Free Narrow is the Way by Faith Martin Page B

you think of anyone who might have got mad enough at her to want to kill her?’
    Mandy sniffed and finally pulled a cigarette from the carton and lit up. She puffed frantically and then shook her head, notnoticing that Hillary had leant back in her chair, well out of the way of the billowing smoke. ‘No. I mean, Julia had a lot of boyfriends, but only Roger recently. And he’s too nice. You don’t think he killed her, do you?’ she added sharply.
    But Hillary wasn’t about to be drawn. ‘We don’t know yet, Mandy. What about Michael Wallis. The son of the farmer, where the party was held. Do you know him?’
    Mandy wrinkled her nose. ‘Vaguely. From around.’
    ‘Did Julia know him?’
    ‘I guess. But she’d never been out with him. She said he’d got a dog for a girlfriend now. Is that true?’
    Hillary smiled and shrugged, thinking of poor Jenny Porter. ‘Some people don’t put looks high on their list of priorities,’ she chided.
    Mandy sighed somewhat wistfully, and Hillary suddenly realized that this shy, unassuming girl, couldn’t have had it easy, always being in the shadow of her beautiful and ambitious best friend. She wondered what, if anything, Julia Reynolds had brought to their friendship.
    They talked for another half hour but Hillary learned nothing more useful. Julia got on well with her parents, but expected to be moving out to live with Roger Greenwood soon. She’d had no family arguments or rows. Her father seemed the sort to be proud of his daughter’s strong personality , rather than disapproving. She made a mental note to find out where Julia Reynolds’ father had been at the time of the killing, just to make sure. It wouldn’t be the first time a father had killed a daughter that he’d seen as bringing ‘shame’ on the family, although, luckily, that kind of thing was much rarer now than it had been. Still, in a murder investigation, you left no stone unturned.
    When Mandy had finally gone, Hillary’s stomach was rumbling, but lunchtime was long since past. She left Tommy to type up his notes, and made her way to the canteen intent on getting a drink and maybe a piece of fruit, but was waylaid on the stairs by a secretary.
    The new super was ‘having a chat’ with his senior officers,and it was her turn, apparently. Wearily, and a trifle apprehensively, she made her way to Superintendent Jerome Raleigh’s office.
     
    She’d worked under Marcus Donleavy for most of her senior years at Kidlington, and they’d always got on well; they understood each other, and Hillary had always regarded change, although inevitable, with a great deal of suspicion.
    As she knocked on the door and waited for his call to enter, she wondered nervously what he’d been told about Ronnie, and the internal investigation into his corruption that had been conducted last year. Nothing good, that was for sure.
    She had only recently discovered – or at least, strongly suspected that she might know – where her misbegotten spouse had stashed the majority of his dirty loot, but as yet hadn’t done anything about it. But with a new super breathing down her neck, perhaps now would be a good time to get it sorted, once and for all?
    ‘Come in,’ Jerome Raleigh called, then looked up as the door opened and DI Hillary Greene walked in.
    She was dressed in a deep burnt-amber two piece, with a plain white blouse, sensible brown shoes, and a pretty, tiger’s-eye pendant. Her nut-brown hair gleamed in a slightly too-long bob. Her make up was discreet and casual. She had a surprisingly shapely figure, the kind film stars in the fifties had, and wary, clever, dark eyes. She was, he could see for himself, a very attractive widow.
    So far, he’d picked up very little about her love life on the gossip train, except that she lived alone on a canal narrowboat in the tiny village of Thrupp. Scuttlebutt insisted that she was currently still very much unattached, although from what Jerome had been able to read