Read The Company She Kept for Free Online

word, sir?’
    â€˜Yes, Spalding, what is it?’
    â€˜I think I know who she might be ...’
    Mayo cast his dark look over the constable, a man he was never really sure he understood. A man who kept himself to himself, quiet and dependable, intelligent though apparently unambitious, still a constable and knocking on for forty. A bit of an enigma, all in all, though Mayo wasn’t quarrelling with that. He didn’t brandish the details of his own personal life around for public consumption, either.
    â€˜Haven’t seen her for years,’ Spalding went on. A raindrop slid down his nose and hung on the end. ‘And in the state she’s in, I wouldn’t like to be categoric, but I think she’s a woman called Angie Robinson.’
    â€˜Why didn’t you say so before?’
    Spalding didn’t look very happy about having said so now. ‘Couldn’t be sure, sir. It was only when we were lifting her – and her hair fell away from her face and ...’ He stopped to brush the raindrop off his nose.
    â€˜And you saw the birthmark. OK. Go on.’
    â€˜I might be wrong. I don’t think I ever spoke to her more than a couple of times. She was just somebody my wife had met.’
    He must be talking about his ex-wife. It was known that Nick Spalding was another recent casualty of the police force, one whose marriage hadn’t survived the stresses and strains put on it. That much Mayo knew, but no more. ‘Right. You’d better tell me what you know about her – and in what circumstances your wife knew her.’
    â€˜I wouldn’t say Roz knew her, sir, she was only an acquaintance.’ He was still reluctant to get involved. ‘Roz and her sister got to meet her through the woman Sophie was working for at the time – some old woman who’d been a famous archaeologist in her day and was writing her memoirs. Lived near Morwen, in a big old house called Flowerdew.’
    â€˜This sister, then – she should be able to tell us something about Angie Robinson?’
    â€˜If she’s at home and in the right mood,’ Spalding said shortly. ‘And if she wants to talk about it. The old woman at Flowerdew suddenly decided she was going abroad, so Sophie’s job there ended, and since then she’s spent most of her time gadding about the world – in between divorces, that is.’
    â€˜Maybe it’d better be your wife we see first in that case.’ Mayo decided he didn’t much like the sound of this Sophie as a witness.
    â€˜Oh, I don’t think so, sir,’ Spalding said quickly. ‘As I say, she didn’t know Angie Robinson much more than I did.’
    â€˜We’ve got to start somewhere, man!’
    â€˜Yes, sir.’
    â€˜Let Sergeant Kite have her address. She’s Mrs –?’
    â€˜It’s still Spalding, sir. We’re not divorced, only living apart,’ Spalding said woodenly. ‘She lives in Pennybridge.’
    Pennybridge at eight in the morning was quiet and appealing, looking at its best in the morning sun, sharp after the night of rain. A picturesque village on the outskirts of Lavenstock whose charms had been the architect of its own downfall, it had attracted estate developers and caused the prices to soar of any old tumbledown cottage anywhere in the vicinity, and especially the period houses clustering round the green. As the well-off moved in, young village people left for flats and council houses in Lavenstock, and eventually the now upmarket village expanded so far it had become little more than a prosperous suburb of Lavenstock. It was the sort of place that brought out all Kite’s Leftist tendencies but he kept his opinions to himself because Abigail refused to be wound up by them and was in any case obviously wrapped up in her own thoughts. Usually bright and chatty, she’d concentrated on her driving and had hardly had a word for the cat since they