Free Worse than Death (Anna Southwood Mysteries) by Jean Bedford Page A

Tell me and I’ll stop. We can all forget it. Just an honest mistake, guys…” I was nearly in tears.
    The driver had come back into the room. He was a thin, wiry man with a rat-like, pointed face. “We’re just the hired help,” he said, in a not particularly unfriendly voice.
    “We get told ‘Take the bird’, so we take the bird.”
    I wondered what happened if they ever got told ‘Kill the bird’…
    “He coming?” Balaclava asked, jerking his head towards the room with the phone.
    The driver nodded. “Yeah. You and Sandy stay till he gets here. I’m off.” He drained his coffee and went out, jangling his car keys. There was the sound of the engine starting up, then its gradual fading as it went back along the track. Sandy leant at the sink, staring out at the bush. Balaclava simply sat, his eyes half closed, waiting. They were very good at being strong and silent.
    My mind churned and I chain-smoked until I felt sick. Graham would be in a panic, surely. Perhaps Evan had called back — I cursed myself for not leaving him a more detailed message. ‘Last seen buying cigarettes…’ I could see the headlines.
    I took a few deep breaths and tried to still my rising hysteria. List your options, I said to myself. Examine the facts, I added, when the first bit of advice seemed to lead nowhere very good. ‘Sandy’ might be short for Alexander. It might also be a generic term for a Scot or a redhead. It might be entirely made up to disguise who he was. I knew what they all looked like. I’d recognise their voices again. I knew which room the phone was in. It didn’t add up to much. My real hope seemed to lie in the cavalry arriving at the eleventh hour.
    I asked to go to the bathroom and Sandy came up with me.
    “Leave the door partly open,” he said. He lounged against the wall outside.
    I could see other rooms leading off the passage, and as we went downstairs again I said, “Nice house.”
    “Yeah,” he said. Great conversationalist.
    We sat at the table again and Balaclava took up Sandy’s position at the window, leaning against the sink and half-closing his eyes. After what seemed like hours of just sitting and smoking, Sandy looked up suddenly and then I heard it, too. The sound of a car coming towards the house.
    *
    I wasn’t surprised in the slightest when the man from the ferry — the so-called Jack Robinson — walked in with Birkett. The policeman looked a lot tougher and harder in the flesh than in his photographs. They were both big, beefy men.
    “Everything okay?” Birkett asked Sandy.
    “Yeah. No problems. No one saw us. She says she doesn’t know what it’s all about.” He gestured towards me and I felt grateful surprise that he’d bothered. I wondered if I was imagining the hostility from Sandy and Balaclava towards Birkett. They’d both seemed to stiffen when he came in.
    Birkett’s cold eyes flickered over me as if I was irrelevant. ‘Robinson’s’ stare was harder to interpret, but I didn’t like it.
    “Okay. Thanks, boys. Wait outside.” They left and Birkett sat at the table facing me. “Right,” he said. “No more games.” He gave me a cop’s interrogatory glare. “Make coffee, Jack,” he said over his shoulder, as if to a servant. He leaned his elbows on the table, fiddling with his key ring.
    “Look, Mr Birkett…” I began.
    “Detective-Sergeant to you,” he said. He liked this game, you could see it in the habitual folds of his sour grin.
    I was shaking again. I sat on my hands, letting my cigarette burn in the ashtray.
    “Detective-Sergeant,” I said, with no sarcasm. “I wish you’d tell me what it is you think I’ve done. For God’s sake — I really haven’t got a clue. It can’t be Leonie Channing — you were after me before that…”
    “You’ve got the wrong friends,” he said. “You shouldn’t get involved in their little schemes. This is big league, lady. You’re way out of your depth.”
    The script was getting worse and