Free Dying in the Dark by Sally Spencer Page B

asked.
    â€˜That’s right, sir.’
    â€˜An’ you’re here to take me to headquarters, are you?’
    â€˜I’m not sure, sir,’ the constable confessed. ‘I rather
think
the idea was to drive you home.’
    â€˜I don’t know whose idea it was, but it’s a very bad one,’ Woodend said. ‘Headquarters in the place I need to be.’
    â€˜The doctor said—’
    â€˜The doctor said I’m fine,’ Woodend lied, and then winced as he felt a sudden pain shoot across his back. ‘You take me to headquarters, lad, an’ if anybody gives you any grief over it, you can say that – against all good sense – I insisted.’ The pain had moved to the base of his neck, but he could live with it. ‘But there’s one thing we have to do before we leave,’ he continued, ‘an’ that’s to go an’ see how Inspector Rutter’s gettin’ on.’
    Beresford’s eyes flickered for an instant. ‘Mr Rutter isn’t here any longer, sir. He left with a couple of other officers, half an hour ago.’
    â€˜An’ I suppose they tried to take
him
home, as well, did they?’
    The moment the words were out of his mouth, Woodend felt sick. Of course the officer hadn’t tried to take Bob home, he thought. Bob didn’t
have
a home any longer.
    How could he ever even have said that? he asked himself. What kind of mindless, insensitive clod – what kind of
gutter rat
– was he?
    â€˜You mustn’t feel guilty, sir,’ Beresford said, reading the expression on his face correctly. ‘You’ve been through a lot in the last few hours. It’s perfectly understandable you’d get a bit confused.’
    â€˜Aye, you’re right,’ Woodend agreed, partly forgiving himself. ‘So where did they take Mr Rutter?’
    â€˜To the station, sir.’
    â€˜I wouldn’t have thought they have made him do the paperwork so soon after his bereavement,’ Woodend said. ‘But perhaps that’s what he wanted.’
    â€˜Perhaps so,’ Beresford said, noncommittally.
    â€˜Well, we’re doin’ no good standin’ around here,’ Woodend said. ‘Time we got our skates on.’
    â€˜Yes, sir,’ Beresford said compliantly.
    It was only as Beresford was driving him towards the centre of Whitebridge that the grief really hit Woodend, but when it did, it came with the force of a landslide.
    Maria was dead! Beautiful, wonderful Maria was dead!
    Images of the past flashed through his mind.
    He remembered the first time he had met her, back in London. Bob had only recently become his sergeant then, and had been on pins about how they’d get on. But he need have had no worries, because the middle-aged English detective and the young Spanish research student had hit it off right from the start.
    He recalled going to see her in hospital, just after the eye surgeon had told her she would never recover her sight, and he – who had faced death in North Africa and Normandy – had marvelled that anyone could show such courage.
    He pictured her walking down the aisle on her wedding day, radiating happiness and moving with all the assurance of a woman who could actually see where she was going.
    And she
had
seen where she was going! Woodend thought. In her mind’s eye there’d been a clear vision of her future as Bob’s wife and the loving mother of his children.
    How could it have ended like this? Why did she have to die in a stupid accident?
    Perhaps a sighted person would have known that something was wrong, and got out of the house before the explosion occurred, he thought. And if that were the case, then life, which had already cursed her by striking her blind, had been doubly cruel in making that blindness the cause of her death.
    â€˜Are you all right, sir?’ Beresford asked.
    â€˜Of course I’m not bloody all right!’ Woodend