Free The Pure in Heart by Susan Hill Page A

while she was alive – though he had found her attractive, she had intrigued him and he hadenjoyed her company. Her feelings for him had been fairly clear on the evening they had gone out to an impromptu dinner at his favourite Italian restaurant, not from anything she had said – she had been far too cautious for that – but from the way she had looked at him.
    But things had not gone on. Freya Graffham had been murdered. Killed in her own house. The house Simon was approaching now.It was a small Victorian artisan’s cottage in a row of others set among a grid of twelve similar streets known as the Apostles because they were near the cathedral. He had not been inside until after Freya’s murder. He had no memories of it which were not dreadful ones. The front door had been painted. It had been maroon. Now it was smart navy blue. There were new roman blinds half down at the windows.The gate had gone. Simon stopped on the opposite side of the road. No one was about. He did not understand why he was here. But as he drove away a leaden feeling settled in his stomach and the day ahead was soured.
    ‘Good morning, Sergeant.’
    DS Nathan Coates looked over his shoulder and steadied the hand he was using to hold two paper cups of coffee piled on top of each other as the DCI wentpast him and on up the stairs.
    ‘Guv? I thought you weren’t back till tomorrow.’
    ‘Change of plan.’
    The door swung to behind Serrailler.
    Nathan shifted the cups slightly. He was smiling. Nine times out of ten he smiled when the DCI or anyone else called him Sergeant. It was over six months since he had stopped being Acting and become an official DS but he was still not used to it, still hadto check that someone wasn’t winding himup. He had wanted the job and not wanted it because it had meant stepping into Freya Graffham’s shoes.
    And the DCI had known all the right buttons to press.
    ‘You came from the other side of the tracks, Nathan. You might just as easily have gone the way of half your schoolmates and how many years would you have served by now, courtesy of Her Majesty’sPrisons? You took the other route, and don’t tell me it was easy. Do they still respect you round your way? I doubt it. They don’t go for coppers much on the Dulcie estate, especially when the copper is one of their own. You now stand for everything you ought to be against, and you are exactly the sort of policeman we want. The police force ought to mirror the society it polices and it almost neverdoes, which is why it’s so important you stay in it and keep climbing the ladder. You’re young, you’re bright, you work your socks off and DS Graffham had a very high opinion of you. What do you think she’d say if you chicken out now?’
    ‘That’s below the belt, guv.’
    ‘Sometimes you have to punch there. Come on, Nathan, see straight. It hit you. It hit all of us. It was a bloody awful thing tohappen. I never thought we’d see a serial killer in a place like Lafferton … drugs, muggings, rapes, burglaries, robberies, whatever, it’s all on the increase, even in a nice small respectable English cathedral town. But multiple murder? We might be able to get our heads round ashooting in the course of an operation … a raid … a panic … a dead policeman. We could have coped with that, but notFreya’s murder. And you were the first there, you dealt with it all and you blame yourself, don’t think I’m not aware of it. You’ve no need to but you do and you probably always will. It’s none of it a reason for you giving up your career. It’s a good reason for you to stay. Are you hearing me?’
    Nathan was, though it had taken him another couple of weeks to admit it. He and Emma had been marriedquietly in the side chapel of the cathedral, with the DCI as his best man, before he had finally committed himself to remaining in the force. It had been much longer before he had agreed to go for promotion to sergeant. But he was a sergeant now and the