Free Death in a Far Country by Patricia Hall Page B

box when the time comes.’
    With that Jenna spun on her elegantly shod heel, followed by Paolo Minelli, who gave Laura a last appraising glance as he turned away, a glance, Laura realised, that was not lost on Angelica who watched her boyfriend depart with a face like thunder.
    ‘Vodka and tonic, please,’ Laura said in answer to Stephen Stone’s enquiry and he too moved away, leaving the two women to survey the now rain-lashed pitch outside, and the sight of the fans beginning to fill up the stands, in a prickly silence.
    ‘What do you do, Angelica?’ Laura asked, trying to break the ice.
    ‘Modelling, mainly,’ the other woman said, without enthusiasm.
    ‘What, here or in London?’ Laura asked, thinking that there could not be a great deal of modelling work on offer in Bradfield.
    ‘Oh, in London mainly,’ Angelica said airily. ‘Leeds, Manchester, you know. Around.’ She reached in her bag and took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one, without offering them in Laura’s direction. She drew the smoke into her lungs hungrily and Laura wondered if the addiction was how she maintained her stick-thin figure.
    ‘It must be an interesting life,’ she said, trying again to break the palpable tension between them. ‘What’s the ultimate in modelling? Doing the shows in Paris and New York?’
    ‘If you look like a twelve-year-old druggie,’ Angelica said with unexpected venom. ‘I know I’m not in that league and never will be.’ Before Laura could answer, she found herself uncomfortably close to Stephen, who had come up behindthem and thrust a glass in her direction.
    ‘V and T,’ he said. The brother and sister duo were uncannily alike, Laura thought as she took a sip of her drink and found herself the focus of another sharp-eyed gaze, almost as chilly as Angelica’s. They were both tall and fair, although Angelica’s hair was highlighted with gold, and their high cheekbones hinted at an ancestry that was not totally rooted in Yorkshire. Angelica would photograph well with that bone structure, she thought.
    ‘Thanks,’ Laura said to Stephen. ‘So how’s the new club going? I heard about it when it opened, but I haven’t got there yet.’
    ‘I’ll put you on the guest list if there’s a gig you’d especially like to see,’ Stone said, but without much warmth.
    ‘Thanks,’ Laura said again.
    ‘Ackroyd,’ Stone said. ‘Weren’t you the reporter who was involved in some shooting a few months back? What was it? A siege of some sort and someone was killed. Did you get shot?’
    Laura swallowed another mouthful of her drink to cover the inevitable pang of distress that clenched her stomach before she could bring herself to answer.
    ‘No, I didn’t get shot. It was a man the police wanted to talk to who was killed and my boyfriend who was hurt.’
    ‘Do reporters often get involved in that sort of thing?’ Stone asked.
    ‘Not if they have any sense,’ Laura said lightly, and felt relieved when Jenna Heywood rejoined them and the subject dropped.
    ‘Would you like some lunch?’ she asked Laura. ‘There’sa buffet through here.’ She waved to a door that was now crammed with burly men heading like hungry bears towards the aroma of food.
    ‘What does Paolo Minelli think of your chances this afternoon?’ Laura asked quietly as they moved in the same direction. Jenna laughed.
    ‘That’s the question you mustn’t ask,’ she said. ‘We’re going to win, of course. Aren’t we, Les?’ She directed her attention with practised ease to a florid, heavily built man in a tweed suit with what was left of his hair combed over his largely bald pate.
    ‘This is Les Hardcastle, my father’s best mate. Laura Ackroyd, from the
Gazette
.’ Hardcastle stopped dead, a plate piled high with food in his hand, and fixed his eyes on Laura’s.
    ‘Jack Ackroyd’s daughter?’ he asked without preamble.
    ‘That’s right,’ Laura said. ‘Did you know him?’
    ‘Aye, of course I did. I knew him