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telling us, without telling us, that our lad was set up?’
    She stood facing them, her back to the screen for the moment. She blinked. ‘You’re quick,’ she said.
    â€˜Col
is
quick,’ Iles replied with a fond, admiring chuckle, as if praising his rescued greyhound which could still show some creaking pace if a tennis ball were thrown to play the course rabbit. ‘Or quick
ish
. I wanted you to know that, Maud. His interpretation of your hints is a very obvious one, of course. But I stayed silent, so he could have his little say-so first. Good for his morale and general selfhood. It’s sad, but this is the only self he has, and I’d like him to make the best of it. I’ve told Col I would take care he wasn’t made to look moronic by you and your lot.’
    Iles began to semi-scream. Acoustics in this little theatre were excellent and gave even only a semi-scream fine penetration and depth, plus a hint of considerable reserves and the possibility that Iles would move into a full, all-out, gloriously unmodulated scream before very long. ‘You might well think, Maud, that this is foolishly kind of me after he had been banging my wife in fourth-rate rooming joints, under evergreen hedgerows, in marly fields, on river banks, in cars – including police vehicles – and, most probably, my own bed, despite the quiet distinction of the area where I live and the indisputable fact that properties standing in Rougemont Place include among their occupants a retired rear-admiral, from the days when the Royal Navy really was a navy, the proprietor of a workshop making vital shoe-wideners, a manufacturer of state-of-the-art double-glazed and centrally heated caravans, a lottery winner, and a paid-off football manager from somewhere up north. There would be occasions when work took me away, and Harpur did not demur. Harpur and demurring don’t mix.
    â€˜So, Maud, let me tabulate the topics and sub-topics, will you? One, you’ll ask, and reasonably ask, why in this case do I wish to protect his unkempt, struggling ego? Two: why do I pick him to come on this assignment with me in another police region? I’ll deal chronologically with these wholly justifiable queries. One: I am, I trust, a forgiving, large-minded man who, at the sight of mental frailty, wishes to do what I can, in the interests of humaneness, to help. Hence, kindness to Col. As a child, I was known by my mother as “Heartfelt Desmond” and, if brevity were not required, “Desmond-who-does-not-pass-by-on-the-other-side”. That deals with Question One.
    â€˜But, then, we have to answer Question Two, don’t we? Why select him as my baggage-man and toothpaste squeezer? And, so, here
is
the answer: am I going to leave this prick-driven laddie unmonitored while I’m away sorting out some distant police crew, my wife being there unchaperoned and vulnerable in Rougemont Place, and Harpur treacherously familiar with the environs?’
    Harpur thought Maud looked appalled – altogether unlike the calm but commanding mandarin figure she had seemed a short time ago. She said: ‘Mr Iles, Desmond, please: none of this has anything to do with—’
    â€˜Oh, I can tell you,’ Iles replied, ‘my wife, Sarah, and I have quite a joint giggle some evenings now when we talk of her goings-on with him in the past. We – neither of us, and I stress this, neither she nor I – neither of us is able to understand how she could possibly have opened up to someone of Col’s grubby ilk. Notoriously, some women will go for what’s termed “a bit of rough”. Although people wrongly pronounce the initial A in Ava Gardner to rhyme with “day” or “say”, I’m told she’d chosen it as her stage name because she liked to have a gardener occasionally, possibly
al fresco
.’
    â€˜Did he have something special for her?’ Harpur