The Collared Collection (18 page)

He pulled her down to lie on the blanket they’d spread in the shade, under the canopy of a giant horse chestnut. ‘For now, you’ll just have to put up with me instead.’

She relaxed, feeling sorry she’d bitten his head off. Tickling his nose with a blade of feathery grass, she said, ‘I think I can tolerate that …’ Closing her eyes, she imagined herself on an exotic beach of silky white sand, turquoise surf lapping at her feet. The personal bar at her disposal specialised in elephantine cocktails with lewd names, which were decorated with paper umbrellas and more exotic fruit than the veg. department in Waitrose. Only the tooth-jarring sound of various sirens on the nearby main road, tugged her back to reality.

He said, ‘Before I forget, I have to go in early tomorrow – I’ve got to check over some paperwork for the CPS. Will it be OK if I drop you at the office about seven thirty?’

‘Sure. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do as well. Susan said she’d be in early after her break, so I’ll have someone to talk to. And Ronan and Bernard are usually part of the dawn chorus.’

‘What?’ he asked, frowning.

‘Early birds …’

He shot her a cynical look. ‘Good – I like Susan, don’t you? Shame her brother didn’t turn up.’

Callie was just glad Susan had turned up to save her from hitting those rocks, though didn’t share. ‘Mm … I’ve not had much contact with her so far in the office and so it was good to have a long chat, get to know her a bit better. She’s very together, isn’t she?’

‘I suppose – does she prosecute or defend?’

‘Both; that’s the policy at Montague’s – it’s quite unusual, most chambers specialise in one or the other.’

‘Trust Ginny to be unconventional.’

‘Well, she can blame that one on her dad, he started it.’

‘Any thoughts on the funeral arrangements? I know you and Elizabeth are seeing the undertaker next week, but do you know what kind of send-off you are after?’

‘Actually, Mike was very helpful on that score. Ironically, he and Ginny had compared their fathers’ funerals – which must have been a fun evening – and Ginny was keen on the big celebration of life approach, rather than everyone hanging around with long faces, wearing black and being formal.’

‘I like that idea too – no amount of grieving will bring loved ones back, so why not remember the good times you shared.’

‘But grieving is an important process of stages: you have to pass through each of them to emerge intact the other side.’

He looked blank.

‘You know; denial, guilt, anger, and so on … not necessarily in that order.’

‘Ah, I see what you mean, Miss Freud. Actually, apart from a couple of grandparents, I’ve never really lost anyone close. Touch wood.’ His fingers brushed nearby tree bark and he grinned.

‘Tell me about your parents – there’s so much I don’t know about you.’

He sighed, ‘Right, here comes the potted version of the Bennett clan. Are you lying comfortably?’

She nodded, clasping her hands together across her rib cage, not unlike a corpse.

‘Then I’ll begin. My dad, also David, was in banking all his working life and I suspect he hated every minute of it. He retired about five years ago and now he’s making up for lost time, on a very generous pension. As soon as he’d turned off his calculator for the last time, he bought himself a ton of artist’s materials and threw himself into painting and sketching in a big way – he’s actually very good. He goes to several classes a week and when he’s not wielding a brush, he’s sweating off the linseed oil at a very smart health club. Apart from that, he plays quite a mean game of tennis, though he hates golf with a vengeance.’

‘Sounds like he’s got himself nicely sorted, what about your mum?’

‘She’s called Joan and she’s a couple of years younger than Dad. She’s always been a stay-at-home mum – women of her generation mostly were, I suppose.’

‘Yes, mine was. I don’t think she thought twice about it. But then I was too – I suspect Dominic felt that gave him total control over me.’

‘Huh! My dad knows better than to try and control Mum, she’s certainly no pushover in that respect. She’s always done the WI, coffee morning thing – she’s kept herself busy that way and I think she’s secretly relieved that Dad is so active and not hanging around the house, because it means he doesn’t interfere with her routine. They take a couple of holidays a year too, so it’s a pretty nice life. What did your dad do?’

