Free Not Safe After Dark by Peter Robinson Page B

remark on purpose to see how he would react. He hoped he’d passed the test. ‘You
were going to tell me what all this was about . . .’
    ‘Was I? Why don’t you tell me about what you did in Redditch last Friday evening first? Inspector Rodmoor will join us here by the table and take notes. No hurry. Take your
time.’
    And slowly, trying to remember all the details of that miserable, washed-out evening five days ago, Reed told them. At one point, Bentley asked him what he’d been wearing, and Inspector
Rodmoor asked if they might have a look at his raincoat and holdall. When Reed finished, the heavy silence stretched on for seconds. What were they thinking about? he wondered. Were they trying to
make up their minds about him? What was he supposed to have done?
    Finally, after they had asked him to go over one or two random points, Rodmoor closed his notebook and Bentley got to his feet. ‘That’ll be all for now, sir.’
    ‘For now?’
    ‘We might want to talk to you again. Don’t know. Have to check up on a few points first. We’ll just take the coat and the holdall with us, if you don’t mind, sir.
Inspector Rodmoor will give you a receipt. Be available, will you?’
    In his confusion, Reed accepted the slip of paper from Rodmoor and did nothing to stop them taking his things. ‘I’m not planning on going anywhere, if that’s what you
mean.’
    Bentley smiled. He looked like an undertaker consoling the bereaved. ‘Good. Well, we’ll be off then.’ And they walked towards the door.
    ‘Aren’t you going to tell me what it’s all about?’ Reed asked again as he opened the door for them. They walked out onto the path, and it was Inspector Rodmoor who turned
and frowned. ‘That’s the funny thing about it, sir,’ he said, ‘that you don’t seem to know.’
    ‘Believe me, I don’t.’
    Rodmoor shook his head slowly. ‘Anybody would think you don’t read your papers.’ And they walked down the path to their Rover.
    Reed stood for a few moments watching the curtains opposite twitch and wondering what on earth Rodmoor meant. Then he realized that the newspapers had been delivered as usual the past few days,
so they must have been in with magazines in the rack, but he had been too disinterested, too tired, or too busy to read any of them. He often felt like that. News was, more often than not,
depressing, the last thing one needed on a wet weekend in Carlisle. Quickly, he shut the door on the gawping neighbours and hurried towards the magazine rack.
    He didn’t have far to look. The item was on the front page of yesterday’s paper, under the headline, M IDLANDS M URDER S HOCK . It read,
    The quiet Midlands town of Redditch is still in shock today over the brutal slaying of schoolgirl Debbie Harrison. Debbie, 15, failed to arrive home after a late hockey
     practice on Friday evening. Police found her partially clad body in an abandoned warehouse close to the town centre early Saturday morning. Detective Superintendent Bentley, in charge of the
     investigation, told our reporter that police are pursuing some positive leads. They would particularly like to talk to anyone who was in the area of the bus station and noticed a strange man
     hanging around the vicinity late that afternoon. Descriptions are vague so far, but the man was wearing a light tan raincoat and carrying a blue holdall.
    He read and reread the article in horror, but what was even worse than the words was the photograph that accompanied it. He couldn’t be certain because it was a poor shot, but he thought
it was the schoolgirl with the long wavy hair and the socks around her ankles, the one who had walked in front of him with her dumpy friend.
    The most acceptable explanation of the police visit would be that they needed him as a possible witness, but the truth was that the ‘strange man hanging around the vicinity’ wearing
‘a light tan raincoat’ and carrying a ‘blue holdall’ was none other than himself,