Dean lay on his bunk, reading a paperback, in as much as his eyes were scanning the pages, but his mind was on his forthcoming trial. Last time had been bad enough, but this time he was being accused of murder, and even he felt that the prosecution had a watertight case. He closed the book, and stopped pretending to read. This was what he had been doing exactly a year ago today, he realized. For all he knew, it was the same paperback.
On the first of August last year, he had been picked up for skipping bail, and he had been remanded in custody to await trial; it had been the end of May before he’d seen the outside world again. Two weeks of freedom, and he’d found himself back in prison, but this time …
Dean felt sick. This time, there was a real possibility that the outside world would become nothing more than a distant memory.
His solicitor and barrister had once again told him, in effect, that he should admit it; they would plead diminished responsibility. Not that they gave that defence much chance of succeeding, but it might just work, they said, given a liberal jury and a fair wind. If it did, the resultant verdict of manslaughter would give the judge some leeway when it came to sentencing. They held out little hope at all for a straight not guilty plea, in view of the evidence, and if the verdict went against him, it was automatic life imprisonment. And he had told them, once again, that he had no intention of pleading guilty to something he had not done.
He would be found guilty – apart from anything else, there seemed to have been no one else who could have done it. But unless his responsibility for his actions was truly diminished, to the extent that he had no recollection whatsoever of doing anything other than falling over the woman’s body, he had not done it, and therefore someone else had. The lawyers said they believed him, but it was professional belief, and Dean couldn’t really blame them for being sceptical.
They were doing their best for him, as they were obliged to do; they were trying to find out if anyone else had been seen in the area, if there was some way in which suspicion could be, if not actually directed at someone else specifically, then at least lifted from him, if any of the evidence against him was tainted or otherwise inadmissible, if any of the witnesses could be proved to be lying, or mistaken. But Dean knew it was a hopeless task. He knew, because he had been there, and apart from the man he had inadvertently run down, there had been no one else in that cottage, the witnesses were telling the truth, and there was no challenge they could make to the physical evidence. Either his explanation as to how it got there would be accepted or it wouldn’t.
Plenty of people had been at the cottage: Kayleigh’s mother’s current boyfriend, her ex-boyfriend, the postman. But they weren’t suspects – they were being lined up to prove that Dean was the only person who was there at the material time, and leave the jury to come to the inevitable conclusion that in the few minutes at his disposal, Dean had murdered her, stolen her car, and attempted to murder the sole witness. Even if the motive the police ascribed to him were to be deemed inadmissible, it would make no difference; the prosecution were under no obligation to prove motive.
He might study law during all those years he would have at his disposal; petty criminals always had a head start in matters legal, knowing exactly which laws they had broken, and which they had not, which defences were valid, and which were not. He certainly hadn’t needed a solicitor to tell him he was in the shit.
He wondered what they were doing now, all those people who would not be spending the rest of their lives in prison. Because that, though his mind flinched away from the enormity of it, was what it amounted to; eventual release on licence was given only to lifers who finally admitted their guilt, accepted responsibility and felt remorse for their offence, and Dean would never, never do that, because he hadn’t murdered anyone. Thus, guilty men went free, and innocent men stayed behind bars.
So how were all these people with whom he had become involved one sunny weekend in June spending their Saturday morning? What were they doing right now?
And what was the real murderer doing?
‘This place in which you are now met has been duly sanctioned according to law for the celebration of marriages.’ The superintendent registrar’s voice was quiet and clear. ‘And before you are joined in matrimony, I have to remind you of the solemn and binding character of the vows you are about to make.’
They looked at one another, and smiled a little.
‘A marriage according to the law of this country is the union of one man with one woman voluntarily entered into for life to the exclusion of all others. But it is more than just that. Marriage is the desire of two people to share with one another the ups and downs, the joys and sorrows that come into every life; to offer help, encouragement and support to one another in moments of adversity, and to appreciate and enjoy one another’s good fortune. You are here to witness the celebration of this marriage, to hear the vows that will be made, and to share in the joy of this union.’
She dropped her voice a little. ‘Are you, Philip Jeremy Roddam, legally free to lawfully marry Theresa Anne Black?’
‘I am.’
Phil had whispered to her, as they had walked from the registrar’s office into the marriage room, that she still had time to change her mind, but she knew the commitment she was making, and she was prepared to make it. Everyone thought she was mad, of course, especially her brother.
