Free Dark Place to Hide by A J Waines Page B

bit of that,’ says Tara. ‘It’s your anniversary in September, isn’t it?’
    ‘Yeah – we’re not doing anything big. Just going to a new restaurant in Winchester and staying overnight. I’ve got a new dress.’
    ‘You must show me!’ Tara gets up; she’s like a fox chasing a rabbit whenever anyone mentions fashion.
    They go up to the bedroom and Tara slips her feet into a pair of stilettos Diane has left by the mirror. She flops on the bed while Diane flicks through the hangers. Tara rolls onto her stomach, her knees bent, and picks up a DVD lying on Harper’s bedside cabinet.
    ‘Not
Doctor Who
…Oh, God – the box set. My kids at school are hooked on it. What’s the appeal for a grown man like Harper?’
    ‘He likes the idea of time-travel in a police box and having a complete personality change every three or four years!’ Diane laughs at the quirks of her adorable husband. She remembersshe left the new dress in the wardrobe in the spare bedroom so Harper won’t see it. She’ll fetch it as soon as there’s a lull in conversation.
    ‘You said he works with the police sometimes,’ Tara continues.
    Diane is barely listening. On the dresser is the glove puppet Harper’s been playing with to tease Frank and she’s thinking of her husband’s hands. He has beautiful long expressive fingers, like Nureyev. She loves the way he holds the phone, grips his toothbrush, stirs a sauce. Everyone notices his hands and assumes he must be artistic in some way: a dancer, a painter, a pianist. In fact, he’s none of these, but she loves the way he uses his hands to sculpt her body. The way he traces his playful fingers around her lips, nipples, armpits and inner thighs. They seem to have a sensibility of their own.
    She snaps herself back to Tara’s comment. ‘He doesn’t really work with them. He has colleagues in the force – through his university work mainly, but they share research.’
    ‘You said he goes into prisons?’
    ‘Not for the police. That’s a bit different. He goes in twice a month as a prison visitor.’
    ‘How did he get into that?’
    Diane tugs at the tassel on the curtain tie at the window. ‘His best friend was sent to Wormwood Scrubs for killing his girlfriend in 2002. Harper went to visit him, then became an official visitor and he’s done it ever since. What happened to his friend was a catalyst. It had the profound effect of kick-starting his career. He didn’t have a clue about what he wanted to do when he left school and suddenly he was studying criminology. He wanted to understand.’
    ‘So why didn’t he become a detective? You said he loves puzzles.’
    ‘He didn’t want to be in law enforcement. He didn’t want to be one of the people who could have put Victor behind bars, but he wanted to work within the system; improving it for both victims and offenders.’
    ‘Did he understand why his friend did it?’
    ‘It was a spur of the moment thing, apparently. Victor wasn’t thinking straight – he’d had a string of bad luck. He’d recently been hit by a car and needed surgery on his knee. He’d been dropped from the college rugby team and his grades had fallen off. He was depressed and stressed; his self-esteem was suffering, then came the final straw – he caught his girlfriend with someone else. She laughed in his face and in that moment, he snapped.’
    ‘Wow – what did he do?’
    ‘He strangled her in a fit of jealous rage.’ She was inadvertently rolling the cord from the curtain around her fingers. ‘Harper told me that as soon as Victor saw her slide to the floor, he was mortified. All he wanted was for her to stop laughing at him – and that’s how it ended.’
    ‘My God – male pride. A dangerous thing, huh?’
    ‘Yeah. He lost it. Went totally out of control. Harper says it’s more common than we think. Someone rises to the bait, makes a silly mistake, takes a risk, isn’t thinking – and the result is that someone else dies. For Victor,