Free With My Little Eye by Gerald Hammond Page B

away.
    Douglas decided not to comment on the mention of gas cylinders. ‘I don’t think anybody ever just dies,’ he said. ‘There has to be a reason. Nothing ever happens without a reason.’
    â€˜Are you sure of that?’
    â€˜Not a damn bit,’ he admitted. ‘That’s the sort of thinking that leads to the assumption of the existence of an all-seeing and all-deciding God.’
    They spent the rest of the meal arguing amicably over religion. It was a subject about which disagreement was all too easy so Douglas usually avoided it, but on this occasion he found that he and Tash had identically agnostic views.
    As they got into the car Tash said, ‘So they use carbon dioxide to push the beer up to the pumps. And to keep it from going flat. I think Mr Swanson did it. I think he set a trap for George Eastwick but his brother walked into it.’ Douglas had to look at her twice to make sure that she was joking.
    When they reached home, Douglas was pleased to see that there were no reporters besieging the front door. Police vehicles, he discovered, were discreetly parked at the back door and had not yet been discovered by the media.
    Tash went to write up the report from their morning’s meeting into Douglas’s distinctive format and onto email.
    Douglas was using the original drawing room as his office. He never entertained more than a very few people at a time so that what had been a small dressing room was quite large enough for his sitting room. He had retained it for that purpose and was preparing to put his feet up when an uncharacteristically polite tapping at the door announced the arrival of George Eastwick.
    â€˜Can I have a word?’ he asked.
    Douglas was tired and he had no great liking for George but he preferred not to get on bad terms with one who might well become a neighbour. There was nothing on the television that anybody with two brain cells could want to watch. Even the Discovery channel could only reveal an obsession with the sexual customs of early man. He was relieved to see that Tash’s siblings were playing Vulcans and Borgs among the trees. He found that he had already read his library book. He could hardly grudge George a word, especially after so polite an approach. He bit back the first word to spring to his mind and invited George to come in and sit.
    George seemed unimpressed with the room. ‘Why d’you squeeze yourself into this pokey wee hole?’ he demanded. ‘You’ve a grand room across the hall and you only use it as an office.’
    Douglas felt the need to explain – to himself as much as to George. ‘I need an impressive office. In here, I’m as often just myself or with one or two friends. If I ever get a live-in girlfriend again I might swap them over, if that’s what she wants. I’ll hope to hold meetings in my office when business builds up.’ In his secret mind, Douglas was determined that any lady planning to move in with him would be the sort who enjoyed intimate comfort above display. The other kind would be strictly a one-nighter. ‘Anyway, it costs less to light and heat.’
    George nodded. That argument he could understand. ‘I wanted to ask you … to ask you …’
    â€˜Yes?’
    â€˜What did you tell yon chief inspector about me?’
    Douglas had no wish to start a list of his enemies with George’s name but he had no objection to giving him a heavily edited version of what he had said to DCI Laird. He decided that he might as well pick up some information in exchange. ‘I don’t remember saying much about you. He wanted a summary of everybody in the house. Of course, I had to tell him about how we came to find your brother. When do they say that Stan died?’
    â€˜They’ve not said. But we found him on Wednesday and they were asking me what I was doing all day on Monday. I said I went back to Falkirk to see was there any mail or