Free Mortal Taste by J. M. Gregson

they’re police.’
    The youth stood back and motioned them past him, looking anxiously down the drive for the journalistic jackals who were not there. Then he followed them into the hall and said, ‘I’m sorry. They’ve been hanging around all day. I’m trying to keep them away from my mother and Catriona.’ Bert Hook felt very sorry for him. He was trying hard to behave like a mature man, and paradoxically it made him look more of a boy. Having ushered them into the room, he stood self-consciously beside them with his weight all on one leg. Then he self-consciously folded his arms; he looked like an actor trying to play an older man in a school play.
    The sitting room had a scattering of empty cups and mugs on most of its flat surfaces. Matt eventually went and took up his position by his mother, so that she was framed by daughter and son, standing stiffly on either side of her like protective sentries. Perhaps the older woman, even in the distress they were trying to defend from outsiders, recognized something ridiculous in this little tableau, or perhaps the little smile was the conditioned middle-class reaction, welcoming strangers, however intrusive, into her home.
    She said, ‘You will have gathered that I’m Jane Logan. This is my daughter, Catriona, and my son, Matt.’ The boy moved half-forward to shake hands with the introduction, then realized that this was not an occasion for that. He stood uncomfortably gauche, with his left hand by his side and his right one still half-extended towards the CID men. He said, ‘Can’t this wait? Surely you don’t need to push your way in here on this of all days.’
    Lambert said, ‘I’m afraid it can’t. We can leave a more formal interview until later but we need to ask one or two preliminary questions immediately.’
    Matt would have protested further, but his mother said calmly, ‘You’d better sit down,’ and set the example by doing so herself in the middle of the wide sofa. Her children hesitated, then sat down one on each side of her, while Lambert and Hook planted themselves gratefully in the two armchairs opposite them.
    Jane Logan looked quite composed, with her fair hair perfectly in place, despite the strain around eyes which had probably been tearful for most of the day. The younger face of Catriona Logan at her side seemed more puffed with grief, more tremulous than hers, but this was probably the first real tragedy in a young girl’s life. Lambert said, ‘Just a few initial questions, as I said. I understand Mr Logan was in Birmingham on the day of his death.’
    â€˜At a one-day conference on trends in secondary education, yes,’ said Jane Logan.
    â€˜He was giving one of the papers in the morning,’ said Catriona, her pride in her dead father peeping through her ravaged face.
    â€˜Dad was something of an authority on comprehensive schools, you see,’ said Matt, anxious to support his sister.
    â€˜So I understand. My wife’s a teacher: she told me how eminent your Dad was.’ Lambert smiled from one to the other, then said to the woman in between them, ‘Was he staying overnight in Birmingham?’
    There was a tiny pause before she said, ‘No. But I wasn’t expecting him back until late. Ten thirty or eleven, perhaps.’
    â€˜You didn’t report him missing until the next morning, though.’
    Perhaps it sounded like an accusation, for Catriona put her hand upon her mother’s, would perhaps have spoken if Jane Logan had not said calmly, ‘No. I just presumed Peter had been delayed by something. I went to bed at eleven and promptly fell asleep. It wasn’t until the next morning that I realized that Peter hadn’t come home.’
    Catriona said protectively, ‘Mum had been to the gym that night after a day’s work. She was tired out,’ and her mother smiled her affirmation, as if a little