A Bleeding of Innocents by Jo Bannister

ago.’ He sighed. ‘It was a mistake. Don’t misunderstand me, he’s a good pilot, when I’ve had enough of this business I’d like to see David running it. But I used to make a packet out of hiring him the Cessna. Now he gets all the flying he wants and I have to pay him.’
    Donovan supposed it was a dour Yorkshire joke. ‘You’ve had no problems with his work, then.’
    Tulliver regarded him levelly. ‘If I’d had problems with his work, lad, he wouldn’t still be here. There’s a word for unreliable pilots. It’s Unemployed.’
    â€˜Funny,’ murmured Donovan, ‘my boss thinks that’s the word for policemen who don’t file reports.’
    Tulliver gave a broad grin. ‘I think I’d like your boss.’
    Donovan wished he hadn’t said it. ‘Yeah, we all did, and it didn’t do him a pick of good because now he’s dead. But that isn’t my case. The Pages: did you ever see them together?’
    Joe Tulliver was a bluff man, unpolished, a man with little in the way of refinement. But he had not built a good business without learning something about people. He heard the grief still sharp in Donovan’s voice and realized this was something that had happened recently; and noting the healing wound on the man’s temple and the stiff way he moved he supposed this was the sergeant who survived and his boss the inspector who died in the incident behind Castlemere gasworks the previous week. The other thing he heard in Donovan’s voice was that he didn’t want to talk about it.
    So he answered the question. ‘All the time. She used to go with him sometimes if she wasn’t working. She was a nice girl, and David’s been like one of the family for ten years. Most weeks they’d drop by our house at least once.’
    â€˜This weekend?’
    â€˜No, not this weekend. They were at the cottage, weren’t they? Mostly it was during the week they came to us. We didn’t go there: you couldn’t swing a cat in that flat of theirs. There’s not a lot of David but she was a big girl, she damn near filled it on her own.’
    â€˜Why didn’t they move somewhere bigger?’
    â€˜I think it suited them well enough. It was Kerry’s flat before they were married, just round the corner from where she worked. It meant she didn’t need a car, and she could get home for a couple of hours if she was on a split shift. But any time they had a day off they went to the cottage. That was where they were at home. The flat was just for convenience.’
    â€˜They liked the solitude, then.’
    Tulliver raised one bushy eyebrow. ‘They were only married two years. Of course they liked the solitude.’
    Donovan twitched a saturnine grin. ‘They were OK, then, were they? It was working out?’
    Tulliver knew what he was asking. ‘They were more than OK. They were very happy. David thought the sun shone out of her navel, and I reckon she loved him too. All their off-duty time they spent together: he’d go to the flat to be with her, she’d come out here to be with him. They weren’t just in love, Sergeant, they liked one another. If you’ve got it at the back of your mind that maybe David Page blew his wife’s head off with a shotgun, forget it.’
    Donovan was still thinking about something Tulliver had said earlier. ‘The car’s his then. Did Kerry drive it much?’
    The big man thought. ‘Not really. I mean, she could drive. But David needed it to get to work so it was always here with him. No, David did most of the driving.’
    â€˜Only she was in the driving seat when she was shot.’
    Tulliver shrugged. ‘I suppose she liked to keep her hand in. If they ever gave up the flat she’d need a car of her own.’
    â€˜Yeah, maybe that’s it.’ Donovan was trying to picture them together. ‘She was taller