Free Making A Killing (The Romney and Marsh Files Book 2) by Oliver Tidy

obvious false facade Masters was hiding something.
     
    *
     
    By the time Romney returned to the station, CID had assumed the peacefulness that offices devoid of people usually manage. Marsh, however, was still at her desk. She sat grim-faced doing nothing. Her desktop was tidy. Romney didn’t need to be a detective to understand that she hadn’t found Phillip Emerson’s mobile phone.
    Her features, when she looked up at him, were hardened. She had been simmering, barely able to keep a lid on her anger. She had gone back over the afternoon and was certain that she had left the mobile phone on her desk. For this she was angry with herself. But she was livid because no matter how many times she considered it, she always came back to the same conclusion – Detective Sergeant Wilkie had taken it. As an idea it was as appalling as it was probable. Marsh could find no other explanation than that the theft of the evidence from her desk had been an opportunist act of professional and personal malice. She hadn’t been able to c onfront Wilkie but she would. She’d know whether it was him the moment she looked into his eyes. And then she’d decide what to do about it.
    As she had sat seething , she had deliberated over how she would deal with it when Romney returned. Despite the damage that the loss of potentially critical evidence could do to the investigation, it was nothing compared to how she saw it impacting on her record. There would be an entry at least, some sort of disciplinary action at worst. The anxieties, outcomes, fury and worry had chased themselves around her mind for over an hour.
    ‘Well?’ he said.
    ‘I’m sorry, sir. I can’t find it.’
    Romney stood looking down on her for a long, horrible moment. She would ha ve preferred him to rage at her, to question her professionalism. She might then have been pushed to defend herself with her suspicions. His anger would have been far preferable to the silent disappointment he treated her to. But he said nothing more about it and neither did she.
    ‘Did you call Lillian West?’
    ‘Yes, sir.
    ‘How was she?’
    ‘Difficult to tell. I told her we are aware of her relationship with the deceased and that we needed to talk to her. She asked us not to go to her home. I offered her that we could meet somewhere neutral. She suggested the cafe at the end of the harbour wall tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. I said that if that would be suitable for you she wouldn’t hear back from us and we’d see her there.’
    ‘That’s near his flat at De Bradelei Wharf. I can see that before meeting her.’ Romney didn’t say whether Marsh would be going with him. ‘Go home, Sergeant. I’ll see you in the morning.’
    From his desk, Romney watched Marsh leave. She’d made a mistake and in doing so she’d put him in a position where he had to do something about it. Maybe he should consider Wilkie’s suggestion of changing them around. He’d sleep on it.
    He rang transport and asked if they’d been able to send anyone out to look at his car and was sorry to hear that owing to workload and illness it wouldn’t be until the morning. Still, on the bright side he now had a good reason to insist that his latest significant other stayed the night.
     
    *
     
    Julie Carpenter had given Romney cause to consider ripping up his rule book on women and relationships, a place where the ink had long since dried. Having drifted into playing the field for some years since his second divorce, he’d gradually become disillusioned regarding his prospects of ever finding that special someone with whom he felt he could connect to such a degree that he might consider some sort of permanent commitment again.
    When he had first returned to the dating scene in his late thirties in search of female company it had been with a mixture of outward scepticism and naive private hope in equal measure. However, the more he experienced of available women his age the more his hope dwindled to gutter