She and Phil had talked to one another, to social workers, to lawyers, to adoption agencies; they had gone into every existing and potential problem that anyone could think of, and she had seen no reason to change her mind. The marriage was necessary, if Phil was ever to be allowed to adopt Kayleigh, and Kayleigh was a commitment he had made nine years ago, without the need for vows to be made. It was a commitment that Theresa was quite prepared to share. She wasn’t Lesley; she didn’t have a burning desire to sort out Kayleigh’s or anyone else’s world. But it wasn’t a compromise – she wasn’t accepting Kayleigh as the downside of her relationship with Phil. If she had felt like that, she would have backed off.
The registrar turned to her, then, and she too, a little self-consciously, certain that she sounded as though she had a string of bigamous marriages behind her, agreed that she was legally free to marry Phil.
Kayleigh was still awaiting trial, but she was now receiving psychiatric treatment; Theresa didn’t know her well enough yet to know how successful the treatment was likely to be, but she knew that its success or failure mattered to Phil only in as much as he wanted to see Kayleigh well. If nothing could be done for her, it wouldn’t make any difference to how he felt. And it wouldn’t make any difference to how Theresa felt about Phil.
The registrar turned back to Phil. ‘Please repeat after me. I promise that I will try to keep our …’
Tommy is a bright and capable student, but an aversion to written work has marred what could otherwise have been excellent academic progress. He is popular with both staff and fellow students, and cannot be faulted on enthusiasm and effort when a subject interests him. Provided he curbs his tendency to avoid (or at best pay lip-service to) whatever he perceives as boring, he could and should succeed in whichever field he chooses to pursue.
‘Tom? What are you doing up there? We’re going to be late! Have you found it?’
‘Yes, I’ve got it. Won’t be a minute.’
Tom, crouching under the roof-beams, balanced precariously on the joists, closed the end-of-term report on his final year at the Liverpool comprehensive that had concluded his formal education, and put it back in the box of family treasures. Quite why it qualified as a treasure, he wasn’t sure, except that it so accurately summed him up; Judy Hill had said virtually the same thing at his last assessment. He smiled to himself. Now that his crown of golden curls had grown back to its full glory, he even looked virtually the same as he had then; the last fifteen years had seen little change, and all his irredeemable, sometimes inconvenient, characteristics remained firmly in place.
But that didn’t matter, he thought, as he lowered himself down through the hatch, feeling gingerly with his foot for the top step of the ladder because by the time the Lloyds came back from honeymoon, and he had done his pre-appointment course, Tommy Finch would be Detective Inspector Tom Finch, Malworth CID. Providing he didn’t break his leg getting down from the loft, that was.
‘I thought you’d gone to sleep up there,’ said Liz, as he safely negotiated his way down to the landing. ‘Oh, look, Tom! You’ve got dust all over your trousers.’ She swatted at him as she spoke, handing him his jacket when she was satisfied that the dust was all gone. ‘The ring’s in the pocket – don’t lose it.’
‘You look terrific in that,’ Tom said, shrugging on his jacket, belatedly realizing that Liz was no longer wearing the dressing gown in which he’d last seen her, on his way up to the loft. ‘Is that one of the outfits Judy gave you?’
‘It’s the outfit – the one she was going to be married in last time round. It’s got this clever buttoning arrangement so it fits you whatever size you are. Not that I’m that much smaller than she was in her last month. It’s brand new – never been worn, but she wouldn’t take any money for it.’
‘Well, there you are,’ said Tom, with a grin. ‘We’re quids in already. Who says they’re expensive?’
The baby had turned out to be not one, but two. Only after they had found out did Liz’s mother remember that one of her aunts had had a twin sister who had not survived, or they might have been prepared for the possibility of twins. They were due in December, and now that he and Liz had got over the shock, they could hardly wait.
Life was being good all round at the moment – on Friday, the LINKS project had been formally inaugurated, and Tom had collected a cool hundred quid on his bet, thanks to Bob Sandwell, who had already transferred to Highgrove Street in Barton, where he was duty inspector, which suited him perfectly; his wife already worked in Barton, and they were buying a house there. Judy had indeed got the DCI post at Malworth, starting right after her honeymoon, and Lloyd was moaning that everyone he worked with had been scattered to the winds, but he had Stansfield CID to organize however he chose, and today he was finally getting married, so he was happy too.
‘Are we ready to go now?’ said Liz. ‘We’re supposed to get there quarter of an hour before the ceremony, and we’re running very late.’
Tom gasped. ‘ Whose fault’s that?’
