Free Dying to Know by Keith McCarthy Page B

dead, and they didn’t ever catch who did it. They were useless.’
    â€˜They don’t fail every time—’
    â€˜And there was the time that my parents were burgled; all the police did was turn up, wander about for twenty minutes and make some fatuous comments about the inadequacy of the locks. They never even pretended that they were serious about looking for the thieves.’
    I might have argued still further, except that I knew that there was a degree of truth in what she said; Masson hadn’t exactly covered himself with an air of infallibility when it came to investigating the deaths on the allotments a few months before.
    â€˜What can we do?’ I asked somewhat pathetically.
    â€˜Investigate,’ she said at once, as if that were a magic word that immediately bestowed on us the abilities of Sherlock Holmes and James Bond in one.
    â€˜How?’ I enquired, and my tone was partly curious, partly trepidatious.
    Well, if she had had anything in her mind, it went out of it at that point and her opened mouth gave forth no bounty. After a short pause, she said uncertainly, ‘We’ll have to think about that. It’s too late now to do anything, anyway.’ She finished her drink.
    By the time I had returned from the bar again, I had made a decision. ‘If Masson’s dumb enough to charge Dad with Lightoller’s murder, then we interfere. Until then, we stay out of it.’
    She was on the point of arguing, so I leaned across and planted a large kiss on her open mouth, which proved effective in silencing her. I had to keep it up for quite a while, but decided on balance that it was worth it. Slightly numb of lip, we parted eventually and Max looked distinctly happy.
    After which, things went quite well. In fact, they went brilliantly . . .
    At about three in the morning, as Max lay sleeping peacefully and with quite astonishing pulchritude next to me, the phone rang and two thoughts entered my head instantaneously. One was that this must be news about my father, that perhaps at last Mr Holversum had worked his promised magic and managed to get my father released; the other was that in five hours’ time I was on call for twenty-four hours and a night’s strenuous hokey-pokey with Max was not the best preparation, especially following on from two nights in which I had barely amassed a total of seven hours of sleep.
    â€˜Yes?’
    Dad’s voice was bright and breezy. ‘Hello, Lance. Couldn’t give me a lift home, could you?’

ELEVEN
    T hankfully, it was a relatively quiet call. There were two cases of influenza, three of measles and three of chest pain (at least two of which were, I’m fairly sure, indigestion), all fairly non-taxing. Which was just as well, since I had not managed to get back to sleep after picking up Dad from the police station and ferrying him home.
    The conversation had been fairly one-sided, as I had spent most of the time listening while he prattled on as if I were picking him up from a coach trip to the seaside. He was cheerful, almost triumphant, constantly repeating the refrain that, ‘I knew I’d win in the end’. I wondered if he had been as verbose in the police station and if that were the reason he had finally been slung out on his ear.
    â€˜They had no proof, of course,’ he proclaimed for the fifth time as I pulled up outside his house. Some peculiar piece of operatic tripe came on the radio; I vaguely thought that this was odd, as it was tuned to Radio One, but thought nothing of it.
    â€˜So I gather.’
    He looked out of his window. ‘We are at my house,’ he said, apparently surprised.
    I mentally applauded his observational skills. ‘We are.’
    A deep frown. ‘You’re not taking me to your house, then?’
    I thought of Max tucked up in my bed, and thought then of his reaction to such a situation. ‘Not tonight, Dad. I’m due on call in less