Cambridge Blue by Alison Bruce Page B

it in the family.’
    Goodhew ignored the personal dig. ‘Nice bed.’ It was a king-size, with an asymmetric headboard composed of wrought-iron gothic scrolls. Nice wasn’t the right word for it; more like quirky with a touch of the Gaudi-esque.
    ‘You serious?’ Kincaide looked from Goodhew to the bed and back again, clearly unsure whether he was being had.
    ‘Absolutely.’
    ‘Really? I think it looks tacky, like some shitty art college project.’ Kincaide couldn’t wipe the grimace of distaste from his face, in fact he made no attempt to. ‘It looks dodgy to me. Pervy in fact. And hideous.’
    Kincaide wandered off again, but Goodhew stayed behind to study the curves of the metal, trying to see it the same way Kincaide obviously had. He found himself pulling that same expression, but still didn’t understand what there was not to like.
    Finally, he walked over to the window and lifted the curtain briefly, then dropped it again. He turned back and ran his fingers along the topmost curve of the bedhead, then crossed the room and began opening and closing the wardrobe. There was nothing left inside, no essence of Lorna’s presence left for him to disturb.
    Kincaide, meanwhile, was in the kitchen, leaning on the worktop and sending a text with some fast and ambidextrous thumb activity. ‘Hang on,’ he grunted to his younger colleague.
    Goodhew flipped open an overhead cupboard, where he found the crockery. Apart from two mugs, the contents were all clearly from a standard issue everything-proof set. The taller mug was cream-coloured with the word ‘Chocolate’ curling across it, the other was brightly painted with the name ‘Lorna’. Not very revealing. He let the door snap shut.
    Kincaide glanced up. ‘I’ve already done the cupboards.’
    Goodhew took the hint and left the next one alone. ‘What about that calendar?’
    ‘Oh, yeah. Nothing much on it, but it can go with the other paperwork. There’s a box of it I’ve just moved to the top of the stairs.’
    The calendar was the type with one square per day but no picture; it had come courtesy of Staples Office Supplies. The current month had only one entry, ‘Hair – 12.00’ on the 16th. If that was a good example of a month’s activity, ‘nothing much’ really would be an accurate description. Goodhew unhooked it from the wall and turned forward the pages from the back. When it came to their calendars, people were either flip and keep, or rip and bin, and he was pleased to see that Lorna had been with him on this one.
    ‘Oh boy,’ he sighed. Either her life was depressingly uneventful or she recorded her more interesting activities elsewhere.
    He had turned right back to the start of the year before any entry caught his attention: 9th January – ‘Bryn to MOT car’. Goodhew read this just as Kincaide dropped his mobile back into his pocket.
    ‘Seen something?’
    Goodhew frowned. ‘Don’t know, really. Did she have a car?’
    Kincaide took the calendar, ‘I saw that too and checked with the others at the Excelsior, but they say no. She sold it apparently.’
    Goodhew followed Kincaide out of the kitchen, and watched him drop the calendar into the document crate.
    And later, as he walked towards home, he reminded himself that there could be numerous people called Bryn in this area. More than just the Bryn O’Brien who’d sat nearest the paint cupboard in primary school. He was the class practical joker, whom Gary couldn’t even remember speaking to, but had secretly admired. Bryn had made light of education, never buckling under the weight of expectation, always doing just enough to get by.
    When Gary’s mother had switched him to a private school at the end of Year 6, he’d found himself reeling from the shock of going from the top of his state school class to being considered mediocre among his new peers. And, for the first couple of years, he gave Bryn credit for helping him through. Mentally he’d kept Bryn alongside him,