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Whatever the case though, the envelope was always going to be
noticed
—by whomsoever. It was like someone entering a lucky-dip postal competition with multicolored sketches adorning the periphery of the envelope; or like a lover mailing off a vastly outsize Valentine.
    What would her boss make of it?
    Barbara had been working at Police HQ for almost six years now and had enjoyed her time there—especially these past three years working as the personal secretary of Chief Superintendent Strange; and she was very sad that he would be leaving at the end of the summer. “Strange by name and strange by nature”—that's what she often said when friends had asked about him: an oddly contradictory man, that was for sure. He was a heavyweight, in every sense of the word; yet there were times when he handled things with a lightness of touch which was as pleasing as it was unexpected. His was the reputation of a blunt, no-nonsense copper who had not been born with quite the IQ of an Aristotle or an Isaac Newton; yet (in Barbara's experience) he could on occasion exhibit a remarkably compassionate insight into personal problems, including her own. All right (yes!) he was a big, blundering, awkward teddy bear of a man: a bit (a lot?) henpecked at home—until recently of course; a man much respected, if not particularly liked, by his fellow officers; and (from Barbara's point of view) a man who had never, hardly ever, sought to take the slightest advantage of her … well, of her womanhood. Just that once, perhaps?
    It had been at the height of the summer heat wave of 1995. One day when she had been wearing the skimpiest outfit the Force could ever officially tolerate, she had seen in Strange's eyes what she thought (and almost hoped?) were the signs of some mild, erotic fantasy.
    “You look very desirable, my girl!”
    That's all he'd said.
    Was that what people meant by “sexual harassment”?
    Not that she'd mentioned it to anyone; but the phrase was much in the headlines that long, hot summer, and she'd heard some of the girls talking in the canteen about it.
    “
I
could do with a bi’ o’ that sexual harássment!” confessed Sharon, the latest and youngest tyro in the typing pool.
    That was the occasion when one of the senior CID officers seated at the far end of the table had got to hisfeet, drained his coffee, and come across to lay a gentle hand on Sharon's suntanned shoulder.
    “You mean sexual hárassment, I think. As you know, we usually exercise the recessive accent in English; and much as I admire our American friends, we shouldn't let them prostitute our pronunciation, young lady!”
    He had spoken quietly but a little cruelly; and the uncomprehending Sharon was visibly hurt.
    “Pompous prick! Who the hell does he think he is?” she'd asked when he was gone.
    So Barbara told her.
    Not that she knew him personally, although his blue eyes invariably smiled into hers, a little wearily sometimes but ever interestedly, whenever the two of them passed each other in the corridors; and when she sometimes fancied that he looked at her as though he knew what she was thinking.
    God forbid!
    It was not of Morse, though, but of Strange that she was thinking that morning when she tapped the customary twice on his office door and entered. Sometimes, when he sat there behind his desk—tie slightly askew, a light shower of dandruff over the shoulders of his jacket, hairs growing a little too prominently from his ears and from his nostrils, white shirt rather less than white and less than smoothly ironed—it was then, yes, that she wished to mother him. She—Barbara!—less than half his age.
    That he'd never had such a complicated effect on other women, she felt completely convinced.
    Well, no; not
completely
convinced …

Chapter Ten
    He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.
    (Joseph Heller,
Catch-22
)
    “Probably some nutter!” growled Strange as he slipped a paper knife inside the top of the