Free A Meeting of Minds by Clare Curzon Page B

the necessary paper work.
    He flicked a glance at his wrist on the steering wheel. Four minutes to go, and he’d be late if he took note of speed cameras on the way. Better assume they were empty of film than risk the Boss’s sarcasm. If he was picked up for burning rubber he could plead an emergency. Keeping his nose clean at this critical point in his career certainly qualified as that.
    The others were already assembled as he slid in. He slung his Barbour over a nearby chair and eased his tight collar. He kept his head down. Running the last fifty yards had given him a flushed face and he was conscious of the others’ eyes turned on him.
    Z made a grimace, nodding towards his feet. One of the brown paper bags had burst from his Barbour pocket and half a dozen Delft Blue hyacinth bulbs were smoothly rolling over the floor like giant marbles thrown under a police horse at a demo. They were dry, casting crinkly purple skins which crackled as he tried to shepherd them together with the toe of one shoe.
    â€˜When DS Beaumont has concluded his soccer practice, I should like to introduce DI Walter Salmon,’ Yeadings announced. ‘From tomorrow morning he will take over everyday running of the present case, and all reports should be passed to him.’
    That was all. The bottom fell out of Beaumont’s world. He caught Z’s wintry smile and knew she was feeling much the same.
    Yeadings nodded and the newcomer stepped forward to address them. At least they hadn’t brought in that sour,
coffin-faced Jenner from Bicester, but this one didn’t look reassuring. He was big, built like a brick loo, as the saying was. The width of his shoulders and the short car coat made a cube of him. The head on top was of much the same shape, with fairish hair close-cropped like a Victorian convict’s. His large, knobbly features were all squashed into the lower three-eighths of his face, and the coarse-lipped mouth stretched almost the full width of his heavy jaw.
    Not a pretty sight, Beaumont warned himself, but the man didn’t appear to concur with that opinion. He had, in fact, a mighty conceit of himself.
    Salmon . The DS ran the name through his mind, and recalled hearing it in canteen gossip. He was ex-Met, from West End Central. A recent newcomer to Thames Valley, he’d been tried out in Reading and created a shindig with a Paki which caused him a reprimand, but not down-ranking or public scandal. So maybe the Brass in their godlike wisdom now thought it safer to let him loose on the natives of rural Bucks.
    Beaumont switched his eyes to Yeadings but could read nothing on the superintendent’s face. Had he been a party to selecting the man, or had his wishes been overridden?
    Beaumont sighed audibly. It looked as though his own chances, dammit, (and Z’s) had been flushed down the pan and far out to sea on this one.
    â€˜OK.’ Salmon addressed the two DSs as though they were a reinforced posse. ‘Tomorrow we meet at eight sharp in my office. Have your reports on today’s interviews typed up and submitted to me by 7.30am. A full briefing in the Analysis Room for all Area CID, together with uniform sergeants and above, at 8.15.’ He stared at them as though they might retaliate or protest.
    â€˜Understood,’ said Beaumont with forced amiability.
    â€˜Understood, sir,’ Salmon prompted sternly.
    Beaumont considered this. ‘Sir,’ he conceded. Anything but call him Guv. That title had been Angus Mott’s.

    Now Sir was turning his attention to Z. ‘I’ll be there, sir,’ she assured him, cool almost to the point of indifference.
    â€˜Time we were all away home,’ Yeadings remarked conversationally. ‘I left Littlejohn and Nan capping each other’s gruesome anecdotes. God knows what excesses of necrophilia they’ll have reached by now.’
    He caught the uneasy glance Salmon shot at him. He smiled back. ‘My wife was