Free Talking to the Dead by Harry Bingham Page B

be told. The sort of person who always manages to find outfits that are seasonal and fashionable, but also affordable and sensible, simultaneously professional and CIDish, yet at the same time gently calling attention to her gym-bunny physique. Plus her hair is always perfectly blow-dried. Plus she never gets food stains on things. Plus she doesn’t make perfectly helpful witnesses cry for no reason, and I bet she can go years at a time without kneecapping perverts. She doesn’t disapprove of me exactly, but I can’t believe that she approves of me, and I’m always 5 percent scared when I’m with her.
    On the other hand, right now Jane seems genuinely pleased to see me. She complains about the day she’s had and how she still has to get her interview notes up on Groove. I’m a much faster typist, so I offer to help in exchange for some tea. It’s a done deal. She gets us tea. I type. She sits on the desk and interprets her writing whenever it’s hard to read, and in the gaps we gossip and fall silent or drop our voices whenever a male colleague strolls by. It’s a nice way to spend time.
    At the end of the type fest, I say, “It’s pretty skinny stuff, isn’t it?”
    For a second Jane thinks I’m criticizing her notes, and I fall over myself trying to set her straight. It’s not her notes I’ve got an issue with, it’s the lack of leads that seem to be coming from all our work.
    “Oh, but the forensic stuff will give us a few names. Maybe CCTV. A few interviews. Something will start to come out. That’s the way these things go.”
    Jane’s attention is wandering away from me now. Jacket on. Hair flicked in one blond shampoo-ad movement out from the collar. A quick inspection to make sure that every fold of fabric is obeying orders. Handbag, mobile, purse check. Perfect lifestyle all present and correct. Spaceship Alexander is ready for blastoff.
    “See you tomorrow,” I say, already scared of her again.
    She gives me a nice big smile, bigger than regulations require, although also one that shows very orderly white teeth, nicely arranged against exactly the right shade of lipsticked lips.
    “Yes, see you tomorrow. Thanks, Fi. I’d have been stuck here for ages otherwise.”
    “You’re welcome.”
    And she is welcome, truly. She blasts off to wherever it is she berths for the night. She has a husband and a young son.
    I have neither and go back to my desk to pick up my stuff. My computer is still on. Brendan Rattigan’s platinum card is catching a last ray of evening light.
    Janet Mancini was so scared of something that she took her daughter to that house of death.
    Brendan Rattigan liked rough sex with street prostitutes. His wife didn’t tell me with words, but she said it every other way she possibly could.
    Brendan Rattigan died in a plane wreck, but his body was never found.
    His card was reported lost, but Janet Mancini had it.
    Brian Penry bought a horse with stolen money, and Brendan Rattigan, it seemed, was one of its co-owners.
    Five thoughts buzzing round my head like flies in a glass jar. No one but me appears to care about these things, but that doesn’t make the flies go away.
    I Google around and come up with the names of some racecourse photographers who do a lot of work at Chepstow. Also one who works at Ffos Llas in Camarthenshire, and another couple who work at Bath. I make some calls, get through to four voice mails, and leave messages. Get through to one real person—Al Bettinson, one of the Chepstow boys—and make an arrangement for tomorrow.
    I don’t have a good feeling about any of this, but there’s at least one fly I reckon I can squash, so I do my best to squash it. The Air Accidents Investigation Branch reports on every plane accident in the U.K., no matter how small the plane or how minor the incident. All AAIB reports are available online, so I call it up, print it off, and shove it into my bag, along with my laptop, the photos, and a bundle of papers.
    It’s been