Body Politic Read Online Free Page A

hands deep in his pockets, his lips lifting slightly at their edges.
    *
    Sunday morning was not a fair time to spring unwelcome surprises upon a man.
    Detective Sergeant Hook was struggling hard, but he was a fish that was already hooked and only had to be landed. He knew the rules of the game, and as a sportsman he knew that when the wriggling was over he would have to accept them.
    ‘ Eleanor had no right to say that I’d do any such thing!’ he said gruffly.
    ‘B ut she did. And now you must,’ said John Lambert gleefully. ‘As your superintendent, I have to insist upon your completing the bargain, however reluctantly.’
    ‘B ut golf. Bloody golf,’ said Bert gloomily. ‘Bloody, bloody, bloody GOLF!’
    ‘ There you are. You’re beginning to get the vocabulary already. You could be a natural for this game.’
    ‘ Who wants to be a natural in such a damned stupid game? It’s the worst thing that could happen to a man. You’ll have me drinking gins and tonics and voting Conservative within a year, if you have your way.’
    ‘ A man’s politics are his own business,’ said Lambert sententiously. ‘There’s no reason why golf should affect your brain, if you keep it under proper control.’
    ‘ A man’s soul lost, for the sake of a night’s baby-sitting,’ said Hook glumly.
    ‘ All this talk about souls is an overreaction. I blame this Open University degree of yours. Is Ibsen on your course, by any chance?’
    ‘ Ibsen wouldn’t have gone anywhere near golf,’ mused the downtrodden Hook.
    ‘ That explains a lot. Most of his characters talk like people short of a physical challenge,’ said Lambert breezily. He decided to turn the knife. ‘You were bought very cheaply, actually. The boys were quite charming. We chatted about football for a while, and then they went to bed like lambs when we told them it was time.’
    ‘ Damned little traitors,’ Hook moaned. ‘They never do that for us.’
    ‘ I expect they’d been threatened with all kinds of retribution if they didn’t behave,’ smiled Lambert, thinking back ten years and more, to the days when he needed baby-sitters for two lively daughters. ‘Anyway, I want you to know that they were as good as gold. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have to pay the forfeit. A basket of fifty balls at the driving range.’
    ‘ Not today. I need time to adjust to the idea,’ Hook said firmly.
    ‘ Right, you shall have it. We’ll leave it until after Christmas and the New Year. That’ll let you dwell on the challenge to come. Monday, January the second. We’ll lunch at the Miller’s Arms afterwards. If you’ve any appetite left after you’ve compromised your soul and your afterlife.’
    Lambert pushed himself back against the seat of the old Vauxhall Senator and eased the car away from the kerb. That date would give him a full two weeks of teasing, in a period which seemed likely to be thin on serious crime.
    ‘ All right. Monday the second of January it is, if that will shut you up,’ said Hook dolefully. It would never do to let Lambert know that he was beginning to look forward to the activity. Hitting a dead ball when you decided you were ready to hit it must be quite easy and exhilarating.
    And it would be a one-off, of course. He would never ever join a golf club.
    *
    Inside the warm thatched cottage with its cheerful fire, Raymond Keane found after Chris Hampson had gone that his display of power was not quite the aphrodisiac the sexual pundits said it should be.
    Zoe Renwick was cool, even apparently abstracted. He followed her into the small, neat kitchen and clasped his arms round her waist from behind her. ‘Penny for them?’ he murmured into her ear. He was excited already by a scent which might have been no more than expensive soap, by the soft touch of her hair and her neck. She tossed her fair hair in a gesture of dismissal, and he had more sense than to pursue any sexual plans in the face of her coolness.
    Zoe made them