Free A Meeting of Minds by Clare Curzon

on your feet, have you?’ He produced his warrant card and repeated the name.
    â€˜I’ve been very fortunate, Mr Beaumont.’
    â€˜Is Ms Winter, though? It makes one wonder.’
    â€˜She’s had no cause for regrets. She took me on trust, recommended by the governor.’
    â€˜Your dad or Wormwood Scrubs’s gaffer?’ he goaded.
    Childe ignored him. ‘The only digs that interest me nowadays are in the soil. I’m in my final year horticulture, get my external degree next summer. That’s good enough for her. If you went to Chelsea Flower Show or Hampton Court instead of to the dogs, you’d know that the lags do a nice line in competitive gardening these days.’
    â€˜Reflected glory from the Leyhill lot? You’re not telling me you actually showed her your genuine CV?’
    Childe didn’t have to answer. His smirk told all. ‘I’m a different person, Mr Beaumont. Born again, Sally Army, teetotal.’
    â€˜They’ve got you banging a tambourine? How come you work Sundays then?’
    â€˜Every day’s the Sabbath, Mr Beaumont, when you’ve got the faith.’
    The DS was tiring of this vaunted respectability and his own name monotonously repeated. It was time to introduce the business in hand. ‘So what do you make of your lady boss?’
    â€˜That’s what she is. A real lady. Not that she’s a softie. Runs
a tight little ship, as the expression is. Expects me to jump on any slackness. And if you’ll excuse me, I don’t care to overrun my tea-break. Perhaps we can continue this in my office. If there’s anything worth continuing, that is.’
    â€˜Oh, believe me, there is.’ He watched the other for a flicker of reaction, but Childe turned on him wide, round eyes the colour of brown Windsor soup, and waited for him to explain.
    â€˜I just want to know why you killed her,’ he said simply, pushing back his chair.
    Â 
    He carried away with him a brilliant image of the man’s amazement, horror, incredulity. Never had he seen a jaw drop so literally. It was if the screw was right out of the hinge and only skin held the lower face together. It had to be genuine; or else Childe had also achieved miracles in dramatic art while he trenched and sowed and pruned in the prison gardens.
    They had gone to his office, and there the man asked all the right, concerned, innocent questions of how and when and where. He knew enough about the lengthy and convoluted ways of police work not to demand, ‘Whodunnit?’ The nearest he approached was to ask, ‘Have you got him?’
    Beaumont stared back. ‘The body was only found early this morning. It could have happened sometime after eleven last night.’
    â€˜Somebody saw her at that time?’
    â€˜That’s when the pub closed. Give another half-hour for the car park to clear. Hers was the only car left there. Only, of course, it wasn’t hers, was it? It was yours.’
    He watched realisation dawn. ‘No!’ Childe shouted. ‘No, you’re not going to stitch me up! She borrowed the Vectra yesterday. We did a swap. I drove her Alfa to get the bumper fixed where she’d backed into a tree. I was going to pick it up later and run it home for her, only the garage hadn’t a replacement part.’
    â€˜Of course, you knew where she lived, having gone there for dinner sometime before. Convenient. Very friendly, your
boss; close. Almost intimate, you might say. Did I mention she was short of some clothes when we found her?’
    The man’s face had taken on a sickly pallor. ‘For God’s sake! It wasn’t like that.’
    â€˜Like what? You were sent away for GBH. On a woman. That’s what this was, only this time it went just too far. But, understandably, it had to. If she didn’t die, your boss could name and shame you, then we’d have you for attempted murder. End of a promising earthy