"As best I can, as happily as I can, enjoying my own body while I"m living in it, enjoying my kids as they become adults, enjoying their kids ...
however it pans out.
"I"m not afraid of another relationship. I get as h.o.r.n.y as the next single man; but anyone who becomes involved with me has to understand that one thing is not negotiable. She is also going to have to be someone Olive would like, because she"s going to be very close to her."
Abruptly, a violent shiver seemed to pa.s.s through him. "Hey, come on,"
he exclaimed. "Let"s get moving or we"ll freeze to the ground."
He steered her forward down the track. "One more hill," he said, "then we"ll turnback."
They trudged on together, down then up another crest, the steepest of the three they had tackled. Louise was breathing hard by the time they reached the top. Neil took a hip-flask from another of his pockets and handed it to her.
"What"s this?" she gasped. "Whisky?"
"Irn Bru," he grinned. "I don"t drink, remember .. . especially not when I"m driving."
He watched her as she drank, deeply from the flask, not daintily from its cup.
"So what about you?" he asked, as she handed it back to him. "Do you have a soulmate?"
She shot him a quick, almost furtive glance. "I think so, but his is taken."
Neil was silent for a moment. "You might be surprised. He has a special soul; dark and mysterious, I suspect, but there"s a lot of it to go around.
There"s more than one of him: that"s as well as I can put it."
He drew a great breath. "Did you mean all that stuff yesterday, about giving up men for good?"
"Sure I did. I"ve been married twice and both times were disasters; my other relationships were no better, culminating in the episode with Warren.
I"ve known other women with similar track records, and for a while, I thought like most of them that all those guys were to blame for not loving us enough.
"Then after the last one, I tried to put myself in the shoes of all those partners, and for the first time, it occurred to me that in most cases, the bulk f the fault had been mine. Since I was a young girl I have been obsessed with acting, not out of ego ... at least I don"t think so ... but because I wasaddicted to it as strongly as an addict is to crack cocaine.
"I have been impossible to live with for any length of time. Short-term, that was fine. People tell me that I"m good-looking, successful, rich, and some have even added that I"m very good in bed, any man"s dream. But as every relationship developed, I became more and more remote, as my partners, quite justifiably I see now, wanted more of me than I was prepared, or able, to give.
"So... and when young Mr Silver, who"s as s.e.xually interchangeable as anyone I"ve ever met, came on to me, it really was the last straw ... I decided to withdraw from that world."
She gave her deep throaty laugh. That I would have no more of men,"
she murmured, "that I would live the rest of my days as a Garboesque figure, alone, independent and unto myself. That was my clear vision of my declining years."
"Was?"
She nodded.
"Until when?"
This time Louise was standing slightly below him on the hill. She looked up at him; at his dark hair, flecked with grey, at his soft blue eyes, and the web of lines around them, at his once-broken nose, at his expression which to some suggested stolidity, but which in fact he had fashioned over the years to mask a developing intellect.
She took hold of the front of his jacket, drew his face down to hers, and kissed him, lightly, on the lips.
"Until very recently," she whispered.210.61.Pringle and McGurk had said nothing at all to Raymond Anders, from the time they had collected him from his holding cell in the West Yorkshire police headquarters building in Leeds until they had installed him in similar accommodation in Galashiels.
They had watched him squirm anxiously, seated beside the sergeant in the back of the car; they had listened to his occasional pleading question about where they were going and how long the journey would take. Yet deliberately, they had said nothing; not one single word.
Now, on Sunday afternoon, refreshed, and having gone over the a.s.sembled evidence, they were ready to begin. Anders had been formally cautioned by Chief Superintendent Charlie Harrison, the uniformed divisional commander, and advised that he was being held on suspicion of murder; he had been advised to call a solicitor and had chosen Geoff Lesser, a formidable High Court pract.i.tioner from Glasgow.
Suspect and solicitor were together when the two policemen walked into the interview room.
"Are you two ready to talk to me now?" asked Anders plaintively as they sat down opposite him and loaded the tape recorder. Pringle made the formal identifications for the record.
"Thanks for confirming, Mr Anders," he continued, with a glance at Lesser, "that we"ve had no informal discussions with you prior to this interview of the matters under investigation. Would you just repeat that for the tape; that we"ve said nothing to you until now."
"Not a f.u.c.king word," exclaimed Raymond Anders. He was a tall man but he sat hunched at the table, fair hair dull and needing shampoo, dandruff on the shoulders of his dark jacket, stubble on his long sharp chin.
"Thanks, that"s sufficient," said Pringle, pleasantly. "Do you know why you"re here?"They told me in Leeds; something to do with the murder of a girl on a trout farm.""Who said anything to you about a trout farm? I thought our colleagues in Leeds simply detained you in connection with a murder investigation."
The superintendent caught the quick glance from client to solicitor. "No point looking at Mr Lesser," he said. "We haven"t discussed the case with him either, and he"s not going to lie to the tape for you.
"So. How did you know about the trout farm?"
"I guessed. I heard it on the car radio; that was it."
"Which station?" asked McGurk.
"Radio Borders."
"Hold on a minute. Does that mean that your sister was lying to the police when she said that you arrived at her place at just after five on Thursday night?"
"No! I did. She was telling the truth."
"In that case," said the sergeant, "prepare to lose your driving licence.
The news of Miss Adey"s murder wasn"t broadcast on Radio Borders until four thirty. It"s a very local FM station, so to hear it you couldn"t have been further south than Alnwick.
"You must have been doing around two hundred miles an hour to get to your sister"s when you did, yet still hear that broadcast."
"Maybe it was Radio Scotland, then."
"They didn"t broadcast the news until just after five, and you can"t pick them up in Leeds."
"Congratulations," said Pringle. That"s maybe no" the fastest opening lie I"ve ever heard in a formal interview, but it"s up there with the best.
Would you not agree, Mr Lesser?" The lawyer scowled at him.
"Okay," the superintendent continued. "Let"s cut away the fat and get to the meat of this. I"m going to accept that you got to your sister"s when you both say you did. Where did you leave from?"
"Hawick; that"s where my office is."
"Right, that"s a two-and-a-half-hour drive to Leeds, minimum, in good traffic conditions; so you must have been on the road by quarter to three.
Correct?" Anders nodded vigorously, starting a small white dandruff storm falling towards the table.
"But you had an appointment with Miss Adey, in her diary, in her handwriting, timed for four o"clock on Thursday afternoon. More than that, you"d a date with your girlfriend on Thursday night. Actually, son," he whispered, confidentially, "I think she"s your ex-girlfriend now.