Blood Line by Lynda La Plante Page A

the years I have known Alan he
was
like a Samaritan—I’ll give you that—but he was a genuine caring person. You could look at this big blonde handsome guy and think he’d be a real arsehole, but he wasn’t. In fact, he was shy, never self-opinionated. I often wondered if there was another side to him, but I never saw it.’
    ‘Or was it just he never showed it to you?’
    ‘You find anyone with a bad word against him, and it’d surprise me. I think he was the product of a very loving home. Anytime you wanted, his mother would welcome you in, cook up a storm, and their house was always full of kids whose parents were not at home or working. His dad was terrific, arranging outings, packing us into his old Volvo, sometimes taking us off to Brighton funfair. He seemed to have an inside knowledge of the best fairs—Clapham Common, Wimbledon, Putney …’
    Anna stood up and thanked Julian, but he wasn’t prepared to let them leave his deli without making up a packed lunch of thick-wedged sandwiches and potato salad with sauerkraut, refusing to allow them to pay.
    Anna and Paul parked at the back of Julian’s deli in a small side street so they could tuck in and enjoy their lunch without being seen by the public. Paul ate hungrily, but Anna just picked at hers, her appetite gone. They had been given two bottles of a chilled ginger and elderflower drink as well, which was delicious. For a while they ate in silence.
    ‘What are you thinking?’ Paul eventually asked.
    ‘I wish you wouldn’t keep asking me that.’
    ‘Okay—do you want to know what
I
am thinking?’
    ‘If I said no, would it stop you?’
    Paul took a big bite of the sandwich. He had mayonnaise dripping down his chin and he used one of the paper napkins to wipe it off.
    ‘Well, go on.’ She folded her own half-eaten sandwich back into its wrapping.
    ‘I’ll finish that off if you’re through with it?’
    She passed it to him.
    ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ Paul said, staring straight ahead as Anna drank from her bottle before screwing the cap back on.
    ‘We don’t know that. What we need to do is find someone who saw the other side of Alan Rawlins, because so far I think it’s all too good to be true. No one is that perfect. He
will
have secrets—maybe dark ones. So in answer to your question, we need to find out what made this Samaritan disappear because, as I said last time, I don’t believe he is dead.’

Three
    The last interview of the day was at Tina’s salon in Hounslow High Street. She had agreed to see them again on the condition they came late in the afternoon just before closing as she had appointments booked.
    ‘Her fiancé goes missing and she’s too busy to see us. The more I hear about her, the less I like her.’
    ‘Maybe she’s seen the dark side?’ Paul said smiling, but Anna was not amused. Instead she told him they should head straight there. She felt tired and decided she would take off home later, after making up the reports with Paul in their incident room.
    ‘Make up a report? But we don’t have a case,’ Paul said as he drove.
    ‘Nevertheless we’ll need to show what the hell we’ve been doing all day. Besides, Langton will want to know.’
    ‘Whatever you say, ma’am. He’s knee-deep in a big case—double murder in North London.’
    She made no reply, instead brushed away the crumbs fromtheir picnic lunch and wrapped their napkins into the small deli bag Julian had provided. She tossed it into a rubbish bin as they pulled up in a small car park attached to Tina’s Beauty Salon. She remarked that it wasn’t a very artistic title and the large neon eye coated in eye shadow and false lashes was tacky.
    The salon was surprisingly well-equipped. A section was given over to hairdressing, then there was a row of booths for manicures and pedicures. Another section, separated by white screens, was the massage and therapy area and there was a small staircase to the floor above with a sauna, sunbeds, and a