Free The Armada Boy by Kate Ellis Page A

years.'
She looked up. He's a long time with those biscuits."
     
    As if on cue, Wesley pushed the door
open. He had arranged the biscuits carefully on a plate. Pam was a lucky woman.
Rachel thought; Dave would have brought the packet.
     
    'Does this have to all be written
down?' said Marion, worried.
    'Nobody round here knows that my Carole wasn't my husband's'
     
    'Don't worry. Mrs Potter. The worst
that can happen is that we'll need a statement about when you last saw him...
probably not even that. Isn't that right. Sergeant Peterson?'
     
    Wesley nodded with his mouth full of
custard cream.
     
    'And he didn't mention if he was
afraid of anyone? Anything out of the ordinary?"
     
    'He said his wife was a bit - how
did he put it? - cold. That's all... nothing that would help you.'
     
    'Could we have your daughter's
address? We might want a word with her.' Marion looked wary.
    'When did you tell her who her real
father was? Was it just in the past few days?'
     
    'No ... it was a couple of years
back.'
     
    'How did she react?'
     
    'How could she react? She's got kids
by two different men herself... she's on to her second husband.' She rolled her
eyes in disgust. Carole's morals, it seemed, were a bone of contention between
mother and daughter. 'We were talking about the war and
it just came out... I never meant to tell her. I was saying what it was like to
think that every day might be your last... the things you do that you wouldn't
normally do .. .' She suddenly looked Rachel in the eye. 'Did Norman suffer ...
when he died, did he
suffer?"
     
    'He didn't suffer ... died
instantly. He was stabbed from behind and his hearing aid was broken. He
wouldn't have known a thing about it.'
     
    Marion nodded, a faint smile on her
lips. When Norman had been standing there alone in the chapel, his last
thoughts would have been of their meetings ... of their gentle lovemaking on a borrowed
blanket on the hard chapel floor under the stars. Marion
hoped - knew - that Norman Openheim had died happy.
     
     
    The address Marion had given them
for her daughter. Carole, was on the council estate which straddled the steep
road into Tradmouth. Wesley decided that as it was five o'clock - and they still
had to interview the two beggars currently enjoying the custody sergeant's
hospitality back at the station - their visit to Norman Openheim's daughter should
wait until the following day.
    They drove back to Bereton to pick
up the inspector, who had been talking lo Openheim's old comrades and their
wives. What effect Gerry Heffernan would have on Anglo-American relations Wesley
did not care to contemplate.
    He was waiting for them in the hotel
bar. Mrs Slater scurried through and nodded to them in her usual businesslike
way.
     
    'Anything to report?' Heffernan
asked.
    They told him about Marion.
     
    'What was it they used to say about
the Yanks? Overpaid, over-sexed and over here."
     
    'Oh. I don't know, sir ... I think
it's quite romantic' said Rachel.
     
    'Like one of those weepy films, eh?
Reunited after all those years, then he goes and dies.'
     
    'I didn't know you were familiar
with weepy films, sir." Rachel said, half teasing.
     
    'You can't be married for twenty-two
years and avoid the things altogether.'
     
    Rachel immediately regretted her
remark. She knew that, even three years after her death, the inspector still
missed his wife. Kathy, deeply. She knew he still kept her picture in his
office drawer.
     
    'Anything new, sir?' She changed the
subject.
     
    'Most of them seem to have watertight
alibis ... they all back each other up. And there are more reports of Dorinda
Openheim carrying on with Todd Weringer.'
     
    'At their age?' Wesley said with
disbelief.
     
    'Let's hope we've all got their
energy when the time comes.' Heffernan grinned, Rachel's remark forgotten. 'And
it seems to be the unanimous opinion that Norman Openheim was what is known in
the colonies as a "regular guy". I gather that's good. They all