Five-Ring Circus (38 page)

It was Con's turn to shrug. “Who cares? The cases get you down sometimes?”

“Sometimes.”

“What d'you do then? Hand ‘em on to someone else?”

“It doesn't work like that. Not like on the wharves.” He grinned when he said it; he'd better or his father would be on his feet, two fists up. The wharves had been Con's parish, the union his religion.

“So you've never walked away from a case?”

“Not so far. But . . .”

“Here comes Mum. Pious as hell. She's just been talking to God or the Pope.”

Brigid Malone smiled as she approached, but she didn't put out her hand or turn her cheek to be kissed. She kept that sort of affection for her grandchildren; she, too belonged to the nineteenth century. A long while ago she had been a handsome woman, maybe even close to a beauty; but that, too, somehow seemed as distant as the nineteenth century. Like Con, she had shrunk over the past six months. Lately she had begun to talk of Ireland, of her girlhood: but only to her grandchildren. To talk like that to Scobie, her son, would be too difficult. With him she was still trapped in the tight corset of her earlier feelings. She loved him, he knew that, but if she shed tears for him he had never seen them.

“
How are Lisa and the children?”

“Fine. How's the Pope?”

“I'll ask him next time he writes. You coming in for a cuppa tea? I've made some scones.”

“Date scones?”

“What else?”

He followed them into the house. The safe house, where they had protected him as securely as he tried to do with his own children. Where crime, when it entered, could be handled with the simple logic of a cricket bat.

******

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Scobie Malone Series

Dragons at the Party

Now and Then, Amen

Babylon South

Murder Song

Pride's Harvest

Dark Summer

Bleak Spring

Autumn Maze

Winter Chill

Five-Ring Circus

Dilemma

The Bear Pit

Yesterday's Shadow

The Easy Sin

Standalone Novels

The City of Fading Light

Spearfield's Daughter

The Faraway Drums