Killing Me Softly (4 page)

Tonight, however, she was Abigail Moon, private citizen, with the prospect of a free weekend after tomorrow, a woman who was entertaining at home the man who was coming to feature most largely in her life. Ben had told her there was something important he wanted to say to her and if it was what she thought it was, she'd been thinking a lot about what her answer would be. She had a feeling he wasn't going to like it. But, like women everywhere, she felt the need to pave the way, in the traditional appeasing manner, through his stomach. Truth be known, as far as cooking went, he could beat her into a cocked hat (not single-minded enough about it, her mother said, and Abigail was bound to agree) but under pressure she could come up with the goods, and she'd promised herself that for once she'd present him with a meal which wouldn't suffer by comparison. She put the light out, slammed the office door and dashed for her car.

As she started the engine, the car clock lit up, making it plain that she hadn't really left anything like enough time for preparing an elaborate meal. Nor was there any question of speeding home through the country lanes in this fog, which had hung about all day and thickened with the dusk. That was the downside of living out of town. Damn! She wondered if she ought to ring Ben and tell him not to venture out to her cottage tonight. Stop making excuses, she told herself firmly. Ben was a journalist, editor of the local
Advertiser,
and he'd once been a correspondent in far-flung and dangerous parts of the globe and wouldn't be deterred by a little thing like fog. Besides, he could always be guaranteed to raise her spirits, which was something she could do with tonight.

And also, she'd had to stand him up far too many times lately.

A solution presented itself. She could pick up a ready-prepared meal at Miller's Wife, whose premises she happened to be passing, perhaps not entirely by chance. The shopping precinct was nearby, and kept open late on Thursdays, and Miller's Wife had followed suit, ready for customers with just such an emergency as hers. Miller's Wife. Ouch! said Ben, but Ben was a writer.

She told herself it wasn't necessary to feel guilty for short-cutting, she was a woman with a busy and demanding job. And with food of this sort, she was in no danger of serving up anything tacky. Miller's Wife products were superior indeed – and priced accordingly. But tonight was special, and to salve her conscience, she would have time to cook fresh vegetables from those she'd bought in her lunch hour. Moreover, she owed it to Ellie Redvers, whom she'd met at aerobics classes, and begun to make friends with, to extend her custom now and then ...

The young woman who looked after the shop, typed the odd invoice and sometimes drove their smart little white and honey-coloured van with the Wheatsheaf logo welcomed her cheerfully as she stepped inside. This was Barbie Nelson, a big girl with her hair scraped unceremoniously back into an elastic band, and wearing thick-lensed Bessie Bunter specs. Appallingly dressed, as always. OK, she was frankly overweight, but she could have done better than that, although somehow it didn't seem to matter too much, with Barbie. She had a warm and vibrant personality and a chuckling laugh; under the thick, clumsy clothing, the abundance of creamy flesh hinted at generosity.

‘Hi, haven't seen you in here for a while,' she remarked cheerfully.

‘I've been learning to cook for myself, lately.'

‘You and a few others.'

‘Like that, is it?' Abigail asked sympathetically, peering into the shiny cabinets. ‘Not doing too well?'

‘So-so.' Barbie was careful. ‘But is anybody, these days? Depressing, isn't it? For a newish venture, I suppose we can't grumble. It keeps us off the dole.'

‘Still just the three of you?' There were staff, Abigail knew, a boy for the heavy work, a woman in the kitchen for clearing up, casual help when they were extra busy. Plus a man who took care of the financial side – but she meant the three who really ran the place.

‘Most of the time, yes. But it's how we like it, how it works for us.'

Evidently it did in this case, just the three of them. There'd been other young women somewhere in the background on occasions, Abigail knew, but presumably they hadn't jelled.

With Barbie's help, she began to make a careful selection. A lobster mousse, for starters, then came hesitations over the main course.

‘Why don't you try the duck with black cherry sauce? It's a new line, but I can recommend it. One of Clare's inspirations, out of this world.'

Barbie looked like a woman who knew and enjoyed her food. Abigail decided to take her recommendation. ‘What about a pudding?'

