surprise was almost comic. The email on his Black-Berry was totally unexpected.
âWhat?â
Susie Peveral and David Hutchinson had settled like a couple of companionable old-age pensioners on a seafront bench at Seaton in Devon. It was an idyllic setting. The gentle swell hissed and swished only a few feet away from them; excited small children and dogs formed the backdrop. A peace so different from their normal lives re-established itself after the traumas of seeing the body in the sea off the Dorset coast.
Neither Susie nor David was prone to too much self-analysis but both were struggling to understand why the sight of what, for David at least, was sadly just one more body was having such a depressing effect.
Seeing the report in the paper had also been a bit of a shock to David â partly because he hadnât expected to see someone he had known, however fleetingly, and he had photographed, in the media as a murder victim, and partly because the photo commission that he had undertaken, which included the dead man, had not been one that he had relished and he had done only as a favour to someone whom he now regarded as rather less than a friend.
He knew he was jaded and he guessed from the various comments and hints from Susie that she also felt herself to be, too. Their decision to take off into the West Country withouttheir usual working paraphernalia was something of a recognition of this.
âEver been on a tram?â
âOnly in San Francisco.â
The double-decked trams of Seaton were a novelty to Susie. With a burst of schoolgirl enthusiasm she scurried up to the top deck and to the front of the tram and subsided into a seat with a sigh both of depth and of contentment.
âWell,â said Hutchinson as they rattled away into the countryside, âwe did plan to get away from it all and do something different.â
âIâm not sure that spotting a body in the sea was exactly getting away from it all!â
âNo.â
âYou knew the dead guy, though?â Susie asked.
Now that the conversation had got started, she was keen to know more of Davidâs involvement with the dead man.
âHardly knew him; I was asked to take a photo of this bunch of businessmen at a lunch. For some Middle East trade magazine, I was told. The dead man was one of the guests. The Chronicle must have got access to the magazine.â
âCopyright fee?â Susie grinned.
âNo chance.â
âSo why were you so surprised when you saw the guyâs face in the paper?â
Hutchinson pondered on how much to tell Susie or whether in fact to just close the conversation down and not tell her anything at all. Killing off the conversation didnât seem too friendly, and talking about it, he thought, might perhaps exorcise his discomfort over the assignment.
âThey were a mixed bunch, Chinese certainly; one at least could have been Middle Eastern; but the rest, it was hard to tell. They were all very wary of each other. No sort of social context to the gathering. The point is, some underling took down the names as I organised them for the shot. The namethat the underling gave this bloke was not Middle Eastern; Iâm sure it was Russian, East European â I donât know, it was very different.â
âThe police said he was identified by documents in his pockets.â
âOK,â said David, âso thatâs incontrovertible proof?â
âWhy are you so edgy about this?â
âThe bloke who asked me to take the photos got me into an East European night club â donât ask where â and I got some shots of under-age girls being groomed for prostitution and made a lot of money. It was a bit dodgy ⦠no, no, it was hellishly dodgy. But I owed this bloke. So I took his group photo. It was a clunking good payday, too, but the sod was using the whole thing as a lever in the internecine warfare that seems to be endemic among
âWhat?â
Susie Peveral and David Hutchinson had settled like a couple of companionable old-age pensioners on a seafront bench at Seaton in Devon. It was an idyllic setting. The gentle swell hissed and swished only a few feet away from them; excited small children and dogs formed the backdrop. A peace so different from their normal lives re-established itself after the traumas of seeing the body in the sea off the Dorset coast.
Neither Susie nor David was prone to too much self-analysis but both were struggling to understand why the sight of what, for David at least, was sadly just one more body was having such a depressing effect.
Seeing the report in the paper had also been a bit of a shock to David â partly because he hadnât expected to see someone he had known, however fleetingly, and he had photographed, in the media as a murder victim, and partly because the photo commission that he had undertaken, which included the dead man, had not been one that he had relished and he had done only as a favour to someone whom he now regarded as rather less than a friend.
He knew he was jaded and he guessed from the various comments and hints from Susie that she also felt herself to be, too. Their decision to take off into the West Country withouttheir usual working paraphernalia was something of a recognition of this.
âEver been on a tram?â
âOnly in San Francisco.â
The double-decked trams of Seaton were a novelty to Susie. With a burst of schoolgirl enthusiasm she scurried up to the top deck and to the front of the tram and subsided into a seat with a sigh both of depth and of contentment.
âWell,â said Hutchinson as they rattled away into the countryside, âwe did plan to get away from it all and do something different.â
âIâm not sure that spotting a body in the sea was exactly getting away from it all!â
âNo.â
âYou knew the dead guy, though?â Susie asked.
Now that the conversation had got started, she was keen to know more of Davidâs involvement with the dead man.
âHardly knew him; I was asked to take a photo of this bunch of businessmen at a lunch. For some Middle East trade magazine, I was told. The dead man was one of the guests. The Chronicle must have got access to the magazine.â
âCopyright fee?â Susie grinned.
âNo chance.â
âSo why were you so surprised when you saw the guyâs face in the paper?â
Hutchinson pondered on how much to tell Susie or whether in fact to just close the conversation down and not tell her anything at all. Killing off the conversation didnât seem too friendly, and talking about it, he thought, might perhaps exorcise his discomfort over the assignment.
âThey were a mixed bunch, Chinese certainly; one at least could have been Middle Eastern; but the rest, it was hard to tell. They were all very wary of each other. No sort of social context to the gathering. The point is, some underling took down the names as I organised them for the shot. The namethat the underling gave this bloke was not Middle Eastern; Iâm sure it was Russian, East European â I donât know, it was very different.â
âThe police said he was identified by documents in his pockets.â
âOK,â said David, âso thatâs incontrovertible proof?â
âWhy are you so edgy about this?â
âThe bloke who asked me to take the photos got me into an East European night club â donât ask where â and I got some shots of under-age girls being groomed for prostitution and made a lot of money. It was a bit dodgy ⦠no, no, it was hellishly dodgy. But I owed this bloke. So I took his group photo. It was a clunking good payday, too, but the sod was using the whole thing as a lever in the internecine warfare that seems to be endemic among
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