Free Pressure Head by J.L. Merrow Page B

out? With or without Graham?”
    Pip bit her lip. “Sometimes. Well, she had her regular things—prayer group on Wednesdays, Salsacise on Thursdays, and French class on…Mondays, I think. Yes, Mondays. When she wasn’t working, that is. And she and Graham always went to her mum’s for Sunday lunch.”
    Bloody hell, no wonder Graham had been pissed off about her going out the night she died. From the sound of it, it must have been their first night in together in a month of Sundays. Of course, if she had been seeing someone else, any or all of these hobbies would have made an excellent cover.
    “Did you go to any of these activities with her?” Phil asked. Maybe he’d had the same thought as me.
    Pip jumped. Maybe she’d forgotten he was there—although how anyone could overlook his brooding, monolithic presence was beyond me. “I—oh, no. I mean… Well, I did go to Salsacise once, but… My husband…” She stared down at her feet.
    Okay, this was the second time she’d mentioned the husband not liking her going out at night. My mental image of the nerd was replaced by a beer-swilling, unshaven Neanderthal who thought a woman’s place was in the home and wasn’t afraid to say so. “You should tell him to make his own tea for once, love,” I said. She flicked me a shy smile but didn’t reply. When Phil didn’t jump in, I carried on. “I think poor old Graham had to fend for himself a fair bit. Did Melanie ever give you the impression things weren’t going too well between them?”
    “No—well, she talked sometimes about how frustrated he was getting, looking for work. But I always thought…” She broke off and looked up at me. “You just don’t know, though. You might think you do, but you never really know what it’s like. A relationship, I mean. Only the people in it know. People are different, when it’s just the two of them.”
    Phil stirred. “Pip, do you think Graham killed Melanie?”
    “I don’t want to think so,” she whispered.
    It wasn’t exactly the resounding denial we’d been hoping for.
     
     
    “I knew you’d be a natural at this,” Phil said as the door closed behind us.
    “What? I didn’t find anything in there.” Actually, I hadn’t even looked. I’d got a bit distracted, first by Cloney Clooney, and then—in a totally different way, I hasten to add—by Pip.
    “That’s not what I mean. You really got that girl to open up to you.”
    I shrugged. “All I did was have a chat with her.”
    “Exactly,” Phil said. We crossed the road to head up past the church. “You know how to talk to women.” Then he frowned. “I’d have been wondering if you’d suddenly come over all straight, if you hadn’t stood there for the first ten minutes with your mouth hanging open, begging Robin East to fill it with his dick.” His voice was a low growl as we walked around the Duck and Grouse to the car park.
    I just laughed, which seemed to piss him off even more. He certainly slammed his car door a bit harder than necessary. I got in the passenger seat and closed my door with a more reasonable amount of force. “Well, come on—the bloke’s gorgeous, isn’t he? I wouldn’t say no.”
    “That’s the sort of bloke you go for, is it? Smarmy gits flashing their money and their dicks at anyone stupid enough to be impressed?”
    “Jealous, are we?”
    “You wish.” Phil yanked the car viciously into gear and zoomed out of the car park, narrowly missing a Tesco’s lorry on the roundabout.
    “Steady on—we don’t all have a death wish,” I muttered. “What did your last passenger die of?”
    He didn’t answer, and when I glanced over, I saw his knuckles were white on the wheel. Bloody hell, had I hit a nerve? Guilt twisted in my stomach. “So, er, do you like being back around here?” I asked quickly. “Glad you moved?”
    The tension eased by about a millibar. “It’s all right.”
    “All right? You’ve got the whole of Herts on your doorstep, here. If