‘You won't want much after all that.'

‘Right, we shan't! I've some good cheese, and some fruit. It'll be better appreciated, anyway.'

‘I like a man who prefers cheese, any day,' said Barbie. There wouldn't have been all this careful thought if it had been a woman who was being entertained, her smile implied. Abigail hoped this wasn't true, but thought rather guiltily that it might be.

‘Give my love to Ellie, tell her I'll ring her, fix something up,' she said as she paid for her packages, aware that she'd neglected to contact Ellie for too long, that a budding friendship needed nurturing if it was to thrive.

‘Sure. Don't forget to follow the instructions exactly, that's important, and
bon appétit.
Take care. And don't do anything I wouldn't do, mind.' Barbie's rich laugh followed Abigail as she left.

She was pleased with her purchases, and it was barely six.
What
a good idea it had been to pick the meal up here! There were no prizes for slaving over a hot stove. There'd even be enough time now to wash the fog out of her hair and have a leisurely soak.

The weather seemed to have got worse. The sodium lights glowed eerily through the soupy darkness. Buildings loomed either side. She pulled up her collar and headed for her car. Her keys were in the lock when the figure, tall and sinister, loomed up right in front of her. And instead of dropping everything and going into attack mode, she found herself clutching her chilly packages defensively to her chest with her free hand as if that might still the banging of her heart.

‘Hello, Abigail.'

‘Nick.' She released her held-in breath. ‘God, you scared me!' She'd been expecting to see him for some time, she'd heard he was around, and knew a meeting had to come, sooner or later. But she wished it hadn't been now. His timing had never been good.

‘Come and have a drink,' he said. ‘For old times' sake.'

‘I can't, Nick, I'm in a hurry –'

Then she decided that she could manage a quick one, if she dispensed with the soak she'd promised herself, because she wanted – no,
needed
– to get it over, this moment she had, if the truth were told, been dreading.

It was the same pub they'd often used for anonymity in the old days, a noisy one in a street off the Cornmarket. Nothing had changed, the same smell of chips, the same Space Invaders, the same beery crowd. Only Nick Spalding was different, in some way she couldn't pin down, although he seemed no less enigmatic, or unfathomable. Deep, that was Nick. Too serious and intense, but that was nothing new. It was part of what had helped to break them up.

‘What brings you back to Lavenstock, Nick?' she asked when he'd put the glass of tomato juice she'd requested in front of her. ‘You couldn't wait to shake the dust off.'

He hadn't lost his old manner of answering obliquely, either. ‘I've left the force, you know.'

Impossible to feign a surprise she didn't feel. She'd heard about it, and it had always been on the cards, anyway: he'd always been something of a misfit, a maverick, had never worked well as part of a team, though he was an able policeman for all that. She thought about the rumours she'd heard, wondered if they were true, and didn't welcome the thought. He'd been a disruptive influence in her life, and one of her few mistakes, career-wise. She thought he might be disruptive in anyone's life, but it was something she, at any rate, could do without.

‘Roz?' she inquired, carefully, forcing herself to ask. She'd only met his wife once, briefly, when recrimination had cracked across the space between them.

‘We've split, in a manner of speaking.' He swirled the melting ice in what was left of his scotch round in the bottom of his glass.

It had never been a seamless marriage, but she'd thought it patched up, the damage she'd helped to cause, the thing she'd found it hard to forgive herself for. And yet ... She made herself think carefully before asking the next question, but he spoke, abruptly, guessing what it was going to be before she could frame it: ‘He died.'

She knew he meant the child, his son, Michael, who was the reason he'd gone back to his wife after their unwise affair. A beautiful child with leukaemia. Cured, there'd been every reason to hope, but only in remission, it now seemed. ‘Oh, Nick,' she said softly.

‘It's OK, I've got used to it.' He brushed aside the beginnings of her sympathy, but the bunched muscles of his jaw denied what he was saying. ‘Look, I need to talk to you, Abigail.' His dark eyes, narrow in a lean face, looked around at the packed tables, the loud crowds around the bar. ‘A proper talk, I mean, not here.' His hand stretched out towards hers in a gesture that was all too familiar.

