River Deep by Priscilla Masters Page B

being in number seven. According to them they banged and banged on the door but no one answered. They assumed it was empty.”
    “How does he explain that?”
    “First of all he said he’d answered the door to them. When I confronted him with the fact that the officers had not seen him he changed his story, said he was upstairs, changing, and just heard them.” He gave her a sharp look. “It didn’t exactly inspire confidence.”
    “Had he been at work on Sunday?”
    “Until four. It’s a busy day for the garage.”
    “Sunday night was the extreme earliest time our corpse could have met with his death, according to Doctor Sullivan,” she mused. They leaned over the parapet. The river was difficult to ignore.
    “And Humphreys was with his friend from late Sunday afternoon because of the floods. So he says.”
    She turned to face him, square on. “Are all policemen so cynical, Alex?”
    Deep in his eyes she caught a flicker of hurt, a wounding that she had not meant. It caught her off-balance so that she wished she could have pulled the words back. But they had been said. And could not now be unsaid.
    “Umm.” His voice was hesitant. “After a couple of years on the job.” He cleared his throat noisily. “We start off – I started off – idealistic.” He gave a vague grin. “I think I probably started off even more idealistic than most.”
    It was hard to imagine. It must have been a long time ago. How old was he now? Forties? So – a rookie cop with an Adam’s apple and a skinny neck?
    “Things happen.” His eyes flickered away, back towards the threatening river. “It changes you. Forever. Once you’ve lost it, the idealism I mean. Once it’s gone you can’t recapture it. It goes for ever. Sometimes I think …”
    She waited, wondering whether now he had begun to talk, he might continue.
    “I believe…” He cleared his throat again, rasping and dry. “It’s what marks the young from the old, Martha.” A hint of a smile, “Cynicism engraves lines of doubt and disbelief on our faces. Lines that mean we will never take people at face value ever again.”
    She was sure there was some personal deep suffering behind the words. But just as instinctively she also knewthat the time for exploration had passed over. His controlled, regular face was back again, the one she recognised. The shutters had dropped and erased the character lines.
    She smiled a vague response, which he returned in the form of a tight grin. “The alibi we finally squeezed out of him is that this woman who is a part-time receptionist at the garage offered him a place to stay because of the floods. Her husband is conveniently away from home four nights a week, driving lorries up to Scotland for a road haulier’s. Seems like Humphreys availed himself of her hospitality. She says he was with her from about five o’clock on Sunday evening. She said he seemed unwell on Monday and Tuesday and stayed with her on the other side of the town – right up until this morning when he went back to work.”
    “How truthful is she?”
    Alex shrugged, heaved a deep sigh and shifted his weight to the other leg. His profile, in silhouette, picked out by the orange light, looked sharp and grim. “Difficult to say. I mean she strikes me as a bit of a liar. Sheelagh, her name is. S-H-E-E-L-A-G-H.” He spelled it out. “Sheelagh Mandershall. Peroxide blonde. Apparently she and Humphreys ‘hit if off straight away’, wouldn’t you know? When she heard about the flooding of the properties she offered him a bed straight away.” A sudden, mischievous smile. “And who knows what else.”
    She mirrored his smile. He suddenly reminded her of Sam, catching her eyes after a particularly spectacular tackle. Muddy and triumphant. Bloody but unbowed. And somehow thoroughly masculine.
    “So what explanation does Mr Humphreys have for a dead man being found in his house?”
    “None. In fact he did look thoroughly shocked. Unlesshe’s a consummate