SHE EXCELLED AT DARTS. LYNLEY HAD LEARNED THAT QUICKLY enough on the previous evening, and he’d added the information to what little he knew about Daidre Trahair. She had a dartboard mounted on the back of the sitting room door, something he’d not noticed before because she kept the door open instead of closing it against the cold wind, which could sweep into the building from the tiny vestibule when someone entered the cottage.
He should have known he was in trouble when she used a tape measure to create a distance of exactly seven feet, nine and one-quarter inches from the back of the closed door. Here she placed the fireplace poker on a parallel, calling it their oche. When he said, “Okkey?” and she’d said, “The oche marks where the player has to stand, Thomas,” he’d had his first real clue that he was probably in over his head. But he’d thought, How difficult can it possibly be? and he’d gone like a lamb to the metaphorical slaughter, agreeing to a match called 501 about which he knew nothing at all.
He said, “Are there rules?”
She’d looked at him askance. “Of course there are rules. It’s a game, Thomas.” And she’d gone about explaining them to him. She began with the dartboard itself, losing him almost immediately when she referred to treble and double rings and what it meant to one’s score to land in one of them. He’d never thought of himself as an idiot?it had always seemed to him that knowing how to identify a bull’s-eye was the limit of what one needed to embrace when it came to darts?but within moments, he was entirely lost.
It was simple, she told him. “We each start with a score of 501, and the object is to reduce that to nought. We each throw three darts. A bull’s-eye scores fifty, the outer ring twenty-five and anything in the double or treble ring is double or treble the segment score. Yes?”
He nodded. He was almost altogether uncertain what she was talking about, but confidence, he reckoned, was the key to success.
“Good. Now, the caveat is that the last dart thrown has to land in a double or in the bull’s-eye. And additionally, if you reduce your score to one or it actually goes below nought, your turn ends immediately and the play is turned over to the other thrower. Follow?”
He nodded. He was even more uncertain at that point, but he decided it couldn’t be that difficult to hit a dartboard from less than eight feet away. Besides, it was only a game and his ego was strong enough to emerge undamaged should she win the match. For another could follow. Two out of three. Three out of five. It didn’t matter. It was all in an evening’s diversion, yes?
She won every match. They could have gone on all night and she probably would have continued to win. The vixen?for so he was thinking of her by then?turned out to be not only a tournament player but the sort of woman who did not believe a man’s ego had to be preserved by allowing him moments of specious supremacy over her.
She had the grace to be at least moderately embarrassed. She said, “Oh my. Oh dear. Well, it’s just that I never actually just let someone win. It’s never seemed right.”
“You’re…quite amazing,” he said. “My head is spinning.”
“It’s that I play a lot. I didn’t tell you that, did I, so I’ll pay the penalty for unspoken truths. I’ll help you with the washing up.”
She was as good as her word, and they saw to the kitchen in companionable fashion, with him doing the washing and her doing the drying. She made him clean the cooktop?“It’s only fair,” she told him?but she herself swept the floor and scoured the sink. He found himself enjoying her company and, as a result, felt ill at ease when it came to his appointed task.
He did it nonetheless. He was a cop when everything got reduced to essentials, and someone was dead through murder. She’d lied to an investigating officer and no matter his personal enjoyment of the evening, he had a job to do for DI Hannaford and he intended to do it.