Free HOME RUN by Gerald Seymour

did you have a day off?"
    " There was a trial finished yesterday. We had a good result.
    We were given a day off."
    She picked up the plate. There was no mark on the chair's arm but she flicked it with her fingers anyway. "There was a trial yesterday that ended at early afternoon, I know that because I heard it on the car radio coming home. I sat here until past nine . . . I am a dim little thing, aren't I, but I didn't understand how it would take you more than five hours to get from the Old Bailey, Central London, to here."
    "We had a celebration."
    "Nice for you." She headed for the kitchen. He followed.
    She spat over her shoulder, "A pity about the tap."
    ''I m sorry.''
    "David, if there is a choice between April, the Lane, or your home, me, I know where the apple falls. Please, don't tell me you're sorry."
    She was a great looking girl. She had been a great looker when they had first met, when he was on uniform duty at Heathrow, and a great looking girl in white at their wedding day, and a great looking girl when he had come home to tell her, all excitement, that he had been accepted into the Investigation Division. She was still a great looking girl, shovelling his dirty plate into the dishwasher. Ann had bought the dishwasher. David had said they didn't need a dishwasher, Ann had just gone out and bought it in the sales. She was as tall as him in her heels, and she had flaxen blond hair that she drew up into a pony, and she had fine bones at her cheeks and a mouth that he thought was perfect. She worked in the outer office of a prosperous architect, and she dressed to impress the clients.
    "So, you all went off to the pub, where there was, of course, no telephone . . . and I presume you took the opportunity to tell them how they were getting it all wrong."
    "I told Bill what I thought we should be doing . . . "
    "Great way to celebrate."

    He flared, "I said that I thought we weren't winning. I said that we should be more aggressive, work overseas more, I said that the men we put away yesterday were laughing at us when they were sent down . . . "
    "God, they must think you're a bore."
    "Do you know that last year our cocaine seizures were up by 350%? Do you know that means that three and a half times as much stuff came in last year as the year before . . . "
    "What I care about is that my husband works 70 hours a week, that he's paid what a probationer constable in the Met gets. I care, used to care, that my husband is never at home when I want him, and when I am privileged to see him all he wants to talk about is filthy, sleazy, nasty drugs."
    His breakfast plate, and his breakfast mug followed his lunch plate into the dishwasher.
    "It's a disease that'll kill this country - AIDS, that's nothing in comparison. Ann, there's a billion pounds spent on drugs in this country each year. It's the principal reason for mugging, burglary, assault, fraud . . . "
    "I don't know anyone, David, who is a junkie. No one in our block is, that I know of. No one in my office. I don't see junkies when I'm shopping. Drug addiction is not a part of my life, except when you bring it into our home."
    "It's not something you can just turn your back on," he said flatly. "Whether it's me you're married to or anyone else."
    She turned. She came towards him. She put out her arms and looped them around his neck. Her mother had told her to come back, and not just to collect her suitcases, her mother had told her to try again. One last bloody time, she had told her mother, she would try again. "Are they all like you, in April?"
    "Yes."
    "All on 70 hours a week, seven days a week?"
    "When it's hot, yes."
    "Do all their wives bitch?"

    " Those that have stayed, yes."
    "I bought some steak, and a bottle."
    She kissed him. He couldn't remember when she had last kissed him. He held on to her, and the telephone rang. He picked the telephone off the wall bracket.
    "Yes, it is, hello Bill . . ."
    He felt her arms coming away from his neck. He saw the