‘I thought it would take you a few seconds – you were up there for ages.’ She looked into their son’s bedroom, but it was empty. ‘Bobby? Bobby! Are you back in the bathroom? Get him out of there, Tom.’
Nine years old, and he spent hours making himself beautiful. Tom couldn’t believe it. When he was nine, it was only the Shirley Temple comments that forced him to get his hair cut at all, but Bobby always knew exactly how he wanted his hair, which was never the same two visits running; he had to keep up with whatever was in fashion, and making it look exactly as it should involved much gazing at himself in the bathroom mirror while he carefully applied hair gel. Tom had somehow sired a miniature cool dude, which mystified him. Bobby had inherited Liz’s dark, straight hair, for which he was truly thankful. Chloe, on the other hand, looked just like Tom and behaved just like her mother; at six, she had golden curls and much more common sense than Tom or Bobby ever would; she regarded her older brother with something approaching disdain.
The bathroom door opened as Tom was about to knock – one didn’t walk in on Bobby’s preparations – and he emerged, looking cool. ‘Wicked,’ he said to his mother as he passed her on the landing, so Judy’s taste in pregnancy outfits had passed muster. Bobby was a man of few words; his reaction to the news that there was to be not one, but two additions to the family, had been a thoughtful nod, and then, ‘Cool.’
‘I’m getting into the car.’ Liz started back downstairs. ‘I’m going, even if no one else is.’
‘Don’t you want it now I’ve got it?’ asked Tom, holding out the garter.
‘Oh, yes!’ She grabbed the frilly blue garter from him, and put it in her shoulder bag.
He smiled. ‘I gave you that for our wedding.’
‘It’s all right, she’s only borrowing it. That’s the whole point.’
Judy didn’t know yet that she was borrowing it; she had steadfastly refused to pander to tradition in any way, vetoing a hen night, pooh-poohing the idea of her and Lloyd spending the night before the wedding apart, refusing to countenance wedding presents, insisting that between them she and Lloyd already had everything they needed, and that anyone who would have bought them something should instead send the money to charity.
The garter had been a last-minute inspiration, and Liz, a believer in tradition and more than a tad superstitious, intended putting Judy in a position where she couldn’t refuse to wear it without being impolite, and had reasoned that since her bridal outfit was bound to be new, the garter would at a stroke fulfil the rest of the rhyme’s conditions.
‘… take you, Theresa Anne Black, to be my wedded wife.’
Phil hadn’t looked at Theresa once during the actual ceremony; some things still made him feel shy. They had known one another for months, really, but they had spent just over six weeks in each other’s company, and he was still afraid of disappointing her. He had wanted to learn off by heart the vows they had chosen to make, but he hadn’t been able to do it. The registrar had said he could repeat them after her instead, and he had felt that he had let Theresa down a little, but she had just laughed at him when he said that.
He still couldn’t quite believe that she was doing this for him; he had thought that the mention of adoption would put paid to any chance he had with her, instead of which she had spent the night with him. After her subsequent offer to marry him, he had told her exactly how difficult Kayleigh was, but it hadn’t put her off, and now, here she was, going through with it.
During all those weeks when all he had done was speak to her on the phone, he had daydreamed about meeting her, and had often thought of asking her up to London to see a show or whatever, but had been too bashful to suggest it. Somehow, meeting her under the dreadful circumstances of Lesley’s death had made it easier, made him bolder, made him brave enough to grasp the daydream, because he had fallen for Theresa Anne Black before he’d ever met her. And now the wildest part of his daydream was coming true; she was in the process of becoming his wife.
Kayleigh had been sent to foster-parents in Malworth – he and Theresa had met them informally, and they seemed like pleasant, capable people. And Kayleigh seemed to enjoy being with them, especially since Andrea had forgiven her, and was best friends with her again.
Kayleigh and Andrea were Theresa’s bridesmaids, if that was the appropriate term when everyone was in civvies, rather than gowns and morning suits, and had been looking forward to today for the last three weeks – once the decision had been made, they had given notice of their intention to marry at the earliest possible date in order to get the adoption procedure under way. Almost the earliest possible date – they had picked the Saturday so that Theresa’s brother could make it back from holiday.
Lesley had left him a bit of money, with which he would be able to set up on his own once the will went through probate, but it was a risky enterprise in a town where he had no reputation, and at the moment he was still jobless, so he wasn’t spending what he had left on anything other than necessities. The wedding was a low-key affair; a handful of guests, and a small party in the flat to celebrate.
