A Woman Unknown by Frances Brody Page A

visited. Mr Hartigan and Father Daley were visiting Mrs Hartigan.
    The man was visiting his mother. Sykes felt a twinge of disappointment. But he had done his job. He checked his watch, so as to be able to report how long the visitors stayed.
    Sykes left by the side gate, back into the ginnel, out of sight. After about forty minutes, he heard the purr of the Rolls-Royce engine. He mounted his bike and followed.
    The car returned the way it had come, back towards the park.
    By the tram stop nearest the park, Sykes stopped, to avoid running down a child who had jumped off the tram ahead of his parents and dashed into the road. People were teeming off the tram, children hurrying towards the gates, a woman carrying a picnic basket. I should come here with Rosie and the kids on the next free Sunday, Sykes decided. And then he saw them.
    Cyril Fitzpatrick stepped off the tram. He held out his hand and helped his wife alight. When they stepped onto the pavement, Fitzpatrick did not let go of Deirdre’shand. She was looking up at him, smiling and talking. He smiled back.
    Typical, Sykes thought. After all Fitzpatrick’s moans and complaints, he and his wife had turned completely lovey-dovey. It was only five days ago that Fitzpatrick wanted a twenty-four watch kept on her. Mrs Shackleton was right. Leave them to sort out their own troubles. Deirdre Fitzpatrick was looking at her husband with something like adoration, as if he were the most handsome of film stars. He looked back at her with a doting gaze.
    Damn! Sykes had let himself be diverted. The motor carrying Hartigan and the priest was well out of view.
    It was with relief that Sykes caught up with the Rolls and watched it enter King Street. He did not wait to see whether Hartigan’s burly driver left it in the road or in the charge of a porter to be taken to the hotel’s garage. Sykes drove past the hotel and into the deserted alley where he secured the motorbike.
    Moments later he was in the suite on the third floor that the Scotland Yard men had taken over. The bed and wardrobe had been moved out to make way for trestle tables. Sykes reported to the sergeant who kept the log book. The man was a dead ringer for the dentist Sykes visited last year. His wavy hair was the colour of a ginger nut, his skin ruddy and his eyes a washed-out blue. It was the none-too-clean hands and nicotine-stained fingers that most reminded Sykes of the dentist. He could feel the taste of the fat fingers in his mouth even now. Sergeant Wilson at least had the benefit of knowing his stuff, unlike the dentist whose only certificates, framedand placed prominently on the walls, were for tidiest allotment of 1920, and special mentions for marrows and carrots.
    Sergeant Wilson greeted Sykes and pushed the log book across to him. Sykes sat down, took out his pen, and in his meticulous hand wrote a brief account of Hartigan’s doings, up to seeing him return to the hotel.
    Wilson was in charge of both the Hartigan and murder log books. The entry ahead of Sykes’s read, Car and chauffeur booked for six p.m.
    Sykes tapped the entry. ‘Am I stood down till then?’
    Wilson nodded. ‘As long as you’re back in good time, in case our man gets ahead of himself.’
    ‘Good. I’m off home for my dinner.’
    Sykes looked forward to his Yorkshire pudding and roast lamb. He took the steps like a lad let out of school.
    In the hotel lobby, he glanced at a shapely pair of legs, a woman with a newspaper hiding her face.
    She lowered the newspaper.
    He stared. ‘Mrs Shackleton, what are you doing here?’
    Wrong thing to say. She glared at him. ‘Sit down a minute. There’s something I want you to do.’
    Sykes thought about his dinner. He was too loyal to wish he had used the other door.
    Mrs Shackleton handed him an envelope. ‘See this gets to the chief inspector. It’s a cutting about an incident at the Fotheringham shoot. I’ve put a note in. He’ll want to investigate a connection to Runcie’s