“Ah yes,” she said. “I’d forgotten that.”
They rang off. Bea sat down at the desk. She watched Constable McNulty across the room attempting to type up his notes, and it came to her that he didn’t actually know how to type. He was hunting for every letter to tap upon with his index fingers, with prodigious pauses between each tap. She knew if she watched him for longer than thirty seconds, she would scream, so she rose and began to head out of the room.
Sergeant Collins met her at the door. He said, “Phone’s below.”
She said fervently, “Thank God. Where are they?”
“Who?”
“BT.”
“BT? They’ve not arrived yet.”
“Then what?”
“The phone. You’ve a call downstairs. It’s an officer from?”
“Middlemore,” she finished. “That would be my former husband. Assistant Chief Constable Hannaford. Head him off for me. I need some time.” Ray, she decided, had tried on her mobile, and now he was trying to get through on the land line. He’d have built up a head of steam at this point. She didn’t particularly want to experience it. She said, “Tell him I’ve just set out to see to some business. Tell him to phone me back tomorrow. Or at home later.” She would give him that much.
“It’s not ACC Hannaford,” Collins said.
“You said an officer…”
“Someone called Sir David?”
“What is it with people?” Bea demanded. “I’ve just got off the phone with a Duke Clarence up in Chepstow and now it’s Sir David?”
“Hillier, he’s called,” Collins said. “Sir David Hillier. Assistant commissioner up at the Met.”
“Scotland Yard?” Bea asked. “Now, isn’t that just what I need.”
BY THE TIME HIS regular drinking hour at the Salthouse Inn had rolled round, Selevan Penrule was in need of one. He also was, at least to his way of thinking, deserving of one. Something strong from the sixteen men of Tain. Or however the hell many there were.
Having to cope with both his granddaughter’s pigheadedness and her mother’s hysteria in a single day would have been too much for any bloke. No wonder David had moved them all off to Rhodesia or whatever it was called these days. He’d probably thought a good bout of heat, cholera, TB, snakes, and tsetse flies?or whatever they had in that god-awful bloody climate of theirs?would sort both of them out. But it hadn’t done so if Tammy’s behaviour and Sally Joy’s voice on the phone were anything to go by.
“Is she eating properly?” Sally Joy had demanded from the bowels of Africa, where a decent connection on a telephone line was, apparently, something akin to the spontaneous transmogrification of tabby cat into two-headed lion. “Is she still praying, Father Penrule?”
“She’s?”
“Has she gained any weight? How much time is she on her knees? What about the Bible? Does she have a Bible?”
Jaysus in a sandwich, Selevan thought. Sally Joy made his bloody head swim. He said, “I told you I’d watch over the girl. That’s what I’m doing. ’S there anything else, then?”
“Oh, I’m tedious. I’m tedious. But you don’t understand what it’s like to have a daughter.”
“I had one myself, didn’t I? Four sons as well, if you’re interested.”
“I know. I know. But in Tammy’s case?”
“You either leave her to me or I send her back, woman.”
That got through. The last thing Sally Joy and David wanted was their daughter back in Africa, exposed to its hardships and believing that she could single-handedly do something about them.