Rope Enough (The Romney and Marsh Files Book 1) by Oliver Tidy Page A
Authors: Oliver Tidy
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to ease his conscience, why shouldn’t I take it? I’ve got money put by that I’ve earned.’
‘My DI isn’t going to like it.’
‘Then he’ll have to lump it.’
*
Romney left the station just after six o’clock. Despite the temporary dead end of the case, his mood was not bad. Superintendent Falkner had agreed that all that could be done was being done. He seemed satisfied with the DI’s summary of the action they had taken. On top of this, the flowers that Romney had organised to be sent to Julie Carpenter at her school to both apologise for his abrupt departure the previous evening and show his regard for her seemed to have had the desired effect.
It had taken him a long time in his chequered personal life to realise just how effective sending something as simple and cheap as a good bunch of flowers to a woman at her workplace could be. The flowers themselves were always appreciated, as was the gesture and the thought, but the envy generated in a woman’s co-workers was what really counted. That, it seemed, was priceless. The phone-call she made thanking him gave him the opportunity to invite her out for a meal, which she accepted immediately.
Romney lived alone for most of the time and that suited him. A daughter from his first marriage was in her final year at university and he saw little of her. She had found a life for herself free of her warring parents, refusing to takes sides, happier well out of it. She would visit him when it suited her and she was always welcomed.
Caught up in the DIY development boom inspired by various television shows, Romney had risked the security of a comfortable, if rather boring, home in the suburbs of Dover that he owned outright to plough it all, plus borrowed money, into financing a project that he believed he’d fallen in love with one summer’s day while cycling around the back lanes of the local countryside. With the passage of time, Romney had come to soberly reflect that, like many things, and people, that wandered into one’s life, it was only the idea of it all that he had fallen in love with. The reality of the work, time and expense registered far less affection.
What had started out as an exciting dream had, at times, been more of a millstone than anything else, especially in the winter when everything seemed perpetually damp, cold and miserable.
Builders’ rates being what they were, he had opted to employ his not inconsiderable talent and his spare time to renovate the place. It had been dragging on for nearly two years and he still had a long way to go before he could envisage an end to it.
In the short time that he’d known Julie Carpenter, he hadn’t yet invited her to see what a monstrous task he’d saddled himself with. He doubted that she would be as impressed as she would be if it were finished. And anyway, crossing such boundaries, he knew from previous bitter experience, brought perils and suggestions of commitment that he was not prepared to engage in, yet. He was quite happy at this stage in their relationship to divide his time between evenings out and her cosy, clean, femininely ordered and fragranced home.
By eight o’clock he was bowling along the back lanes, showered, changed, hungry and excited at the prospect of later undressing Julie’s firmly curved body and making love with her again as they had on the last two occasions they’d met before the previous night. Rodrigo seeped out of the speakers and everything was good in the world. Except that it wasn’t.
With a guilty feeling, he thought back to his interview that morning with Claire Stamp. What would she be doing now? Where was the rapist – the man who had succumbed to, what had Marsh called it, the barely suppressed animal desire inside him? Fleetingly, Romney wondered whether that was what he was feeling towards Julie Carpenter: a simple, basic, primitive urge to possess her, to dominate her. But it wasn’t the same, of course. Similarities might exist on
‘My DI isn’t going to like it.’
‘Then he’ll have to lump it.’
*
Romney left the station just after six o’clock. Despite the temporary dead end of the case, his mood was not bad. Superintendent Falkner had agreed that all that could be done was being done. He seemed satisfied with the DI’s summary of the action they had taken. On top of this, the flowers that Romney had organised to be sent to Julie Carpenter at her school to both apologise for his abrupt departure the previous evening and show his regard for her seemed to have had the desired effect.
It had taken him a long time in his chequered personal life to realise just how effective sending something as simple and cheap as a good bunch of flowers to a woman at her workplace could be. The flowers themselves were always appreciated, as was the gesture and the thought, but the envy generated in a woman’s co-workers was what really counted. That, it seemed, was priceless. The phone-call she made thanking him gave him the opportunity to invite her out for a meal, which she accepted immediately.
Romney lived alone for most of the time and that suited him. A daughter from his first marriage was in her final year at university and he saw little of her. She had found a life for herself free of her warring parents, refusing to takes sides, happier well out of it. She would visit him when it suited her and she was always welcomed.
Caught up in the DIY development boom inspired by various television shows, Romney had risked the security of a comfortable, if rather boring, home in the suburbs of Dover that he owned outright to plough it all, plus borrowed money, into financing a project that he believed he’d fallen in love with one summer’s day while cycling around the back lanes of the local countryside. With the passage of time, Romney had come to soberly reflect that, like many things, and people, that wandered into one’s life, it was only the idea of it all that he had fallen in love with. The reality of the work, time and expense registered far less affection.
What had started out as an exciting dream had, at times, been more of a millstone than anything else, especially in the winter when everything seemed perpetually damp, cold and miserable.
Builders’ rates being what they were, he had opted to employ his not inconsiderable talent and his spare time to renovate the place. It had been dragging on for nearly two years and he still had a long way to go before he could envisage an end to it.
In the short time that he’d known Julie Carpenter, he hadn’t yet invited her to see what a monstrous task he’d saddled himself with. He doubted that she would be as impressed as she would be if it were finished. And anyway, crossing such boundaries, he knew from previous bitter experience, brought perils and suggestions of commitment that he was not prepared to engage in, yet. He was quite happy at this stage in their relationship to divide his time between evenings out and her cosy, clean, femininely ordered and fragranced home.
By eight o’clock he was bowling along the back lanes, showered, changed, hungry and excited at the prospect of later undressing Julie’s firmly curved body and making love with her again as they had on the last two occasions they’d met before the previous night. Rodrigo seeped out of the speakers and everything was good in the world. Except that it wasn’t.
With a guilty feeling, he thought back to his interview that morning with Claire Stamp. What would she be doing now? Where was the rapist – the man who had succumbed to, what had Marsh called it, the barely suppressed animal desire inside him? Fleetingly, Romney wondered whether that was what he was feeling towards Julie Carpenter: a simple, basic, primitive urge to possess her, to dominate her. But it wasn’t the same, of course. Similarities might exist on
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