Open File Read Online Free Page B

compact and dark, but she still had the plummy voice. She wasn’t the school’s netball captain or freestyle star—perhaps the top debater and certainly a prefect.
    ‘Mr Hardy, do come in. We’ll go through to the sunroom. Not that there’s much of it today. Dreadful weather.’
    I didn’t think it was so bad, but up here, I guessed you expected the best at all times. We went down polished boards, past a series of rooms on either side of the long hallway, through a flagstoned kitchen to a partially glassed-in balcony that hung out over an overgrown lawn and neglected garden. The floors were swept and the surfacesshone but the outside needed work. Rude of me to notice.
    ‘Would you care for tea, Mr Hardy?’
    Tea? You’d have to hold me down and use a funnel.
‘No, thanks, Ms Pettigrew.’
    ‘Please sit.’
    We sat on padded cane chairs. She wore a blouse and skirt, medium heels. She had good legs. No wedding ring, no jewellery. She had disconcertingly dark eyes that bulged just slightly, making you feel watched more closely than you wanted to be. Her complexion was pale and smooth with just a few lines showing. If she wore makeup it was subtle. She was just short of attractive but certainly interesting-looking and that can be better.
    ‘I’ve spoken to your former husband, obviously,’ I said, ‘and to the policeman who supervised the investigation into your missing son.’
    ‘Gunnarson,’ she said. ‘Competent, I thought, but nothing beyond that.’
    ‘I believe I need your authority to talk to people at the school.’ I took a sheet from my pocket. ‘I typed up something appropriate. Would you mind signing it?’
    She glanced at it briefly and signed with the pen I offered.
    ‘I wanted to ask you about Justin—his habits his character, I suppose. As I said, I’d like to look at what he left behind and to hear any thoughts you might have about what caused him to leave.’
    She inclined her head slightly. ‘To leave? That’s an interesting way of putting it. Yes, I rather like that. He left, didn’t he?’
    There was a quality to her I couldn’t put my finger on. Call it a lack of frankness, a feeling that much was beingheld back. But it was impossible to tell whether this related to Justin or to something else. Her degree of composure was disconcerting and I had a sense that she knew I was aware of it and was playing me. I began to get an inkling of what Gunnarson had meant by ‘dragon lady’. I didn’t want to be played. Time to be direct.
    ‘D’you think he’s still alive, Ms Pettigrew?’
    ‘Very possibly not, and if so it’s all Paul’s fault, the coward.’

3
    I was about to probe that remark when the front door slammed and I heard laughter and pounding footsteps in the hallway. Angela Pettigrew shot out of her chair as if released by a spring and went quickly through the kitchen to the passage, heels clacking on the boards. I followed and her voice, raised to a shout but still with the rounded vowels, echoed through the space.
    ‘Sarah! Who do you have with you? Come out of there at once!’
    By the time we reached the door it had opened and a young man had come out looking alarmed and disoriented. He turned towards us, realised he was headed the wrong way, pushed Ms Pettigrew aside and made her lose balance. She fell and swore.
    A younger female voice screeched, ‘No, Ronny!’
    Ronny was big, young and frightened and he made the mistake of throwing a punch at me as he tried to get clear. I blocked his clumsy swing with my left forearm and hooked him low in the ribs with a short right, the way I’d done hundreds of times in the ring. A skilful boxer spots it early and sways away, reducing the impact. Ronny didn’tknow the moves and the punch took the wind out of him and rubberised his legs. He went down in a heap as Ms Pettigrew got gamely and smoothly to her feet.
    Sarah, all teased blonde hair and eye makeup, stood in the doorway in her bra and school skirt and giggled as I