Mark Pearson - The Killing Season

‘The wedding, Jack! We need to talk about the wedding.’

I sighed with relief. ‘Plenty of time for that, darling. It’s not until next year. Let’s talk it through tonight at home. When you’re not so busy.’

‘I’ve tried talking to you at home, but you never sit still long enough to make any decisions.’

‘You know what my decision would be. We’d fly off to the Caribbean, just the four of us, and get married on the beach. Come home as Mr and Mrs Jack Delaney with none of the associated hullabaloo.’

‘We are not running off anywhere, Jack. I hope you’re not ashamed of me.’

‘Of course I’m not!’

‘Then you should be prepared to declare your love for me in front of the whole world! That’s what marriage is all about after all, isn’t it?’

Kate had a way of dancing me into corners with her words. Questions that I couldn’t answer without being in the wrong. ‘Are you sure you never trained as a lawyer?’

‘I’m being serious!’

I stood up and kissed her. But her lips remained closed tight and the glint in her eye was not one of mischief, but a warning of dark clouds gathering therein.

‘I’ve said I am happy to get married here, didn’t I? We’ve set the date and picked the church. Church of England at that!’

‘You don’t have to sound like you are doing me a favour!’

‘Well, we can’t get married in a Catholic church and you don’t want a registrar performing the ceremony.’

‘Don’t you play the Catholic card on me, Jack Delaney!’ she snapped. Seemed I was right about the gathering clouds.

‘Well, I was just saying.’

‘You are never “just saying” anything. I know you well enough by now for that.’

‘You know I love you and just want to make you happy.’

‘And that’s why you’re marrying me?’

I could see it was a loaded question because of the challenging look in her eyes. ‘Of course not,’ I said. Trying to work out quickly what trap she had set. ‘I’m marrying you because it would make me the happiest and luckiest man in Christendom.’

Her look softened. Perhaps I’d danced around the landmine this time.

‘And you really mean that?’

‘Sure, if I were to lie to you would not my tongue blacken and fall from my mouth?’

Kate laughed despite herself. ‘I must be all kinds of fool to be marrying you, Jack.’

‘It doesn’t matter what kind of fool — you’re my fool and that’s all that matters.’

She looked at me, considering for a moment, and then smiled again. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, it is.’

‘OK. I’d better report back to Amy.’

‘You are going nowhere!’ Her voiced snapped back into schoolteacher mode. ‘I told Lesley to hold all appointments for the next half an hour.’ She pulled a fat folder out of a drawer. ‘There is plenty to arrange. Wedding music. Guest lists. The wedding-breakfast menu. Flowers for the church and the reception. Wedding invitations. Wedding stationery. Honeymoon destinations. I have booked the village hall in Upper Sheringham, but we need to talk about entertainment. Bridal car for me. Car for you and your party.’

‘Yes, dear.’ I summoned up a smile from somewhere. That beach on Barbados was looking far more attractive by the minute.

‘And what if it rains?’ She continued.

‘Umbrellas?

Kate didn’t even bother to respond. ‘And your best man. . have you picked someone yet?’

‘I thought Sally Cartwright.’

‘Think again. Much as I love that detective constable I want a traditional wedding and not some other woman standing beside you at the altar making bookends of us both.’

‘Yes, dear.’

‘And if you call me “dear” one more time I am going to pick up my reflex hammer and brain you with it.’

An hour later and I was sitting back in the caravan, nursing a bruised stomach and a bottle of Fullers Honeydew beer, watching a stable girl walk across the yard to the farmhouse.

Jodhpurs, riding boots, a green waterproof jacket, long blonde hair tied back in a shaggy ponytail. Time was, I would have invited her into the caravan to join me for a drink. I wasn’t even considering it now. Well, not seriously. But a man’s eye is drawn to the female figure as a moth is drawn to a flame, as some poet might have remarked once. I took another sip of my beer and smiled inwardly. I may still shoot the occasional glance but I had no desire to act. I wasn’t lying when I said I loved Kate. Everything had changed with her.

Like I said, I used to hate the taste of real ale. Maybe they served it differently down south but since moving to the North Norfolk Coast I had acquired a taste for it. Maybe my metabolism was changing. Probably some science in it — I would ask Kate but she’d only make me laugh and I was forbidden to do that. Maybe it was just because most people round here drank it, including a many the women. When in Rome drink like a Roman. Kate thought it was part of a psychological shift, a metaphorical putting-down of roots. I reminded her that she had qualifications in medicine and forensics, not in psychology or psychiatry, and she had simply smiled at me in a way she had that made me feel too good about her to be irritated. Who knows, maybe she was right. In the cold winter nights at the farthest outpost of civilisation, with nothing between me and the North Pole except thousands of miles of hostile sea, there was something comforting about sitting in front of a real fire in an old pub, listening to the wind howl and drinking something that had its roots in the first intoxicating beverages made by man.

I looked out of the other window, the one at the far end of the caravan, at a herringbone sky flecked with veins of crimson as the weak sun dipped towards the horizon. Halloween would soon be upon us and then Bonfire Night and looking at that sky I felt the power of forces that shaped the personality of this landscape and its people. A pagan power rooted in flame and ceremony, dating from long, long before the birth of Christ. I took another pull on my Honeydew ale and shook my head, smiling wryly. Saints alive, sure I’d be drinking mead next. I put the bottle down as the door opened and a woman walked in without waiting for an invitation.

She was in her late thirties, maybe mid-forties. I may be a detective, but what with Botox and fillers and who knows what monkey-gland elixirs nowadays I sure as hell wouldn’t like to stake my life on making a completely accurate guess at a woman’s age. Bad manners, too. She had brunette hair, cut short in a Louise Brooks-style bob, and wore a dark charcoal dress suit whose hem came just above her shapely knees. She had great pins. Like I said before, moth to flame and all that, but in my defence I am a detective — I am paid to notice these things. She was a good-looking woman and knew it. She wasn’t shy about make-up but it was subtly applied, although her lipstick was a cherry red that accentuated the blueness of her eyes, eyes that were looking at me with a degree of confidence that signalled she was used to getting her own way. I could see a lot of men would be happy to do her bidding. She was a snap-her-fingers-and-see-them-run kind of woman. She exuded sex, confidence, authority. She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

Maybe this time she would say ‘I’ve come to see you, Mister Delaney, because I think some men have been following me.’ In a husky whisper just like Marilyn Monroe’s in some 1950s film noir whose title I forget.

‘What the fuck are you playing at, Delaney?’ she said instead, exploding my flights of fancy.

‘Afternoon, Susan,’ I replied giving her the benefit of the full wattage of my smile. ‘How’s your day going?’ The full wattage had no effect on her. Her eyes remained as hard as the bark on a frozen tree.