Free Nor All Your Tears by Keith McCarthy

my father happy without having to beard Inspector Masson in all his terrifying glory. ‘How is that going?’ I asked in a cunningly disinterested way.
    â€˜Well, I shouldn’t really say.’
    â€˜No, of course,’ I hastened to say. ‘It was wrong of me to ask, Sergeant.’
    She hesitated, then said with a faint, modest smile, ‘My name’s Jean.’
    I was slightly taken aback and it was after a short hesitation that I allowed, ‘Jean it is, then.’
    I had assumed that that was that, but she continued in a low voice, perhaps fearful that Masson really did have the supernatural abilities he seemed to threaten, ‘We made an arrest this morning.’
    â€˜Really?’ I think I did quite well with the feigned surprise.
    â€˜The caretaker.’
    â€˜George Cotterill? You think he did it?’
    She nodded. ‘His story concerning his movements contains certain inconsistencies. There is at least sixty minutes unaccounted for between the time he claims to have locked up and left the school and the time he arrived home.’
    â€˜Is that all?’ It didn’t sound much.
    â€˜And he has a record.’
    â€˜Oh? What did he do?’
    Her smile was that of someone with a very, very big secret. ‘Something bad. Something very bad indeed.’

THIRTEEN
    T he weather had been having its effects on my patients and, in turn, this was having its effects on me. With increasing numbers of cases of heatstroke, especially amongst the elderly and those under two, surgeries were always busy and we were making huge numbers of house calls; something that in itself was becoming a problem. Every day now, by about one in the afternoon, the tarmac of the roads and pavements felt soft as I walked on it; I felt completely drained of energy and my skin greasy and dirty. As I passed women in light summer dresses, men in T-shirts and children in swimming costumes, I (in my suit because I am a doctor) felt even hotter than I actually was. And everyone, it seemed, was upending fizzy drinks bottles, licking mountainous ice-cream cones or, if they were children, slurping Jubbly-Wubblys,the melted bright-red ice water running down their chins and over their hands; I had to make a conscious effort not to stare in naked envy.
    The fact that I had arranged to meet Max in the Norbury Hotel for a drink kept me going that afternoon through five house-calls, three of them heat-related. I wasn’t finished until half-four, and then I had an evening clinic which was completely booked and didn’t finish until six-fifty, giving me no chance at all to shower or change before it was time to meet Max. I could only hope that I wasn’t exuding too many unpleasant odours. I reckoned, though, that my news about George Cotterill would drive all olfactory unpleasantness from her mind.
    I was not wrong.
    â€˜Oh, my God!’ She was shocked in a way that only she could be; Max was in many ways an innocent, in many others the most knowing person I have ever met. I suspect that she enjoyed – perhaps even revelled in – shock, excitement and incredulity. She delighted in her constant surprise at the variance between the world as she thought it should be and the world as it was, obstinately refusing to behave. ‘Really?’
    I nodded glumly. ‘Apparently so. A young couple.’
    â€˜He battered them to death?’
    â€˜With a hammer.’
    She winced. ‘Why?’
    â€˜Apparently he saw himself as some sort of moral guardian. He had a strict Christian upbringing mixed with a healthy dose of schizoid paranoia; they lived in the same block of flats as him and weren’t married. He was constantly remonstrating with them – the usual stuff about saving their souls, turning to God, and suchlike. They laughed at him, apparently; laughed once too often, though. He went completely bonkers, ranting about how he was going to save their souls, no matter what they