The Edge Read Free

wants to add anything, you’d better go your designated ways. After I’ve seen the Bartons again, mine is to interview the press. It seems the PR office is suffering a fit of the vapours. Regional Crimes will meet up with this augmented murder team at 3 p.m. when the Incident Room’s fully prepared. Everyone reports then to Sergeant Wally Pierce as Office Manager.’
    The meeting broke up. Yeadings was aware of Beaumont hovering, sleekly alerted and wearing his star-pupil expression. But he wasn’t going to be awarded any gold stars for the moment. He clearly imagined that Z had been sidelined for him to receive an accolade discreetly.
    Shuffling his papers, Yeadings waited for his tactful cough of reminder. When it came he looked up as if suddenly recalling the present. ‘Oh, yes. The AC Personnel has confirmed DI Salmon’s to stay on indefinitely. When he gets back from leave he’ll be running the case as temporary DCI under me as Senior Investigating Officer.’

    With that the DS would have to be satisfied. ‘Ah, Beaumont,’ said Yeadings, as if throwing a disgruntled dog a bone, ‘I’ll take you along, to talk to the Bartons.’
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    Rain was still sheeting down as they found Connie Barton scrubbing carrots in the kitchen sink. She hadn’t forgotten their intended visit. In the dining room freshly baked scones topped with cream and raspberry jam, plus a tea-set of exuberantly floral bone china, were set out on a stiffly starched tablecloth. It struck Yeadings as almost indecent to make such an occasion of it. And yet he understood the woman’s need for some sense of decent normality.
    â€˜I’ll jest call my husband,’ she offered, went out into the still boisterous wind and applied herself energetically to the brass ship’s-bell that hung in the porch. ‘He’s heard it,’ she shouted as a distant double blast on a whistle replied.
    â€˜You probably reckernised it’s a police one,’ she said proudly. ‘My Uncle Charlie was a copper up in Nottingham and he left it to me. Better than running up an almighty bill with them mobile phones.’
    They heard Barton arrive at the back door, then splashings in the scullery’s ceramic sink, followed by the wooden rumble of a roller towel. He joined them scarlet-faced. ‘How’d it go then?’ his wife asked.
    â€˜Fine. A healthy little heifer calf, pretty as her mother. And Red Rose made a good job of it, so she did.’
    â€˜There, then,’ said Connie. ‘I knew she’d be a breeder. Still, that’s not what these gen’elmen came to hear about. We have to tell them what we know about the folks up at the house.’
    Beaumont produced a pocket tape-recorder and found a place for it next to the scones. ‘We’d like to use this, if that’s acceptable,’ Yeadings said, seeing the man’s suspicious glance at it. ‘It saves my sergeant having to take notes.’
    Connie smiled confidently, hefting the heavy teapot. ‘We’re used enough to them things. Send messages that way to our grandchildren in New Zealand. Their Mum died last winter of leukaemia, so we make sure to keep in touch regular.’
    It was clear to Yeadings that, shocking as news of the murder had been, this couple were accustomed to take life and death as a
part of the expected. And as they explained how things were – they the real husbandmen while the owners regarded the herd as an investment or tax-deductible statistic – it appeared that beyond a normal countryman’s deference for the ‘gaffer’, Ned Barton held no great opinion of the adult Hoads personally. Indeed, he and Connie seemed to have had more contact with the younger members of the family.
    â€˜Would you happen to know if young Angela had a special friend at school?’ Beaumont probed cautiously.
    â€˜Not one special one,’ Connie doubted.