Flawed by Jo Bannister Page B

hairy!’
    He was doing nothing to shift people's gaze off him, or even make them blink. He breathed at them in exasperation. ‘You know – one of those spaniel things. Tibetan. Isn't that what they call them?’
    Voss considered. ‘I think they call them Lhasa Apso, Hux.’
    ‘Isn't that what you said?’ Huxley hadn't been listening.
    Voss made an effort to move on. ‘Do you talk about me when I'm not here? Wondering whether I'm queer?’
    They were positively affronted. ‘Of course not. You've got a fiancée.’
    This was true. It was one of the life-altering decisions he'd made in the year of his thirtieth birthday. That, and buying a flat. As a single man he'd happily rented bedsits at some of Dimmock's least glamorous addresses, on the basis that working as a policeman – and particularly working for Detective Superintendent Deacon – didn't leave him time or energy enough to care about the decor. Being engaged to a charming but strong-minded Chinese nurse gave him a new set of priorities.
    Which didn't invalidate his point. ‘Jack Deacon's middle-aged and unattached. Do you sit here discussing his sexuality when he's safely out of earshot?’
    A wave of fear swept through their eyes. ‘Christ, no!’
    ‘Then maybe we shouldn't be discussing Detective Inspector Hyde's. Because (a) it's none of our business, and (b) who gives a shit?’
    ‘She had one of those, too,’ Huxley muttered darkly. ‘My mum.’
    ‘A Shih Tzu?’ hazarded Voss patiently.
    ‘No, it was a Pekinese.’
    Deacon wasn't in the canteen when all this was going on. Somebody told him about it later. It was all he could do to hold himself together until he was alone. Even so, people who heard him laughing in the privacy of his office were reminded irresistibly of Mrs Rochester in the attic. Deacon had been twenty-five before he worked out what a lesbian really was. Until then he thought the word for women who wouldn't sleep with him was Discriminating.
    Later, finding Voss alone in the office that had been cleared for Alix Hyde's inquiry, he asked how it was progressing.
    ‘You know what these things are like,’ said Voss, wrinkling his freckled nose, ‘it's all paperwork at the start. Collating files. We've been to see Walsh a couple of times. He was very polite – well, he didn't laugh in our faces. He just kept insisting the rumours about him weren't true.’
    ‘He said he was keen to cooperate,’ guessed Deacon.
    Voss nodded. ‘He said the sooner he could satisfy us, the sooner he'd get us off his back.’
    ‘He offered to give you access to his accounts.’
    ‘He did. He gave us written authority…’ Voss was an intelligent and astute detective. He. didn't believe in lucky guesses. ‘You mean, these are not necessarily the actions of an innocent man?’
    Deacon chuckled. It sounded like the rumble of a distant avalanche. ‘What I told DI Hyde, I wasn't making it up. I really have tried to nail Terry myself. I found him enormously cooperative, and his accounts a model of bookkeeping practice, and he may not have laughed in my face but he nearly had a stroke not doing. Don't let me put you off, Charlie. Nobody's fire-proof, keep plugging away at it and you may well get a breakthrough. We all know he's as bent as a dog's hind leg: nothing would give me greater pleasure than visiting him in Pentonville. But it isn't going to be easy and it isn't going to be quick. He likes being a rich crook. He isn't going to give it up without a fight.’
    ‘You can't think of any angles I could try?’
    Deacon regarded him. ‘If I could, don't you think I'd have mentioned it?’
    Voss hastened to apologise. ‘I didn't mean…’
    ‘I know. You've got to remember, Charlie Voss, this hasbeen tried before. More than once. He won, we lost. That means we go into the rematch with him confident but us hungry. That's the only edge you're going to get. Now you've started, go into everything. Take nothing on trust. Try to find a way of turning his