Free Poison At The Pueblo by Tim Heald

when it comes to cadavers, as you so quaintly call them. That’s a different area of expertise.’
    â€˜You’re saying the old ways were better?’
    He didn’t care for his wife when she was in one of these moods. The Polish girl came with chorizo and calamari with crusty bread and olives. The Bognors eyed them thoughtfully.
    â€˜If you put it like that, then I suppose so, yes.’
    â€˜So,’ she said, triumphantly spearing an olive with a toothpick. ‘You admit it.’
    â€˜Admit what?’
    â€˜That there’s an old way and a new way of doing things.’
    â€˜I didn’t say that.’
    â€˜You did actually.’
    Bognor was about to argue, but thought better of it and took his own olive instead. He used his fingers and not a toothpick.
    â€˜I simply don’t see the point,’ he said, very deliberately, ‘of crashing in where angels fear to tread, if you follow my drift. Bones and hacksaws just aren’t my thing. I do motivation, trade gaps, political intrigue, zeitgeists, grown-up stuff.’
    â€˜Meaning pathology is for other ranks?’
    â€˜I didn’t say that. I wish you’d stop putting words into my mouth.’ He put a ring of calamari into his mouth instead of Monica’s words, chewed and took a sip of wine. ‘I simply don’t understand this modern obsession with gory detail. I don’t need to examine the body to know that someone’s dead. And if it’s a question of “how”, then I rely on the expert. I do “why”. With the greatest respect to the Patricia Cornwells of this world, they can’t do that.’
    â€˜That’s not what most people think.’
    â€˜I don’t give a flying whatsit for what most people think. I’m not interested in most people. I’m interested in right and wrong, the truth, eternal verities. “Most people”, as you put it, aren’t interested in concepts like that.’
    â€˜You don’t like “most people”, do you?’
    â€˜I’m indifferent to “most people”,’ he said, ‘and, in a sense, I’m paid to be just that. I despise highly paid executives who hide behind majorities and committees. I’m not a great believer in popular opinion, best-sellers, fashion and all that garbage. Leaders are paid to lead and that means being decisive and, if necessary, unpopular. Only a fool fails to listen to advice, but only a fool always acts on it.’
    â€˜Max said to me the other day that the crime and thriller market is dominated by “serial killer novels, American forensics and the exceptionally gruesome”.’
    â€˜You know my opinion of Max,’ said Bognor. Max had been a contemporary of Monica’s at the Courtauld but had decided there was no money in the history of art and its appurtenances. He had started his own publishing house specializing in British editions of American best-sellers. He drove a Porsche, had a mews house in Belgravia and was, as they put it, unmarried. Bognor did not think much of him on a number of accounts. ‘In any case, Max deals in fiction. I do real life.’
    She laughed. ‘You call it real life but you never sit in on autopsies or get your hands dirty doing menial work. Home or away.’
    He chewed chorizo. It was fatty and flavoursome. Bad for him. Which he approved of.
    â€˜I told you. I’m paid to think. I’m going to have hake with a green sauce and a red Ribiero. What about you? I’m not in the mood for white.’
    She said she’d like the rabbit which came with a Portuguese sounding sauce involving clams and said she was feeling reddish too.
    â€˜Fiction mirrors life,’ she said. ‘If it’s not realistic, it’s no good.’
    He snorted derisively. ‘Fiction is fiction. If it just mirrors real life then it’s pointless. It has to be a work of imagination. As such it’s artificial.