Free An Act of Evil by Robert Richardson

turned away. Writing, as Maltravers very well knew, was not a glamorous calling. But he felt slightly deflated by the incident. What had been a strangeness the previous afternoon had grown like an emotional cancer into a concern, a worry and now a creeping fear.
    Waiting for Tess to finish, he crossed to a window and looked out over that part of Vercaster which lay below the hill on which the school stood. Over to the right, on its own higher hill, Talbot’s Tower rose against a sky washed in blue-black ink, faintly glowing with street lights. His eyes passed casually over the irregular mosaic of slate and tiled roofs broken by glimpses of road or open space. Below one rooftop lay a cheaply furnished bedroom with slime green paint and cheap wallpaper aged to the colour of an old dishcloth in which, the previous night, Arthur Powell had slept, his precious picture of Diana Porter on the stained and cracked varnish of the table by the bed. Maltravers’ gaze passed idly over it and on to the edges of the city where he could see the moving lights of distant motorway traffic.
    “ Goodnight!” a voice called behind him.
    Maltravers turned and saw Jeremy Knowles, his face slashed by a smile that unnervingly made him look more wicked, looking towards him.
    “ See you again,” he added, then swiftly turned and was gone.

 
    Chapter Five
     
    DETECTIVE CHIEF SUPERINTENDENT William Madden’s head appeared to be constructed only of skull and skin without any living humanity of flesh; his hair was the colour and texture of an old tennis ball left out in all weathers. He rarely smiled, laughed only with bitterness and was so totally a professional policeman that his very plain clothes seemed as much a uniform as the one he had ceased to wear.
    On Tuesday morning he sat at his desk reading the summary of the investigation into Diana’s disappearance while David Jackson stood, stiff and uneasy, before him. Madden’s reputation extended beyond his own force and into national police legend — ruthless, methodical, unsympathetic and very good — and Jackson had arrived at Vercaster apprehensively anticipating their first encounter. Madden, his body still, as if carved in granite, read swiftly and silently, then put the papers down and reached to adjust the position of a file tray that was fractionally out of line with the edge of his desk. Jackson waited patiently while he thought.
    “ Absolutely nothing? Anywhere?” he demanded.
    “ No, sir. We’re still waiting for final reports from two of the South coast ports in case she took out a temporary passport but it doesn’t seem likely.”
    Madden squeezed the end of his nose hard between thumb and forefinger and breathed in and out deeply; it was his only observed physical peculiarity.
    “ Right,” he said. “Either someone’s hiding her — possibly without realising it if she’s in some remote hotel or something — or she’s dead.”
    Jackson felt he was making conclusions too soon but knew better than to argue. Madden worked on the principle that co-ordinated police procedures were infallible because he was convinced that he was infallible and he expected all other police officers to be the same. He also had an impressive track record of being right.
    “ The problem is that we’re dealing with the acting profession,” Madden went on. “Emotional. Irresponsible. Artistic.” He had standard definitions for nearly all classes of society, each one rarely using more than three pejorative adjectives; somehow he imagined that all life was as orderly as his desk .
    “ This man Maltravers. He was the one who brought her to Vercaster and was among the last to see her.” He looked sharply at Jackson. “Thoughts?” he demanded, revealing that he had already thought the matter through, reached his own conclusions — which by definition must be right — and wanted to see if his subordinate could follow the same process.
    “ I take your point, sir, that he knows Miss Porter