Free Candles and Roses by Alex Walters

should stay longer, do something for her. Above all, he felt as if there should be more words, but he hadn’t a clue what they might be.
     

CHAPTER TEN
    ‘Penny for them,’ Horton said. They were driving through town to visit Danny Reynolds, Katy Scott’s one-time boyfriend. Horton was at the wheel. They’d hit what passed for rush hour up here, and the traffic was clogged and slow-moving. McKay had never been able to work out how the Highland traffic authorities could contrive so many tail-backs from such a small population.
    As it had turned out, it hadn’t taken them long to track Reynolds down. He was still on the PNC, with a recorded caution for possession, the best part of ten years before. The address had been out of date, but Horton had identified three Daniel Reynolds on the electoral role. A couple of telephone calls later, and they’d pinned down the correct one.
    ‘They’re not even worth a penny.’ McKay was conscious he’d been staring blankly out of the passenger window for the last ten minutes or so. He’d been thinking, with no real focus, about Katy Scott, about her father, and then about Chrissie and about his own life. That way, he knew, lay nothing but self-pity or worse.
    ‘This is the place,’ Horton said. ‘Next left.’
    It was a respectable looking new-build. Neat semi-detached houses with tidy, low-maintenance front gardens, most with at least one new car sitting on the drive. The sort of place that would attract young professionals with a half-decent joint salary. Somewhere you could trade up, step by step, from a tiny starter home to a five-bedroom villa without moving off the estate. The Reynolds were on one of the lower rungs of that ladder, but doing all right.
    Horton pulled into the curb. ‘Number eleven.’
    The houses along this stretch were largely identical, differentiated only by the colour of the paintwork and the efforts made to personalise individual properties—window boxes, garden furniture and ornaments, decorative door-knockers. All looked neat and well-maintained.
    As they entered the front garden, McKay gestured towards a football lying at the edge of the lawn. ‘Patter of tiny feet,’ he said.
    The front door was opened before he’d pressed the bell. A young woman, slim with pale blonde hair, was standing inside the doorway. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked, in a tone that suggested it was unlikely.
    ‘Police,’ McKay said, holding his warrant card steadily before her face. ‘DI McKay and DS Horton. Mrs Reynolds?’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘We’d like a word with your husband, if he’s in.’ McKay gave a smile unlikely to provide any reassurance. ‘Just a routine enquiry, in connection with an ongoing investigation. Nothing to worry about.’
    ‘You’d better come in.’ She ushered them into the house, leading them into a small sitting room. ‘I’m sorry everything’s a bit of a mess. I’ll go and get Danny.’
    The room seemed tidy enough to McKay, except for a small pile of children’s toys next to the television. Exactly what he would have expected. Neat modern furniture purchased from some chain store. Large screen TV and a stack of DVDs. A handful of paperbacks on a bookshelf largely occupied by random ornaments. Aspirational was probably the word.
    After a few minutes, an anxious-looking man appeared. He was probably around thirty, ginger hair already slightly receding, dressed in a tee-shirt and jeans, his watery blue eyes blinking nervously at them. ‘Danny Reynolds,’ he said. ‘Was it you phoned earlier? I don’t know why you’d want to speak to me.’ He sat himself down in the middle of the sofa. McKay and Horton had occupied the two armchairs.
    ‘As I told your wife, Mr Reynolds, it’s just a routine enquiry—’
    ‘Isn’t that what you say just before you arrest someone?’ Reynolds laughed. It wasn’t entirely clear whether he was joking.
    ‘We’re enquiring about someone we believe was a past acquaintance of yours. A Katy