Free Last to Leave by Clare Curzon Page B

work. And of the worse kind, because DI Walter Salmon had flown home from his holiday in Brittany and required his immediate company for a visit to Mrs Kate Dellar.
    It could surely have waited for tomorrow. But, on the other hand, it was himself the DI had preferred to call in, and not Z. Any opportunity to get a step ahead of his rival DS had to be seized. So how far had Salmon acquainted himself with the case as it stood? He must have dropped in at the incident room already being set up, and helped himself to such reports as were logged.
    Brought that much up-to-date, the DI had phoned Mrs Dellar and made an appointment, catching the lady as she returned home, actually walking in through the door. Wrong-footed, she’d not had the wit to insist that a meeting was inconvenient.
    Beaumont returned the basset hound to the kitchen and flung the end of its lead to his son with suitable instructions. Then he walked to the road’s end and waited to be picked up by the Great Uncouth himself.
    He found Salmon unchanged but for a hectic band of scorched skin across cheeks, nose and throat, which ceased abruptly on his brow where some kind of headgear had been pulled down for protection. Beaumont pondered its likely nature: cricket umpire’s panama hat; baseball cap; beret? No, he looked more the old-fashioned knotted-handkerchief type, paddling on the sea’s edge with
rolled-up trouser legs and twanging red braces; the sort of belly-bulging, middle-aged man you used to see on saucy postcards, surrounded by fat women and jeering kids. However inappropriate that image, he’d been keen to return a day early to duty.
    At Mrs Dellar’s cottage, while they waited for her to answer the doorbell, Beaumont sized up the other man. He was big. 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 gingerish fair 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, but the man himself didn’t appear to hold that opinion. He had, in fact, a mighty conceit of himself.
    He hadn’t given any hint of his immediate intentions. Perhaps it was his idea of a charm offensive, familiarising himself with the main players before the game got properly under way, and impressing bystanders with his being in control of the case.
    It might not come amiss to warn him. ‘The lady’s very upset, sir,’ Beaumont ventured, deliberately avoiding the term ‘guv’ which was reserved for the absent Angus Mott. ‘She seems the sensitive sort.’
    Salmon’s eyes flicked sideways to put him in his place. ‘All the better to gauge her reactions,’ he said shortly. Like Little Red Riding-hood’s wolf, Beaumont noted, and was visited by a second unflattering image of his senior officer, in a granny’s flannelette nightie, peering over the bedclothes.
    The door opened. Kate Dellar stood there, white and strained. ‘Is there any news?’ she asked anxiously.
    There was no attempt to lead her indoors, to soften the blow.
    â€˜I have to report that a body has been found, ma’am’,
Salmon announced baldly. ‘At the scene of the fire. A post-mortem is to be carried out tomorrow and we can tell you more then. ’
    It took a moment for it to reach her. Beaumont had time to step forward and catch her as she swayed.

6
    Refreshed by Sunday’s family outing, Superintendent Mike Yeadings had returned home to find three messages on his answerphone. The first assured him that his DI, Walter Salmon, was returning for the Larchmoor Place case and would attend the post-mortem on a body found at the scene of the fire. The second was from DS Zyczynski, bringing him up to date on the findings and giving the time of next day’s post-mortem as