Stuart Pawson - Deadly Friends

"You're not the first to tell us that. If you don't mind me saying," I went on, 'you look rather, er, large for a squash player."

He laughed and patted his belly. "They can't get round me. But you're right. I only do it for some exercise. Golfs my game."

"And you, Mrs. Duffy?"

He answered for her. "Golfs her game, too. Isn't it, darling? She's the ladies' captain next year."

"Really. Well done. And how did you find the doctor, Mrs. Duffy?"

She smiled at the memory of him. "He was dishy," she said. "I only met him twice, but he could have taken my pulse, anytime."

"I'll tell you what he was like," Duffy informed us, emphasising his point with a raised hand. "This was bloody typical of the man. When we played him and that girl. You remember, don't you, Trish?"

"I'll say. I completely went to pieces."

"This girl," Duffy explained. "Her partner didn't show up. She was upset. The doc started chatting to her, ended up partnering her, against us. He'd no need to do that, had he? Bloody beat us, too."

"That's what I've come to ask you about," I admitted. "The manager told me about it. I don't suppose you remember the girl's name, do you?"

They both looked blank. She shook her head. He said: "No. Sorry.

Ought to do, but it won't come."

"It was… just… an ordinary name," she said.

"Did you have a drink with them in the bar, afterwards?"

"Yes, we did."

"And how did he and the girl get on?"

"Very chatty," Mrs. Duffy replied. "Very chatty. But when I was alone with her we went to the ladies' — I said: "You've done all right there," and she said he wasn't her type. I expected her to be over the moon, I would have been, but her feet were well and truly on the ground."

"Would you have said that she was his type?"

"No, not at all. She was a plain Jane, and he was going out with her off the telly. Do you know about her?"

"Yes, I've talked to her." I suppressed the smile that the memory generated. "I assume the doc and the girl would have to meet again to play in the next round?" I said.

"That's right," Mr. Duffy confirmed. "They swapped phone numbers, and he told her what times he was most likely to be available. It was awkward for him, being a doctor and on call."

"I know the feeling," I said.

"We went to watch them," he went on. "Bugger me if they didn't win again. Got knocked out in the semi-final, though. She was thrilled to bits, I remember. Got a little trophy. I think that meant more to her than going out with the doctor would have done." He turned to his wife. "You missed that, didn't you, darling?"

"Yes," she confirmed. "I had one of my heads."

I nodded sympathetically. It must be terrible to have heads. "But you still can't remember the girl's name?"

They couldn't.

"OK," I said, 'in that case, we'll have a little identity parade." They looked worried. I'd taken the membership list with me. I unfolded it on the arm of the easy chair and pulled my notebook from my inside pocket. "I'm going to write four names down," I explained, 'from the list of members. If you recognise her name amongst them, I want you to point to it. Understand?"

I found three women's names and added them to the one I was interested in. "Just point, if you think you see her name," I told Duffy.

"That's her," he said, without hesitation, placing a fingertip on the second name down. "At least, it was something like that."

"Thanks. Now you, Mrs. Duffy."

I moved across to her and a wave of perfume hit the back of my throat like a karate chop. I swallowed and blinked away the tears.

"That's her," she said, touching the page with the tip of a nail extension that gave me a pain in my teeth. Writing on blackboards would have been hell for her.

"Are you sure?" I asked. She'd picked the same name as her spouse.

"Yes, definitely. That's her. Susan Crabtree."

The door closed behind me and I could almost hear the collective sigh they emitted on the other side of it. No doubt they'd celebrate my leaving with a little snifter or two. I pulled the coat together across my throat and walked down the drive towards the car. The rain was falling straight out of the sky, too morose to slant either one way or the other.

I could have strode away from it. I could have written that letter of resignation, saying I wanted out, and that would have been that. In two weeks, I'd be a civilian. But I didn't. I had a job to do. I didn't make the rules that's what we pay politicians for. I just applied them.

And every guard in every concentration camp used exactly the same excuse.

I drove to the Canalside Mews, home of the late doctor and also of Darryl Buxton. Eight flats, two definitely empty, a weekday. I'd be lucky to find anyone in.

I got an answer first try. "My name's Detective Inspector Priest," I shouted into the hole in the wall. "I'm making enquiries about the late doctor who lived upstairs. Do you mind if I come in?"

"I'll open the door for you," the woman replied, as the catch buzzed.

I pushed it open and walked across the lobby to flat number two. My luck held. Two others were in and answered my questions, not that I had many. "We're investigating various callers or salesmen who've been seen in the area," I told them all. "Have you ever had anyone leave a catalogue for a company called Magic Plastic?"

Heads were shaken. Noses were looked down. Magic Plastic salesmen didn't call at prestigious developments such as Canalside Mews.

Perhaps, I thought, they knew that the residents weren't as generous with their money or as sympathetic as the likes of Janet Saunders. The young man in number five wearing a cookery apron offered me a coffee and the lady in number seven showed me her husband's tropical fish.

"Your sergeant was ever so interested in them," she said.

"I know. He told me all about them."

I saw a lot of gold velvet and tassels and G-Plan furniture and was definitely unimpressed. I was left with the big question: if the Magic Plastic salesman had never called at Canalside Mews, where did the doctor obtain the mini-bin I'd seen in his apartment? I climbed into the car and wiped the rain off my neck. I couldn't put it off any longer. I started the engine and drove across town to where Susan Crabtree's parents lived.

It was a street of post-war semis with bay windows, similar to the one I lived in. The type of house that middle-class people aspired to, in those far-off days before inflation set the market alight and home-owning became a hedge against it and not a millstone around the pay packet. These had become seedy a few years ago, then regained respectability as the double-glazing salesmen moved in to give the place a face-lift. Now the cycle was being repeated with patio doors and conservatories. As I cruised slowly past their house I saw a woman at an upstairs window, polishing the glass like she'd done every day since her daughter hurled herself off a graceless concrete car park, two Christmases ago. She wore a yellow smock that made her the brightest thing in the street. I parked about six doors away and turned up my collar.

I knocked at the door of the house I'd parked outside and a dog started barking. A woman told it to be quiet and somewhere inside another door slammed, muffling the dog's yelps. A bolt slid back, the latch clicked, and the door swung open.

She was about eighty years old and four foot eleven high. "Yes," she demanded.

"Police," I said, offering my ID. "I'm DI Priest. Could I have a word, please?"

"Come in," she ordered.

We stood in the kitchen. "First of all," I told her, "I want to give you a ticking off."

"A ticking off?" she echoed. "I'm too old to take a ticking off from you, young man, police or no."

"You should be more careful who you let in. Don't you have a spy hole, or a chain on the door?"