The Chief Inspector's Daughter (32 page)

‘Oh – sorry, dear.' He smiled at her a little guiltily, but his kiss was affectionate as well as dutiful.

Molly accepted it, and brushed a crumb of toast from his lapel. ‘And don't you forget to keep in touch with me, Doug Quantrill,' she reminded him.

Alison stopped dead in the front path when she saw Martin Tait's Citroën parked at the gate. He got out, said a cheerful goodmorning, and began to load her cases. ‘Your father sends his apologies,' he explained. ‘He was tied up, so he asked me to come instead.'

Alison reluctantly took her seat beside him. ‘Why do detectives always have to be such liars?' she said.

They drove in silence through the town and out along the Saintsbury Road, past the industrial estate.

‘I suppose it's no use saying I'm sorry about Oxlip?' he offered, as the railway bridge came into sight.

‘Not really. What's the point? It doesn't matter what we think of each other, does it?'

‘I know you think badly of me,' he said, ‘but I certainly don't of you.'

‘Not after what I told you? About my feelings for Jasmine—'

‘Good Lord no.' In fact, Tait had discovered, her confession had made Alison rather more interesting. He had thought about her a good deal in the past fourteen days, and he could see that her unhappy love affair in London might well have led, temporarily, to a revulsion from men. He could understand how she had come to focus her emotions on Jasmine Woods. But that was all over; she needed now to return to normality, and he felt challenged to make sure that she did so as soon as possible. That was why he had persisted in his attempts to see her.

She was, too, he decided, every bit as attractive as he had thought her that day on the bridge over the river. And now she was going back to live in London … He cursed himself for having been so slow off the mark when he first met her, misled by Jasmine's assured good looks into dismissing Alison as immature and unworthy of his attention.

‘Well, I am sorry about Oxlip anyway,' he said. ‘But we had to catch Smith – after all, it was possible that he was the murderer.'

‘What'll happen to Gilbert?'

‘Nothing very alarming. A suspended sentence, probably, with attendance at a drug clinic as one of the conditions. They'll try to help him rather than punish him – though whether he wants to be helped is another matter. Druggies often don't, that's their problem. They may have a heightened perception of beauty when they're on drugs, but that can mean that ordinary life becomes intolerable for them when they come off. He'll miss Jasmine, of course, she must have helped him tremendously.'

Tait drove over the coal sidings, parked his car and carried Alison's cases up on to the open platform. It was a bright, cool day and the wind from across the fields disordered her dark hair, and the gauzy scarf that was as green as her eyes. She looked understandably sad, though whether because of Jasmine Woods or because of leaving home, he couldn't decide. Something of both, perhaps.

‘Supposing I hadn't told you what I did,' she said. ‘Would you have charged Gilbert with Jasmine's murder?'

‘No, we hadn't any evidence. All we were able to prove was what he'd told us, that he took the netsuke when he went up to the house next morning. But we'd have gone on questioning him for days, so you saved him from a lot of hassle. And you saved us – your father and me – a lot of work. I'm very grateful for your help. We'd have got the same result in the end, of course; we'd have caught Buxton ourselves, as soon as we started digging about in Jasmine's past life and putting facts together. It might have taken some time, but sooner or later we'd have unearthed something that would have told us what we learned from you.'

Alison shivered. ‘Then I'm glad I told you myself,' she said proudly. ‘It took a lot of courage, but it was worth it. Poor Jasmine … at least some part of her life has been left undisturbed.'

Tait felt too protective towards her to tell her that the confession had been unnecessary. All she'd needed to do was to tell him about the missing photograph. He could have worked out Buxton's involvement for himself.

He changed the subject. He wanted to talk to her about herself, not about the Jasmine Woods case. ‘What are you going to do when you get back to London?' he asked. The platform near the booking office was becoming crowded and so he steered her up towards the end, his fingers touching her elbow so lightly that she didn't notice.

