yet out of danger. During the next few days there were a couple of scares, one complication sufficiently serious to necessitate us having to go to the hospital during the night. But John weathered the storm and following a request from Elspeth I played down the seriousness of the temporary setbacks when I spoke to Patrick on the phone.
    â€˜He’d only have come rushing back, and to what purpose?’ she rightly said, garden herbs in her hand as she prepared to make chicken soup to take in to the patient.
    In a quiet moment I wondered which duties Patrick would be given, assuming he passed the preliminary aptitude tests. I almost wrote ‘attitude tests’, for that would be where any pitfalls would lie. He was never the archetypal army officer, although such a thing might not exist in today’s modern armed services. He is a man who has never posed, never yearned for the accessories of some of his colleagues, a couple of black Labradors and a Filofax; never drunk gin and tonic, preferring instead to have a beer and play darts in the public bar with the locals. He was in trouble countless times for doing things his own way – insubordination, they called it – and as he himself once said there were few carpets upon which he had not spent time. That he had reached the rank of lieutenant colonel had a lot to do with possessing the kind of charisma that ensured he could lead men into a black bog and safely out the other side, win the war and come home again, not to mention a downright scary ability to be instantly at home with whichever weapon was placed in his hands. And hey, hadn’t James and Joanna Carrick bought him a Swedish throwing axe for Christmas as a joke only to have him fall on their necks with gratitude as he had always wanted one and would now be able to go to Sweden and take everyone on as it was a sort of national sport there?
    I have not even touched on his proficiency in mimicry, almost essential when working undercover and the smile that would charm Sauron clean out of his tower.
    I surmised that if he got his own way as to where he would be stationed for the probationary period he would have to report to Avon and Somerset Police HQ at Portishead in Bristol and take a turn in various departments savouring all aspects of the work. It occurred to me that no one had yet told Carrick what was going on. Surely there was really no point until it actually happened.
    â€˜You know, I simply can’t imagine Patrick as a policeman,’ Elspeth said, all at once, her mind obviously on the same track as mine.
    It was a pity that neither of us thought through what the downside of this new venture might be.
    At