Martin Cooper glanced up from a
plank of wood he and another man were sawing,
he called out to me,
wait there! One second!
I ignored him.
The masts in the marina jangled in the gentle breeze.
I marched,
imaginary deerhound at my heels.
Talbot! Goodboy! Gooddog!
As I was striding back, the B&B owner called –
she sounded tired. Things with the baby were still tricky,
she needed to stay on.
Sorry to do this, but there are some guests arriving. You
don’t have to do anything, they’re regulars, they’ll sort
themselves out – but could you let them in?
She added,
if you’d like the company, do make a stew, I’m
sure they’d love it.
I chopped my veg. I braised my beef. I left it on the Aga.
The guests arrived.
A sweet old man; his adult daughter.
Oh, you’ll never guess who they were, Ava.
The father and the sister
of the murdered woman.
Really –
as though I’d fallen through the
genres – oh, if only I were a detective, Ava, implausibly
thick moustache, or else a hard-boiled ex-cop just trying
to enjoy my holiday…
though there was nothing left to solve.
The case was closed.
Nothing to deduce but awful sadness. The embers
of an anger that couldn’t sustain itself.
I can feel her here,
the father told me,
we stay so I can talk to her where she was last alive.
They were good people, Ava.
Nice,
and startlingly open.
They’d only recently been through the trial,