Alarm bells rang as she moved it out of reach. ‘It wouldn't be a good idea, Nick.'

‘You've got me wrong.' He smiled, slightly cynical. ‘It's advice I want, nothing else. There's something worrying me.'

Nick, admitting he was worried, now there was a thing! She was intrigued, but she'd been keeping one eye on the big clock over the bar, and the hands had reached now or never point. She had to leave. ‘I'm sorry, I can't, not now. Some other time?' She began to gather up her things, her leather shoulder bag and her gloves.

‘Tomorrow then? Or when it suits your convenience.'

He'd never been one to plead. In his face, she read watchfulness, but in his dark eyes ... panic? Surely not! ‘All right, but I won't be messed around again, Nick,' she warned.

He smiled, the one that appeared when he'd got his way, and she was immediately sorry she'd let herself be persuaded, but it was too late to back out now. ‘For a few minutes, tomorrow then, on my way to work.'

‘I'm staying at Prospect Street. Meet me there and I'll give you coffee.'

‘Prospect Street?'

‘Number four. It's property Roz still owns ...'

The Amhurst girls, as they'd been, Roz and her sister, had money, and property all over the town, left to them by their parents, who'd been killed in an air crash when the girls were still young. Abigail had to think for a moment where Prospect Street was, then she had it, an insignificant little row of houses where any prospect there had ever been was now obscured by the new Marks and Spencer's. But a street which might not remain insignificant in monetary terms if the demands for more car-parking space near the shopping precinct were ever satisfied, and compulsory purchase orders served. Clever Roz, it had been a good move to hold on to it.

Nick watched her through the haze of smoke as she left, noticed heads turning. She had bronze hair, lovely, that used to fall in a glorious tumble of waves to her shoulders when she let it out of its workaday plait. The plait had gone, now she was an inspector – didn't go with her status, he supposed – as had the short, assertive cut she'd adopted for a while. Now it was styled to fall in rippling curves,
haute couture
hairdressing. It looked right on her, spoke of her confidence with herself. Her clothes were better, too. She was on the way to becoming elegant. He wondered why he'd ever let her go.

Witty in a dry, ironic manner, unfailingly good-humoured, with a fund of amusing stories from his life as a newspaperman, Ben Appleyard had worked on many of the large nationals, and several of his former colleagues looked on his present job, editing a provincial newspaper, as a comedown, not worthy of him. He knew it was generally thought that he hadn't shown judgement in taking the position, that it wasn't a good career move. But Ben had had his own reasons. He was as adept at parrying questions about these reasons as he was at balancing the demands of his own job with Abigail's. He was a journalist first and foremost and she was a dedicated police officer; compromise was not always easy. It made for a delicate relationship. The depth of commitment on both sides would be tested tonight, and he wasn't sure how it would turn out. He wondered if she'd guessed, and how she'd respond. She was astute by nature as well as by training, and it was Ben's experience that when a woman provided this sort of meal and took such trouble with her clothes – calf-length skirt, sweater in soft wool, the colour of bitter chocolate, with a necklace of chunky gold nuggets inside the cowl neckline – she generally knew something was in the wind.

‘You look like an advert for Gold Blend, dark, strong and sexy,' he said, nuzzling her neck as they sat on the sofa in front of the fire, her legs across his knees, replete and a little sleepy with good food, finishing off the wine he'd brought. She laughed, content for the moment to talk of this and that, gradually falling into a companionable silence. It felt good to be with him. He was easy, comfortable in his skin, tall, dark and thin as whipcord, her sort of man.

She said suddenly, ‘Ben, I saw Nick Spalding today. He's back in Lavenstock.'

It was out before she thought twice about it. Mentioning her former lover might have been tactless, had it ever been any problem between them, but Ben kept his ear to the ground and had known about the relationship before he and Abigail had ever become a couple, anyway. ‘Does it bother you?' he asked, after a moment.

‘No,' she replied, in a way that made him think she wasn't exactly telling the truth: either that or she was trying to convince herself. His senses were alerted.