‘Oh, I'll probably do temporary secretarial work, until I can find something more interesting. I'm not exactly sure what I want to do, except that I don't want to spend the rest of my life being a secretary. But I need time to look round, so I'll stick to typing for a bit. I'm going to stay with my sister at first, but I shall try to find a share in a flat as soon as I can. That's what I had before.'

Tait didn't like the sound of a shared flat. If that was the set-up she'd lived in before, when she'd had an affair with the wretched man who treated her badly, he would prefer her to live with her sister. There were altogether too many spare men in London. The DCI must be out of his mind to let a nice girl like Alison go back to a place like that with the idea of fending for herself.

He debated the possibility of putting in some kind of bid. Normally he'd find it easy. If you put a girl on a train you naturally kissed her good-bye, and a kiss was a useful start to further negotiations.

But he couldn't attempt to kiss Alison just yet. Not because she'd told him she didn't like him; that was merely part of the challenge. He couldn't attempt to kiss her because he didn't want her to think him brash or crude or insincere. He didn't want to risk putting her off.

She pushed a blown strand of hair out of her eyes. ‘I've got to get away from home and the family,' she explained earnestly, ‘so that I can sort myself out. After all, it comes as a shock when you realize that you aren't like most other girls. Oh, perhaps I am, of course. Perhaps the way I felt about Jasmine was just a temporary reaction. I suppose I may carry on typing, get married, have two or three children and a part-time job and be completely happy. But at the moment I don't know what lifestyle I want. I've seen so many alternatives. I do know that I don't want to join a commune, and I certainly don't feel militantly women's lib. I'd hate to be an unmarried mother, and I don't think I want to be like Jasmine. I don't know what I want, except an emotional breathing space. I need time to come to terms with myself. After what's happened to me here, I feel … ambiguous.'

She looked delightful, thought Tait. He liked the way her nose tilted, and the way strands of hair blew across her face and clung to her full, moist lower lip until she brushed them away. And the seriousness with which she talked nonsense was oddly endearing.

A signal bell rang. He went on looking at her, trying to fix her image in his mind, but she glanced up the railway track in the direction of Yarchester. The lines were straight for nearly two miles, and she could just see at the far end the pinhead that would materialize into a train.

‘Martin,' she said.

‘Mm?'

‘Will you do something for me?'

‘Of course, if I can.'

She took a deep breath. ‘Will you kiss me?' she said.

‘What?'

‘Please. You see, I hate being ambiguous. I don't want to go back to London not knowing whether I'm turned on to men or to women. And I can ask you to do it because we're not emotionally involved. We don't even like each other much. It'll be a perfectly objective exercise, but I think I'll know right away whether I'm still off men. You don't mind, do you?'

He was too dazed to reply. Alison had closed her eyes and lifted her face, like a child waiting with resignation for a farewell kiss from her least favourite uncle.

He felt absurdly nervous. He put his hands on her shoulders and found that he was shaking slightly. He gave her a gentle, tentative kiss, first on the cheek and then on the mouth. She didn't move. He felt his confidence returning, and applied a little more pressure.

Gradually, experimentally, her lips gave way. He held her more tightly, tasted her tongue, and immediately felt the world cartwheeling round him. For the first time since he was seventeen, he knew that he was in danger of falling seriously in love. He had to restrain himself from clutching her to him and babbling about letters, about telephone calls, about going up to London to see her.

Alison broke away from him and stood back. ‘Thank you,' she said.

Tait blinked and tried to steady his breathing. ‘Well,' he said, hoping that he sounded nonchalant, ‘I imagine that's resolved your ambiguity for you, hasn't it?'

She said nothing, but looked grave and a little judicial, as though she had been asked to pronounce on the quality of a wine.

‘Hasn't it?' he appealed.

Her reply was lost in the chunter and throb of the diesel engine as the London train came in.

First published in 1981 by Constable

This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world

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Copyright © Sheila Radley, 1981

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