Free Game Over by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles Page B

friend, but even I didn’t know her well. It was so sad and awful.’
    ‘It must have been.’
    ‘He was married to someone else at the time, but I don’t think she’d ever really understood what he felt about these things. He did tend to keep his feelings very much to himself. You know what men of his generation are like. So it all built up and he had a kind of nervous breakdown. And out of the mess, he and I got together and we’ve been together ever since.’
    ‘So, good coming out of evil. I wish I could think anything good would come out of this.’ She broke off a small piece of cookie and watched her fingers turning it into crumbs. ‘Is he good?’ she asked abruptly.
    ‘Bill? He’s the best. And he never gives up. Best of all, you can talk to him, and he really listens.’
    ‘And the other one? Sergeant Atherton?’
    ‘Jim is Bill’s friend as well as his bagman, so he’s my friend too. He’s brilliant in his way.’
    ‘Is he seeing anyone?’
    Joanna thought it an odd question, but took jetlag into account. ‘He was going out with a friend of mine, another violinist, but they split up a while back.’ She didn’t say, ‘Why do you ask?’ but her tone asked the question clearly enough.
    Emily said, ‘He offered me his spare room. I didn’t want to be treading on anyone’s toes.’
    ‘You won’t be.’ Speculation was so rife it was lucky Emily was not looking at her just then.
    ‘Why d’you think he did it?’ Now she looked up. ‘Offered?’
    ‘Just kindness,’ Joanna said firmly. ‘He’s a kind person underneath.’
    Emily nodded wearily. ‘That’s what I thought. I’m glad I was right.’

Five
    To Err is Divine . . .
    T he basement of Valancy House ran under the whole building so it was very spacious. The caretaker’s flat occupied only part of it: sitting-room, bedroom, bathroom and kitchen, reasonably sized, according to Hart, but dark and depressing, with bars at all the windows, which looked out on to the small yard at the back where the dustbins lived. ‘Still, to get a flat that size in this area, you’d put up with a lot worse,’ she concluded. ‘I reckon Dave Borthwick knows he’s lucky, ’cos to my mind he’d never earn enough if the flat didn’t come with the job.’
    ‘Not very bright?’
    ‘Not very anything,’ Hart said, ‘except muscle-bound and ugly. Though I reckon we’ll find he’s well tasty. If he’s not got a record, my arse is an apricot. Sorry, boss.’
    ‘Think nothing of it,’ Slider said graciously. ‘We’ll put Hollis on it when we get back. Borthwick’s record, I mean, not . . .’
    ‘Gotcha.’
    The rest of the basement was windowless, stone-floored, the walls clad to shoulder height with those glazed brown tiles beloved of Edwardians, the bare bricks painted above with pale green distemper, lit by naked forty-watt bulbs hanging from flexes that were probably the originals. Footsteps echoed down there, and there were distant mysterious groans, thumps and gurgles of pipes, and a monotonous dripping as if an unseen tap somewhere had a faulty washer.
    ‘I could feel right at home here,’ Hart said chirpily. ‘My school was just like this.’
    Part of the space was taken up with the pit of the lift-shaft and the bottom of the stairs. There was an open area around them, a door in the adjacent wall into the flat (battered metal with a massive keyhole) and then various rooms around the perimeter, linked by corridors. Presumably at one time the caretaker had had a lot more to do for the residents than in modern days. One room was evidently the coal-store, for there was a chute leading up to a circular bronze hatch in the pavement above, and a lingering, ghostly smell of coal, though it was swept clean. Next door was an ancient boiler squatting on a concrete dais, though all its pipes had been removed.
    ‘Must’ve used to run the central heating. They’ve all got individual gas boilers in the flats now,’ Hart said.
    In another