‘He was a surveyor, the building variety. Quite honestly, I don’t know whether he was fulfilled or not – he died suddenly when I was twelve – and I never got any kind of hint either way from Mum. She wasn’t a very approachable person, kept most things bottled up; which was sad, because there were just the two of us for all those years, but I never felt particularly close to her – although I did love her. She was my mum, after all – goes with the territory. It was a struggle financially after Dad was gone and I think she resented him for leaving her alone to cope. She left hardly anything in her will – she’d re-mortgaged the equity on the house just to survive. But, of course, she hadn’t confided any of that in me …’

David lifted her chin with the tip of his index finger. ‘Hey, don’t get too serious, now.’

She tried to look sparkly. ‘I’m fine … I just felt that she’d wasted a lot of her life being bitter and twisted – and then she died an agonising death from stomach cancer …’ Tears stung her eyes.

He struggled to his feet, stiff after lying still for so long. ‘OK, enough – wait here. I’m going to buy you the biggest ice cream I can find.’

‘Ooh yes! A soft, whirly one with a chocolate flake, please.’

He called over his shoulder as he strode off, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

Callie’s tongue darted out lizard-like to stop melting ice cream running down the cone onto her hand. She’d already eaten the flake with which David had indulged her greed and her lap was dotted with chocolate crumbs. She meant to get those in a minute, with a damp finger.

‘So do you have any siblings?’ she asked. ‘Obviously I’m an only child, because once I was born my parents realised they couldn’t improve upon perfection.’ She laughed. ‘Actually, I think it was more a case of Mum not being too keen on “that bedroom business”. Poor thing, she didn’t know what she was missing.’ She gnawed her way around the top of the cone.

David chortled. ‘You brazen hussy, as my granny would say … and to answer your question, I have a brother and a sister, both younger than me – but not by much.’

She sprayed crumbs. ‘Go on, dish the dirt …’

‘My brother Robin is a psychologist, not married but has been living in sin for a number of years – also as my granny would say. No children.’

‘What is his girlfriend called?’

‘Jocelyn – she’s a pretentious madam.’

‘Pretentious as in you telling me you worked for the Parliamentary Legislator’s Ombudsman Department?’

He snorted, ‘Well, the initials P-L-O-D should have given you a clue. I just don’t find it’s a good idea to tell women I’m a policeman, until I get to know them well.’

‘Hmm … The jury’s still out on that one. Do you get on with Robin?’

‘Yes, very well – he’s only two years younger than me; then came Megan, a year younger than him.’

‘Your mum had her hands full for a while then?’

He shrugged. ‘I guess.’

‘What does Megan do?’

‘She lives in LA – her husband’s a surgeon and she works as his receptionist. It’s a very posh set-up, all designer chic. They met when she was training to be a physio and he was doing a year’s secondment at Charing Cross Hospital. They have one son, Eric, between them and Kyle, her husband, has a daughter, Lorie, from his first marriage. Megan says Lorie is a witch and I think she rather enjoys playing the evil stepmother.’

‘Quite a medical lot, then – at least you married a doctor.’ She regretted reminding herself of the fact. ‘Have you been over to visit them much?’

‘Only three times – I don’t enjoy the plastic lifestyle much, but Mum and Dad go every eighteen months or so – Eric is their only grandchild so far.’

She caught the ‘so far’ and filed it away for future reference. In the space of only a few minutes, the sky darkened dramatically.

‘Looks like we should make a move,’ he said, ‘before the heavens open.’

She gobbled up the last of her chocolate crumbs. ‘Okie dokie, I’ll shove these bits and pieces back in the cooler bag and we can high tail it out of here – it won’t take a moment.’

While she packed away leftover items of food, David shook pieces of twig and grass from the blanket, rolled it tightly and laid it on top of the bag when she’d done. By the time they came within sight of the ornate black and gold gates, it was starting to spit with rain. As they strode purposefully past rows of cars parked nose-to-kerb on voracious meters, Callie noticed two Panda cars and a fire engine ahead, stationary and parked at odd angles in the middle of the road up by the bridge, with their blue lights flashing. Black smoke swirled around the grouping … that horribly familiar feeling of unease curdled with the ice cream in her belly. She caught David’s arm and his eye followed her line of vision, along the road.

‘Oh, Christ!’ He broke into a run. ‘That’s my car! Some bastard’s torched my car!’

Chapter Thirty

She was whisked to work bright and early on Monday morning in a blue and white, complete with siren and flashing lights – a fitting mode of transport, she felt, for a gal who likes to make an entrance now and again.

