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conceded, ‘I don’t feel too good.’
    ‘Oh.’ He backed down immediately. ‘If you’re not well it’s fine, I’ll take it.’ He had to admit, she didn’t look too clever. He knew her health had suffered after the trauma of being stabbed in the leg earlier this year, and he didn’t want a relapse on his conscience. ‘You get off to bed.’ He smiled encouragingly.
    He watched his colleague shuffle off down the corridor, sighed and picked up the telephone receiver.
    ‘Johnny,’ he said, lighting another cigarette. ‘Gimme the details, I’m all ears.’
    ‘It’s that same farmer Miss Clarke went to see earlier.’
    Simms knew he should go after her. For continuity’s sake she ought to take the call. Why the hell hadn’t the whole sodding field been searched straight away? Clarke should have stopped the farmer in his tracks and sealed it off. This was a serious oversight. What was the matter with her?
    ‘OK, mate, get an area car down there. Grab Sanderson’s tractor keys until the field has been combed. I’ll call the lab, put Drysdale on alert, then I’ll be straight down there.’
    Sue Clarke felt a dreadful wave of nausea; it must be my bloody hormones, she thought. She’d sat in the car for five minutes with her eyes closed before she’d started to drift off to sleep. Tired and emotional was an understatement – death-warmed-up was closer to it. She wondered if she had a temperature; she certainly felt feverish. She’d probably caught a chill from her night in the field. She should never have been sent on surveillance on a night like that, and in her condition too. Not that anyone knew, though.
    She reversed the Escort out and was about to pull forward but paused instead, closing her eyes and resting her damp forehead on the steering wheel. Damn, she thought. She realized she’d made a mistake: she should have sealed off the field and had uniform tread through. As if Forensics would look beyond the immediate area; they weren’t best pleased to be there at all in the first place. Genuine intrigue and commitment to duty were battling against her desperate need for sleep. She re-parked the car and got out. Have a strong coffee, that would help. She missed the nicotine which she’d often relied upon to keep her going, but she’d had to can the fags as they made her even more queasy. And she probably would have packed them in anyway as soon as she found out … And everybody else would find out soon enough – she wondered how long she had before it began to show. She’d had a scare six months ago, but this time there was no doubt. For what seemed the billionth time she cursed her stupidity and slammed the car door shut.
    Frost was going to thump him. Wife’s funeral or not, any minute now he would bust the bleeder’s nose, just watch him.
    He shouldn’t have returned to the wake. After a stroll around the block to clear his head Frost had intended just to pick up his coat and car keys and leave, figuring he could make his peace with his mother-in-law some other time – if that were possible at all. But while fetching his coat he’d been collared by Winslow and agreed to have a drink in the study. Frost, surprisingly, got on fine with the bald, bespectacled ACC.
    Unfortunately, a few drinks had had the effect of turning Winslow into a bore, and after the customary condolences Frost found himself on the receiving end of a lecture on the coming of the computer age. It was enough to send him to sleep, so when Winslow paused for a pee, Frost made a break for it. He exited the study, intending to leave by the front door, but on entering the hall bumped straight into his brother-in-law. By Frost’s own generous standards Brazier had had a lot to drink. Rather like Winslow, this seemed to compel him to deliver lectures, but Brazier’s chosen subject was Mary Frost’s decline.
    Frost endured it for a couple of minutes, but it was clearly an encounter that was never going to end well. He heard all