A Few Words for the Dead Read Online Free Page B

boiler’s on the blink. My boiler’s always on the blink. I don’t suppose you’re any good with old boilers?’ She winked in case the double entendre was lost to him. You never could tell with security officers.
    ‘I won’t be in your way, I promise,’ she said, taking him by the arm. ‘What are you looking for? Perhaps I can help? He has all manner of old rubbish here, old books, old papers, old sisters.’ She laughed again.
    ‘I’m just retrieving some paperwork,’ he said, ‘nothing important.’
    Which meant it obviously was, decided April. Some people were just no good at lying.
    She looked the man up and down. Solidly built, ghost of a tan. Recently divorced – or, at least, recently stopped wearing a wedding band – some men took time before the message finally got through and they ditched the jewellery. He had flinched slightly when she’d taken his arm though it moved easily enough as he gave it a squeeze and a shake. It hadn’t been a gesture of awkwardness so she decided to be brave and test an assumption. She patted him on his bicep and he flinched again.
    ‘You’ve muscles on you,’ she said flirtatiously. ‘Bet you get in a lot of fights.’
    ‘Not for a while,’ he admitted. He sounded sad about the fact.
    ‘Got any good tattoos?’ she asked.
    ‘A few.’ His mood brightened. ‘Just had a new one on my arm, actually.’
    April looked surprised, though she wasn’t. If he was sore on his arm the most likely reason was either a wound or a tattoo. He hadn’t been in any fights lately, apparently, so… ‘Oh go on, give us a look!’
    ‘I’m really busy at the moment.’
    ‘Oh come on! It’ll only take a minute!’
    He looked around, as if expecting his commanding officer to have come into the room unnoticed, then grinned and pulled off his jacket. She helped him, lifting his wallet out of the jacket pocket as she did so, dropping it on the floor and nudging it beneath the sofa with a gentle backwards kick.
    He tugged at his tie so he could unbutton the upper half of his shirt and expose the tattooed arm. Lifting the thin gauze, he revealed a particularly awful picture of a character from a popular fantasy TV show.
    ‘I’m a fan,’ he explained.
    ‘It’s gorgeous,’ April lied, wondering how the actress in question might feel about being reproduced in a manner that made her breasts larger than her head. ‘Sexy.’
    The officer nodded and made no move to cover it back up, as if April might need a little more time to fully appreciate it. She didn’t but she tried to pretend to bask in its wonder for a few more seconds.
    ‘Wonderful work,’ she announced finally, helping him cover it back up, ‘I’d love to have something as brilliant as that.’
    ‘It was expensive,’ he replied, as if that were all the proof needed to grant it artistic merit.
    ‘I bet.’
    ‘I really ought to get on.’
    ‘Oh, do, don’t let me hold you up.’
    She stooped down in front of the sofa to pick up her handbag, snatching the man’s wallet while she did so and dropping it inside. She disguised the action by pulling out a packet of menthol cigarettes.
    ‘I’ll just sit here and mind my own business,’ she said, taking out a cigarette and lighting it. ‘I hope you don’t mind but August does insist I never leave the office unattended.’
    The officer looked as if he might argue for a moment but then remembered how much she liked his tattoo and just smiled. ‘I won’t be long. Maybe you can even help?’
    ‘Darling, I’m at your service completely.’
    He moved over to the pair of large filing cabinets on the far wall of the office, tried to open a drawer and discovered it was locked.
    ‘I don’t suppose you…’ He turned to April.
    ‘A key?’ April replied, dropping her cigarette packet on top of the set she kept in her bag, ‘I’m afraid not, he never trusts me with anything other than the office door.’
    The officer sighed and moved over to the desk. He tried one of the