Callie sat at her desk, thinking. David’s swanky Beemer was a complete write-off and he’d have to sign out a squad car to drive around in, for the time being. Considering so many people were out and about on a warm Sunday afternoon, there were few witnesses to the destruction of his pride and joy. However, two young boys throwing a Frisbee on the green had spotted a guy on roller blades stop beside the vehicle and attempt to post something through the sun roof, which they’d left open a crack because of the heat. When that didn’t work, he appeared to place whatever it was underneath the vehicle and skate off. The car exploded into a fireball shortly afterwards. Because they were some distance away, the boys could describe the man only as tall and thin, dressed in black and wearing a baseball cap pulled low – one thought he might have been wearing sunglasses, but neither could say whether or not he had a moustache, as described by the car rental receptionist.

Firemen at the scene diagnosed a similar device to the one that had caused her house to burn; hardly original, but it seemed that Balaclava Man had been out for his Sunday afternoon constitutional, armed with incendiary apparatus. It was a miracle that no one passing by had been seriously injured or even killed.

Ronan brought a coffee to her desk – something he would never have done before the terms of Ginny’s will became common knowledge. Perish the cynical thought, but always at the back of her mind nagged the knowledge that Ginny didn’t like or trust the guy, and she wanted to know why. Ginny could, at times, be brutally judgemental and dismissive, but Callie needed to find out if she was justified in his case – not that she suspected in her wildest dreams that he could be Balaclava Man. Leprechaun Lady perhaps, judging by the way he minced.

‘Nice weekend?’ he asked her, leering.

‘Oh, you know … the usual. David and I met up with Susan on Saturday, so we had something to eat and a few drinks together. That was nice – nothing much else, really.’ Apart from one spectacularly incinerated car, she thought. ‘You?’

‘Very quiet, I was still feeling a bit under the weather, so I put the decorating on hold and watched a lot of sport on the telly. Not that I need much of an excuse to do that.’

‘How’s the tumble down cottage coming along?’

‘Very slowly. It’ll be a long while yet, to be sure. ‘Tis a labour of love, I’m thinking.’

And she was thinking, go away. She lowered her head, hoping he’d vamoose, but no, he hovered. Eventually, he said, ‘Err … I was wondering … perhaps we could do lunch sometime, Callie?’

She didn’t even give herself time to consider his invitation. ‘I don’t think so, Ronan, I usually prefer to grab a sandwich at my desk and work through, just like everyone else here.’

His smile didn’t falter, but his eyes hardened. ‘Please yourself – I thought it would make a refreshing change, that’s all. I’m not proposing fecking marriage.’

She smiled back, ‘Thanks for asking.’ What was all that about, she wondered?

Callie needed to seek Bernard’s advice on one of the briefs in her pile – she scooped it up and strolled over to a cabinet, where he was bent over the bottom drawer, rifling through tightly packed hanging files.

When she squatted down next to him, he turned to her with a mischievous look, ‘I very much think Ronan is trying to butter up the new boss,’ he said quietly.

Feigning surprise she asked, ‘Do you really think so?’

‘Oh yes … he and Ginny had a very fractious working relationship – perhaps he’s trying to start off on the right foot with you. Just speculation on my part, of course – what can I do for you, Callie?’

She explained her problem and he solved it instantly. She worried what she was going to do without him.

‘Bernard, do you know what Ginny had against Ronan?’

‘I do, yes.’

She waited – when it became obvious he wasn’t going to spill the beans voluntarily, she prompted, ‘It’s just that in my um … rather peculiar circumstances, I do need to know whom I can trust.’

He thought for a long moment. ‘I can understand that, Callie – shall we simply say that Ginny felt she had cause to question his allegiance to Queen and country.’

‘Not the IRA!’ she hissed, rather too loudly.

‘I don’t know any details, but Ronan, his mother, and brothers do seem to have left Belfast in something of a hurry – he would have been a teenager at the time.’

‘Oh, I thought they actually came from Dublin, in the south?’

‘Hmm … not what I heard, but listen, Callie – this is mostly hearsay and I really don’t know what I’m talking about.’

‘Is this a mother’s meeting, or can anyone join in?’ The sharp incision came from Susan, who had just walked in the door with Simon. She’d made Callie jump, which she would freely admit was often the sign of a guilty conscience where she was concerned. Bernard smiled at Susan.