Free A Species of Revenge by Marjorie Eccles Page A

was possible, and felt that the trail had gone cold, and now here was the break she’d needed, out of the blue.
    â€˜That’s it, you stick with it, now that you’ve got a lead,’
    Mayo advised crisply. ‘Get over there as quickly as you can the wife doesn’t know yet?’
    â€˜Wish she did – but I didn’t think it was the sort of thing to tell her over the telephone.’ He nodded his understanding. Apart from breaking it gently, in a case like this, you had to take advantage of the situation to grasp anything that might give a possible clue as to why someone had taken Ensor’s life.
    â€˜What kept us?’ Abigail asked, inside half an hour later, as Kite eventually slowed down and began to thread his way competently through the built-up suburban areas on the outskirts of Birmingham. She’d have preferred to do the driving herself, but Kite was a Class One police driver, and proud of it, and she decided it wasn’t worth trampling on his masculine ego this time. She relegated herself to navigating from the map spread across her knees.
    â€˜No point in hanging around.’ Kite’s watchword. He should channel his energies into getting his inspector’s exams, she thought. But Kite insisted he was happy where he was, and he was a damn good sergeant, very like Mayo, in that things moved when he was around. He ran his cases competently, without the need for flourishing trumpets.
    It was a change, working with him, rather than the lugubrious Sergeant Carmody, who usually doubled up with her when she needed partnering. He was at present on leave, no doubt bored to death on the Costa Brava with his wife and his mother-in-law, counting the days until he got back to work.
    â€˜You’re too used to plodding along with old Ted,’ Kite said, picking up her thoughts. ‘When’s he due back? Another week? God, it’d bore me stiff, sitting around the poolside with the ma-in-law for company.’
    â€˜Don’t suppose Ted’s too happy. He’d swap the Costa Brava any day for what we’ve got on. Hang on, we’re nearly there.’
    Another turning, and they’d reached their destination, a smart house on one of the new estates that were spreading out and stretching ever nearer towards Stratford-upon-Avon.
    Judith Ensor was a woman in her late twenties, slim, small, with a gorgeous figure and a cloud of dark hair, a heart-shaped face, big grey eyes fringed with thick lashes, which she was inclined to flutter. She had a very slight, but attractive, lisp. She was ready for work, her clothes and make-up immaculate. Had Abigail been asked to hazard a guess as to what that work was, she’d have plumped unhesitatingly for beauty counsellor, hairdresser, fashion consultant or some allied occupation, but she would have been wrong. Mrs Ensor worked at a car-component factory as an industrial nurse. She might well constitute an industrial hazard herself, if she walked through the factory looking like that.
    She sat very still when she was told the news. Under the pearly make-up it was impossible to see whether she had paled, but her eyes looked slightly unfocused and her lips were stiff when she spoke.
    â€˜I knew something would happen one day.’
    â€˜Would you care to elaborate on that, Mrs Ensor?’
    â€˜What?’ She blinked several times in rapid succession. The big grey eyes were lustrous with what might have been tears. ‘Oh, oh just – his car, you know – he drove it so fast. ’
    â€˜I don’t think you can have understood. It wasn’t a car accident. I’m afraid.’
    Shock took people differently. It was possible she hadn’t taken it in when Abigail had told her how her husband had died. But Abigail didn’t have the impression she’d been thinking of a car accident when she made that initial response. A quick recovery, though, if it had been a slip of the tongue. Judith Ensor