style="font-size:15px;"> Zoë was wearing make-up and showing cleavage. Both were artfully presented. Her hair was blonde and cut short, gamine style, setting off the sculptural forms of the long neck, chin and cheekbones. She had played it wild with the make-up around her eyes, making them hard to read.
‘I hope that you’re here to arrest the bastards,’ Zoë declaimed. I thought that the accent might be Shropshire or Cheshire.
Sheila laughed.
‘What reason would I have to arrest them?’
‘They’ve reneged on the deal, the cheapskates.’
‘Zoë …’ Sheila protested amiably.
‘What deal would that be?’ I asked, playing it slightly dumb and nervous in the presence of glory.
‘You tell him,’ Zoë instructed Sheila. ‘You’re pissed off about it too.’
Sheila smiled, apologizing for her sister-in-law. ‘Our husbands have cried off taking us to the rugby in Dublin.’
‘It’s a bloody institution, the Dublin trip,’ Zoë wailed.
‘They’re not going?’
‘Oh, they’re going all right, they just don’t want the WAGs with them this time. Selfish buggers,’ Zoë snarled.
‘Ah.’ I grinned, pretending that I had only just seen the light. ‘I thought you meant arrest them for what happened on Saturday night.’ I segued into a big, dopey cop smile, and waited for the reactions.
Sheila had the grace to look uncomfortable. Zoë just shrugged and pulled a face. ‘Bloody schoolboys,’ she hissed.
‘It was a silly stunt that went wrong, Sergeant, and now the episode is closed,’ Sheila said firmly.
‘And they learnt a lesson,’ Zoë added.
‘What lesson was that, Mrs McGuire?’
‘Getting ripped off by that dirty bitch, and spending a freezing night out in the forest. And then having to pay for the repairs to that minibus.’
‘Zoë, Sergeant Capaldi isn’t here to talk about Saturday night,’ Sheila said, and from the look she gave me, I realized that I was meant to recognize that as an instruction.
‘What are you here for?’ Zoë asked.
‘Do you know Boon Paterson?’
‘Of course,’ Zoë answered.
Sheila just nodded, but I thought that I picked up a small surge in the current of her concentration.
‘He didn’t turn up for his flight back to his unit in Cyprus.’
‘Has there been an accident?’ Sheila asked, and this time it was Zoë’s attention that seemed to be nailed.
‘Not that we’re aware of.’
The back door opened and Ken McGuire walked through in socks and a pair of faded blue overalls, a light dusting of chopped straw in his hair and on his shoulders. The air of slightly preoccupied contentment that he had carried from the cattle shed was wiped into a big, puzzled, angry frown as soon as he saw me. This time he wasn’t faking the surprise.
‘You …’ he spluttered angrily. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘He’s here about Boon, Ken,’ Sheila explained, cutting in over the erupting tirade.
‘Boon?’ It took a moment for it to register; he was still so affronted at the sight of me in his kitchen. ‘What’s Boon got to do with anything?’
I explained, taking it as far as I had got with Sheila and Zoë. He looked thoughtful as he listened.
‘Did he mention anything on Saturday night that might have made you think that he didn’t want to go back to his unit in Cyprus?’ I asked. ‘Did any conversation or discussion like that come up while he was home on leave?’
Ken shook his head. ‘Not in front of me. None of the others mentioned it either. If he had said anything, it’s something we would have talked about, believe me.’
‘He was drunk, wasn’t he?’
Ken frowned and looked at me sharply. ‘Why do you say that?’
I smiled pleasantly. ‘I would have thought that it might have loosened him up. If it was on his mind, that’s when he would talk about it.’
He relaxed. ‘I take your point. And I suppose we all had a pretty good skinful that night.’ He smiled mock-ruefully at the ladies, and then shook his head. ‘But the subject didn’t come up. Only the inevitable fact that his leave was over.’
I nodded understandingly. ‘How did he get home?’
‘Pardon?’
‘You dropped him off in Dinas. It was late, it was cold, and, you said it yourself, he was very drunk. So how did he get home?’
‘You didn’t abandon poor old Boon, did you,’ Zoë protested, ‘in your rush to get that dirty bitch up into the hills?’
‘Zoë!’ Sheila hushed.
Ken smiled to include me in the conspiracy that we shouldn’t take his sister-in-law too seriously. ‘We dropped him at his house. He asked us to. He was supposed to be travelling in the morning.’
I stared him out for a moment, giving him the opportunity to retract. ‘DCI Jones told me that you said in your statement that Boon Paterson asked to be dropped off in Dinas.’
He shook his head. ‘No, sorry, he’s got it wrong. He must have misheard us. Boon asked to be dropped off at home. Your Inspector Jones must have heard us saying that we drove through Dinas on the way out to Boon’s.’
‘He was okay with that?’
‘Who was okay with what?’ Ken asked, puzzled by the question.
‘The pimp who was doing the driving. He didn’t mind running a taxi service?’ I asked, deadpan.
His eyes drilled into me, trying to find what level of belief I was working on. ‘He didn’t have a choice. We were the paymasters.’ He flicked a glance of apology at the ladies.
‘Why did Boon want to be dropped off?’
‘I told you. His leave was over. He was travelling the next day.’
‘But not flying out until the evening. This was his last night, I would have thought that he’d have wanted to stay on with his friends for as long as possible. Continue the party.’
‘We tried to persuade him.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to ask him why he wanted to be dropped off early, Sergeant.’
‘It wasn’t a case of imposing apartheid?’