The witnesses were Theresa’s brother and his Aunt Jean, and the guests were those of Theresa’s friends able to come at such short notice. His on-the-road existence with Lesley meant that he had lost touch with everyone with whom he might have become friends, but he and Ian had been for a drink together a couple of times and got on pretty well, despite the way they had met.
Phil could see why Lesley had picked Ian; he was someone who did as he was told, basically. But he was a nice guy, and Phil couldn’t see the point in not becoming friends with him. Both he and Theresa had wanted him to come to the wedding, and he had got out of hospital just in time. He was sitting at the end of a row, his plastered leg sticking out, his crutches on the floor.
Theresa’s brother had thought it very strange, inviting Ian to the wedding – stranger, if anything, than he had found Theresa’s decision to marry Phil in the first place, and being prepared to adopt Kayleigh – but Phil knew that Theresa wouldn’t have dreamed of not inviting him; Ian was her friend, and always had been. And, he thought, if Theresa could accept Kayleigh as part of the package, then he could surely accept Ian.
‘Now you, Theresa. I, Theresa Anne Black …’
Kayleigh was really glad about Phil and Theresa; she seemed much more likely to make him happy than her mother ever had, even if it was all very sudden. Not that Phil and her mother had been unhappy, but they had had rows all the time, because of her, and she hadn’t liked that.
‘… to be my wedded husband.’
Phil kissed her now that they were man and wife, a little peck on the lips. He had always been shy of showing his feelings in public, and Kayleigh smiled as she saw his face grow pink. He was all right once everyone started signing the register, and he had stopped being the centre of attention.
Theresa had said that if they could, she and Phil would adopt her, and then she would be able to live with them instead of with her foster-parents. They were all right, but it would be much better to be at home with her dad again, and now that he and Theresa were married, it might happen.
Kayleigh hoped it would.
Judy hadn’t felt anything like as nervous as this the first time round; she had married Michael without any of the jitters she’d been subject to over the last few weeks as the date approached. And the silly thing was that she had known that she and Michael were all wrong for one another, whereas she and Lloyd were and always would be right together. Perhaps, she thought, it was because this time really mattered.
‘We’re going to be far too early,’ Lloyd said. ‘It’s only half past ten now.’
‘I know. But I’d rather be there than sitting waiting at home.’
Home was still her flat, with her mother sleeping in a single bed in the nursery, but if their offer was accepted, it would soon be a stone-built, detached house – with a garden in which Lloyd could pretend he would grow strawberries – in the old village of Stansfield, just a couple of streets away from where Lloyd had had his flat.
Judy hadn’t been able to believe her luck when she had been scanning, with no great enthusiasm, the property supplement in the local paper, and had found it up for sale. She really liked the old village; she never knew whether it was the village itself or her association of it with the moment when she and Lloyd finally consummated the love affair they had begun when she was twenty years old, but a house becoming available there made the thought of moving so much easier than it might have been.
They were having to get a much bigger mortgage than they had meant to, even with the sale of their respective flats, and it didn’t yet have the self-contained living accommodation that Lloyd had promised her mother, but it did mean she would have her own room, and a loft conversion was being planned, on the in-for-a-penny principle.
Her mother had been dressing Charlotte as they left, glad, Judy was sure, to see the back of her nerve-racked daughter, and to be left to her own devices with her granddaughter. Charlotte now had two bottom teeth, of which Lloyd had to have taken two thousand photographs, and these days the conversations were two-way affairs, with the odd lisped sibilant; Charlotte still spoke gobbledegook, but she did it in sentences now, if not paragraphs, and got cross if Judy didn’t seem to be listening. Judy had a dreadful feeling that she was going to be just like Lloyd as soon as she did get the hang of the language.
‘Have you actually been struck dumb, or are you just having second thoughts?’
She smiled at him. ‘Neither. I was just thinking how we’ve turned into a family. And I like it.’
Theresa posed with Phil on the steps of the Civic Centre, and laughed as the confetti swirled in the breeze that was playing havoc with the hair so carefully styled that morning.
Ian knew the hairdo hadn’t been her choice; Theresa had told him that her hairdresser had said that she must have something special for her wedding day, and had proceeded to build her hair into a style that made her look like someone else. The wind was turning her back into Theresa, and a good thing too, in Ian’s opinion.
He and Theresa had never discussed marriage; he supposed if they had, they would have done it. And then Lesley would never have happened. He didn’t know why a piece of paper would have made a difference, but he knew that it would have. It had never occurred to hirn to ask Theresa to marry him because he and Theresa had always really just been friends, not lovers, and while he would have liked to return to the status quo, he knew it was never going to happen. So he was glad she had found someone she was happy with.
