Page 24 of Murder in Shades of Fire and Ash

But Tom stood up. It looked like the conversation was going to happen whatever Charlie wanted.

18

Monday morning

Charlie was going to have to talk to Tom. He gave avoiding it one last try. “I’m really, really busy,” he said.

“This won’t take long,” Tom replied. “I owe you an apology and an explanation. We can get ice creams.”

As the ice cream in the house freezer disappeared as soon as it arrived, and Charlie was entitled to ten minutes off, he agreed. The nearest source of ice cream was just across the road, and for once there was no queue. Cones in hand, they sat on the nearest bench. Charlie looked at his double chocolate, with extra chocolate chips, which Tom had bought him without needing to ask, and his heart felt full.

“It’s not you,” Tom said.

“So, who is it then?”

“I should have talked to you about the girls coming to stay. I should have asked you about the holidays. I’m sorry. I’m their dad, and I’m used to putting them first. But you’re my husband, and we’re supposed to be a team. I need to remember that.”

“Fine,” Charlie said, and turned his attention back to his ice cream.

“Look, they’re pissed off with each other at the moment, and they’re pissed off with Ann and Ori for leaving them here instead of taking them both to London. They’re just pissed off, and they’re teenagers.”

“Which is hardly my fault,” Charlie said. “But it’s me who can never find anything, or get in the bathroom, or make my lunch.”

“True. So, I rang Ann, and I’m putting them on the train to London this afternoon. I negotiated us three days. Couldn’t persuade them to keep them for any longer. Apparently, they’ve got dinner invitations, and concerts and private views.” Tom sighed. “But three days peace is better than nothing.”

Charlie wanted to throw his arms round Tom, except that they were in public, he was holding an ice cream, and he really did have to get back to work.

“Thank you,” he said. Then his phone rang.

Ch Sup Kent.

“Sir,” Charlie said.

“I need you to come in to HQ to see me,” Kent said.

“No problem,” he said, thinking about how he had driven to Wrexham twice the day before. But he could check up on Dylan if he was going yet again, and that felt like the right thing to do. “What kind of time?”

They agreed Charlie would go to see Dylan first.

It seemed to Charlie that the weather was fractionally cooler than it had been the day before. The sky was the same hard blue, but there were a few wispy bits of cloud amongst the contrails. There was plenty of time to contemplate the sky, thanks to it being the school holidays and thus prime time for the commissioning of roadworks. Charlie sat in long lines of holiday traffic, waiting for the temporary lights to let them through — to the next set a mile down the road. Men in work boots, shorts and hi-vis vests over bare chests did whatever they were doing, though labouring outside in this heat must be hell. Thingsspeeded up a bit on the A5, but even that wasn’t immune to the rash of roadworks. He passed the signs to Vale Crucis Abbey and wished he were going there, to wander through the shade of the ruins, imagining the monks from centuries before. Orianna had written about the Abbey:

… Bare slabs where monks laid their heads.

We observe. Collective memories

Compressed beneath the grandeur of soaring vaults …

Tom and he had spent a day there earlier in the year, so that Tom could draw. In true Tom style, the ruins were meticulously portrayed, but each image had the ghost of a long-ago monk, slipping just out of view. Which, Charlie thought, was how this case felt. As if there was something on the edge of his vision that he needed to bring into focus. He shook his head and told himself to concentrate on driving, and the parts of the case in plain sight.

He parked againoutside Dylan’s neat brick house. Charlie heard steps behind the door, but it didn’t open. There was a spy hole, he saw, and he wondered if the press had found out about Dylan, or he was simply being careful in case they did. Wise man.

Dylan answered the door in what appeared to be the same shorts and T-shirt that he had been wearing the day before. His face was blotchy, and his eyes were dark pits in his face. The previously perfect hair hung limply, damp with sweat. He looked as if he hadn’t slept, eaten, or been outside since then. But once they were inside, Charlie saw that the house was tidy, with a pile of books and papers next to an open laptop on the coffee table. The back garden doors were open.

“I’ve been working,” Dylan said. “Unwin was killed because I sent him away so I could study. So, I’m studying.” Dylan’s face crumpled as he spoke.

Charlie reached out and touched Dylan’s arm. “Unwin was killed because someone out there is a murderer. Not because of anything you did.This isn’t down to you.” But he could tell Dylan didn’t believe him, or didn’t want to. “Telling yourselfif onlywon’t help. Honestly, it won’t.”

Dylan shook his head miserably. “That’s not how it feels,” he said. He took a deep breath. “I’m glad you came, because I remembered something. Unwin had a phone call just before he left. I was in the kitchen tidying up a bit. I heard Unwin say something like,I’ll see you later then,and I assumed it was Patsy. I couldn’t hear the other person, but I thought it was a woman’s voice. Higher pitched, I guess.”

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