Free A Narrow Margin of Error by Faith Martin

chiff-chaffs making their iconic calls in the willow tree opposite her boat. She lay awake for a while, listening to the fragile feathered creatures that had migrated thousands of miles to come to England, and wishing that all that flying had tired the noisy little sods just enough not to call right outside her porthole window.
    With a sigh, she rolled out of bed, pulled on an old terry-cloth robe that had seen much better days, and made her way through to the small galley kitchen where she set the coffee pot boiling. She contemplated toast, then decided not to bother, and instead reached for yesterday’s
Oxford Times
.
    She turned to the financial section, but there was no report in it by Terence Pitt. But then, just how often would a financial correspondent be called upon to write an article? This was Oxford, not London. She wondered if it could be Darla who was the main breadwinner in that family, despite her husband’s high-falutin’ family connections. She sighed again and drank her coffee, then had a one-and-a-half minute shower and dressed.
    By her watch it was nearly 8.35 when she stepped out onto the towpath, and the chiff-chaffs flew off in alarm. She had just a short walk past the rest of her neighbours’ narrowboats before the pub car park hove into sight. But as she approached Puff the Tragic Wagon her steps slowly faltered.
    What the hell?
    Her car was usually a pale-green colour (with creative swirls of rust here and there) but for some reason, her eye kept straying to the colour pink. And red. And yellow. And orange. And white. All of which seemed to be crammed against every window in the car.
    For a moment she thought some hooligan had sufferered from a touch of creative originality, and instead of spray-painting foul slogans over the outside, had for some reason gone for a more abstract theme, and confined himself to the windows only in some show of minimalist reticence.
    But as she cautiously approached her car, she saw instead that it was literally stuffed full of roses. Bunches and bunches of them. She walked slowly to the driver’s side door and looked inside. She couldn’t see the foot pedals for red roses and ferns. Carnations, roses and other frothy greenery was piled high on the driver seat, and the passenger seat beside it. The back seat and the rear floor was also submerged by roses and other flowers of every hue that reached, literally, to the ceiling of her car.
    Hillary bent down and squinted at the lock of the door handle. Tiny scratches showed where someone had picked the lock.
    She stood up again and glanced around. Most of the cars that were left in the car park on a regular basis were gone now, but that was only to be expected. It was a working day after all, and most of the villagers and boat owners had a longer commute than she did, and would have left earlier. She wondered what they’d made of the sight of her rainbow-hued old rustbucket. They’d probably just grinned and thought she’d struck lucky with some romantically minded new partner.
    But she’d have to track them down and ask them if they’d seen anything or anyone lurking around. Not that her admirer was likely to have let himself be seen, and there were plenty of hours of darkness once the pub was shut for him to have left his gift unnoticed.
    But it had to be done, since you just never knew. The thought of other people knowing she might have a problem wasn’tpleasant, however, and she was in no hurry to start questioning her neighbours.
    Instead she reached into her bag and called Steven Crayle.
    It was answered on the second ring with a curt, ‘Crayle.’
    ‘Steven, it’s me. Are you at work yet?’
    ‘Just approaching the turn-off. Why?’
    ‘Can you come on down to Thrupp for a few minutes?’
    There was a brief moment of silence, and then he said, ‘I’ll be about five minutes.’
    Hillary thanked him, then snapped shut her mobile and stood looking at the floral bouquets inside her car. She tried to tot