Free A Narrow Margin of Error by Faith Martin Page B

smile of joy, huh?’
    ‘Seems to have escaped me for the moment.’
    ‘If he’s watching, don’t you think we should do something to make him good and mad?’ Steven asked, trying to keep any inflection out of his voice.
    Ever since he’d kissed her, he’d found himself reliving the moment at the most inconvenient of times – during budget meetings , driving home, in the shower, and most of all, alone, in bed.
    Since his divorce there’d been the odd date or two, of course, but nothing that had really touched him. The sexual encounters had been pleasant enough, naturally, and mutually satisfying, but hardly important.
    Now, at the thought that he might be about to kiss her again, he found himself tensing up like an excited schoolboy about to get his first grope. It made him feel both elated and uneasy.
    Hillary glanced across at him thoughtfully. He was totally unable to read her expression, and he felt a cold but oddly not at all unpleasant sweat break out on him practically everywhere.
    ‘I suppose we’d better,’ she said finally, and stepped towards him.
    Steven Crayle obediently took her in his arms and kissed her.
    And then again.
    And then again.
     
    It was nearly 10.30 by the time Hillary pulled into the Thames Valley HQ car park. Her car, which still smelt better than it had in years, bore traces of the odd detached colourful petal. After she’d parked she walked quickly through the foyer and down into thebowels of the building, where the rabbit warren that housed the CRT was located.
    She’d found no receipts amongst the flowers and had made up a list of over fifteen different florists, the names of which had been incorporated in colourful logos on the polythene wrappers.
    At some point she was going to have to run up her phone bill contacting them all, but she could already sense it wasn’t going to lead anywhere. In these days of the internet and modern technology there were so many ways he could have ordered them electronically without leaving a trace. And if his ‘romantic nature’ had led him to buying each and every bloom in person, what was the likelihood of a shop assistant remembering him specifically from all the other customers?
    ‘Guv,’ Jimmy called, looking up from his desk as she passed by the open door on her way to the stationery cupboard that everyone else euphemistically liked to call her office.
    It was the first time he could remember her being late to work and, sensing that she was distracted, assumed that she’d gone somewhere else in relation to the Thompson case before coming into the office. ‘Anything for the murder book?’
    Hillary shook off thoughts of florists, and shook her head to match. ‘No. Neither of the youngsters in?’ she asked, seeing he had the small office all to himself.
    ‘No, Sam’s got lectures and Vivienne’s doing something for the computer nerds,’ Jimmy said.
    The larger team who used computers to search for crime patterns in the statistics carried out most of the CRT’s work. They also had a large liaison team with the forensics department, and such painstaking and detailed work required a lot of manpower. Not surprisingly, they often poached an extra pair of hands from Steven Crayle’s investigative team when needed.
    So long as they didn’t call on her, she didn’t care. But she knew the likelihood of that happening was practically zero. Commander Donleavy wanted her doing detective work, not number crunching.
    ‘That’s fine. We’d better get on with the next of the witnesses,though. Where’s Dwayne Cox hang out nowadays? Darla told us he encouraged Rowan’s sexual exploits, remember? He seems the logical one for our victim to have boasted to, or confided in if something had backfired on him.’
    ‘Wouldn’t he have told Gorman about it if he had, guv?’ Jimmy asked, reaching for his coat.
    ‘Not necessarily. It depends. If he dared or egged Rowan on and involved him in something that later led to him getting killed, he