Midnight Fugue by Reginald Hill

home because this wasn’t really official police business. He said he was going to ring you there to put you in the picture and would let me know as soon as he’d made contact. I told him I’d wait for his call at the hotel, but soon as he rang off I stuck the address he gave me in my sat-nav and headed round to your street. I just had to be doing something, even if I thought…’
    She tailed off and he said, ‘Even if you thought I’d probably be a waste of time. So, soon as Mick rang and said he’d talked to me, you were going to be ringing my bell!’
    ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Sorry. Anyway, it didn’t work out. Suddenly you shot out, jumped in your car and drove here like you were late for a funeral.’
    ‘How’d you know it was me?’
    ‘Mick described you.’
    ‘Oh aye. Young, slim and sexy, was it? Don’t answer that.’
    Time to review the situation. He’d been weighing up the woman as she talked. A few years older than his first assessment, well into her thirties, but she knew how to use her make-up and she kept herself in good shape. Very good shape. Bright blue eyes, teeth in good nick, hair naturally blonde and elegantly arranged by someone who probably charged a tenner a snip. Clothes to match, expensive but not designer expensive, though her shoes (he knew a lot about shoes; they were Cap’s sartorial weakness and she had enough fancy footwear to kit a WAGs convention) probably cost more than he’d paid for his last suit. But then he did get very good discounts.
    As for personality, she was strong. She’d come close to losing control a couple of times — and from the sound of what she’d been through, it would have been understandable if she had — but she’d managed to pull back from the brink. She was, he judged, a woman who felt that action was the better part of reaction. Heading straight up to Mid-Yorkshire in response to that weird missive, driving around the streets first thing this morning then camping outside his door, all this suggested someone who would rather do something than sit around doing nothing.
    Or perhaps, rather do anything than sit around thinking about what the past had held and what the future might hold.
    All in all, he liked her. Not that that signified. His life was punctuated with trouble spots that had started with women he liked.
    So, decision time.
    He couldn’t see what this could have to do with him professionally, but it was his day off, and having someone else’s confusions dumped in his lap had certainly diverted his mind from his own.
    On the other hand, his knight-errant days were long past, he wasn’t about to rush into anything, not even for a damsel in distress as tasty as this.
    He said, ‘I’ll need to brood on this a bit, luv. Tell you what, why don’t we meet up later? Have a bit of grub mebbe?’
    Giving her the chance to say thanks but no thanks. If after meeting him she didn’t care to pursue the acquaintance, it was no skin off his nose.
    ‘OK. Where?’ she said without hesitation. So he must have made an impression. Or she were really desperate!
    He said, ‘You’re at the Keldale, right? All the best folk take Sunday lunch on the terrace there. Tell them you want a table overlooking the gardens. Any problem, tell Lionel Lee, the manager, you’re meeting me.’
    ‘Mick said you were a man of influence,’ she said.
    ‘Did he now?’
    For perhaps the first time since his return, he actually felt like it.
    He stood up. She remained sitting.
    ‘You not leaving?’ he said.
    ‘I think I’ll sit and listen to the music for a while,’ she said.
    ‘Oh aye?’ Then recalling he was allegedly here because he was fond of this chase-me-round-the-houses stuff, he added, ‘You a fan of old Bach then?’
    ‘Very much so. Occupational hazard. I’m a music teacher by profession.’
    That surprised him. His notion of music teachers involved wire-rimmed spectacles, scrubbed cheeks, and hair in a bun. Mebbe he should get out