It had been very sudden; they seemed just to have met when they were announcing their intention to marry. But then, he had felt like that about Lesley, so he understood. His brief interlude with Lesley seemed almost unreal now; there were moments, memories, that could give him a stab of pain, but mostly he felt a little as though someone he had known in passing had died, not someone with whom he had intended spending his life.
‘Ian, can you manage a camera with your leg?’
Ian smiled at Kayleigh. ‘Not with my leg, no, but I can probably manage it with my hands.’
‘Oh, funny man.’
He laid the crutches down on the low wall, and stood with his legs slightly apart, his weight on his good leg. He could achieve relative stability that way. His leg had suffered a clean fracture and was healing quickly; it was the foot that had given him all the problems, all the pain. They had thought for a while that they might have to amputate it, but they had operated instead. And they thought now that he might not need any more operations, so things weren’t as bad as they might have been. He would have a limp, but it could all have been a great deal worse.
‘Oh, good, thanks. I want one of Dad and Theresa, the witnesses and the bridesmaids.’
He watched as she and Andrea shepherded Phil’s aunt and Theresa’s brother a step up from the bride and groom, one to either side, then took up their own flanking positions on the step up from them.
She hadn’t said much about Lesley when she’d visited him in hospital; Ian couldn’t tell how badly or otherwise it had hit her. She seemed just to have accepted it, but so much more went on in Kayleigh’s mind than anyone ever suspected that it was difficult to tell.
‘Move in a bit closer,’ he said, looking into the viewfinder. ‘Lovely. Now, smile!’
They all smiled, just as a gust of wind lifted up the bride’s dress, and the carefully posed tableau fell into laughing disarray. Ian took the photograph anyway; it would be better than the posed one.
Lloyd glanced at Judy as he stopped at the zebra crossing just before the registry office, put there so that people getting off at the bus stop didn’t get mown down as soon as they tried to cross the road. She had said that if Lloyd wanted to get married, that was all right by her. If he wanted to spend a fortune on a reception, fine. But, she had said, she was not going to behave like a virgin bride – he was not going to stay somewhere else the night before, because of some ridiculous superstition. They would drive to the registry office together, or they wouldn’t go there at all.
‘I had no intention of spending the night anywhere else,’ he had said. ‘How would I know you would turn up?’
He had, of course, had every intention of sticking to tradition; he had been going to stay with the Finches. But it didn’t bother him; he didn’t think it could ever be bad luck to see Judy. This morning she was very nervous, slightly flushed, and she looked wonderful. She was, he had told her that morning, the second most beautiful woman in his life. The first most beautiful was being brought by Judy’s mother at something more like the time of the ceremony.
He pulled into the car park, and backed into a space without having to search for one; no bad luck yet, he thought. They were much earlier than they needed to be, and he watched, smiling, as Judy anxiously took the make-up mirror from her bag, and made minute adjustments.
‘Stop staring at me.’
‘Sorry.’ He amused himself instead by looking at the people posing for photographs in the stiff breeze that had got up. After a few moments, they ceased to be an anonymous wedding party, and resolved themselves into people that he knew. He wound down the window to get a better look at them.
‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘Fancy that.’
He got no reaction, so he tried again.
‘Who would have thought it?’
Still nothing.
‘They were quick off the mark. I feel a bit like Cupid, since I was the one who brought them together, as it were. If I hadn’t taken him to Barton General, they might never have met. I was there when he made their first date.’
She was, of course, ignoring him on purpose, so he began all over again.
‘Well, well, well. Fancy that. Who would have—?’
‘Well, well, well, what?’ she asked, a mite crossly for his bride-to-be. ‘What are you going on about? Stop being mysterious.’
‘Romance would appear to have blossomed. That bride and groom – do you know who they are?’
Judy looked across, shaking her head.
‘Theresa Black and Phil Roddam. And the man with the crutches and the two young women is Ian Waring, ex-partner of the bride, and ex-fancy man of the groom’s deceased wife.’
Judy looked at him, her brown eyes suspicious. ‘Are you making this up?’
He laughed. ‘No, honestly. The entire wedding party is composed of my murder investigation. It’s a wonder Dean Fletcher hasn’t been given compassionate release to attend.’
Judy was clearly still not convinced that he was telling the truth; she went back to plucking invisible hairs from her eyebrows as Lloyd watched his one-time suspects arrange themselves in various groups until they had been photographed in every conceivable combination. The thought crossed his mind that Phil Roddam had been left some money by Lesley, but it was hardly an amount worth murdering for, even if it hadn’t been conclusively proved that neither he nor his new bride could have murdered her. His eyes widened as he realized who one of the young women was, and he sighed, still unhappy about the outcome of his murder enquiry.
‘And there’s another thing Dean Fletcher was telling the truth about,’ he said. ‘I don’t know about looking eighteen – she looks about twenty-five in that get-up. I didn’t recognize her.’
‘Who?’
‘Kayleigh – that’s her, with the camera.’
Judy looked across, without much interest, just as Lloyd saw the Finches’ car pulling in, then went back to her activities with the tweezers before her head swivelled back in a perfect double-take. ‘That’s Kayleigh Scott?’
‘It is. But she doesn’t normally look like that – no one believed Fletcher that she could look like that.’ Lloyd was beginning to wonder just who had taken advantage of whom in the Dean/Kayleigh relationship. ‘I don’t know the other girl.’
‘That’s Andrea Merry.’ A slight frown was bringing her carefully plucked eyebrows together.
‘Is it? I wouldn’t have thought Andrea would be too keen on staying friends with Kayleigh after what she did to her.’
‘Are you sure that’s Kayleigh?’
‘Of course I’m sure!’
Tom, Liz and their children were coming over to them, but Judy didn’t seem terribly interested in that.
‘But I saw …’ she began, and her voice trailed off. ‘And I know that was before ten, because … and it wasn’t until after eleven that … and that bus stop means that she would just have to—’ She broke off completely then, as the Black-Roddam wedding party made its way towards the car park.
‘Why have you suddenly become incoherent?’ he asked, looking back at her, and closed his eyes when he saw her face.
She couldn’t possibly be looking like a gun dog. Not now. Not today. She hadn’t even worked on the investigation – how could she be looking like a gun dog? But she was.
Suddenly, she was scrambling out of the car. ‘Tom,’ she said, her voice urgent. ‘Do you recognize that girl with Andrea Merry?’
Tom looked at Kayleigh, at first shaking his head, then nodding vigorously as the group of people came closer to him. Lloyd saw the girl half smile, her face slightly puzzled, and the girl he now knew to be Andrea Merry caught her arm. The two of them started discussing something, casting glances over at Tom and Judy.
Lloyd looked at Liz, and shrugged. ‘Sorry about this,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what’s going on either.’
‘Lloyd?’ Judy bent down to talk to him through the window, her voice quiet and apologetic. ‘I think you’re going to have to arrest them.’
Lloyd stared at her. ‘ What? No – no, absolutely not. We came here to get married, and that’s what we’re doing. They’re on their way to a wedding reception, for goodness’ sake. Phone the station if you want them arrested. They’re not going to run away.’
But Judy was shaking her head. ‘I think that’s just what they are going to do. She’s recognized me and Tom – Andrea’s telling her right now who Tom is, and she’s putting two and two together, just like I am. Look at them!’
‘She’s right, guv,’ said Tom. ‘If ever anyone would have a contingency plan, it’s Kayleigh.’
It was all too obvious that both Judy and Tom knew something that he didn’t know, and that he wasn’t going to be able to ignore it. The girls were still in tense discussion, and his bride and his best man were standing by, waiting for him to make a decision.
It was his wedding day; he had guests. His father, his mother-in-law and his baby daughter, his sisters, his son and his wife, his daughter and her current boyfriend, Freddie and his wife, his friends, his colleagues … they would all be arriving any minute now. The girls were getting into their car, but you didn’t just drop everything and arrest people on your wedding day, especially other people’s wedding guests. He was sure that all wedding etiquette books would agree that it was the height of bad form.
‘I mean it, Lloyd – if you want to get Dean Fletcher out of prison any time soon, you’re going to have to arrest them. Quick – box them in before they drive off!’
He looked helplessly at the other car, and back at Judy.
‘Lloyd? Now would be good.’
It was bad luck to see the bride before the wedding, Lloyd thought, and he knew when he was beaten. He fired the engine and drove out, stopping the car across the bows of the other one as it tried to reverse out of the parking space.
He got out of the car and went to one side of the girls’ car as Tom went to the other. ‘ This had better be worth it,’ he said, as Judy ran up to join them.
‘It is.’ She was ringing the station as she spoke. ‘I’m still piecing it together, but if I’m right, then all your little puzzles were spot on.’
She’d be right. His gun dog was never wrong.