Death Watch by Sally Spencer

we’d got the job finished, because that meant I could listen to it in peace.’ The mechanic paused. ‘Here, I haven’t got Peter in trouble, have I?’
    â€˜No,’ Beresford promised, ‘you haven’t got him in trouble.’
    He was telling the truth. The girl’s watch had been smashed at two minutes past three, and even if it had been wrong by a few minutes, that still put Peter Mainwearing in the clear – because there was no way he could have reached the corporation park before twenty past three at the earliest.
    â€˜There’s times when I’ve thought about being a bobby myself,’ the mechanic said.
    You’d have to grow at least another three inches first, Beresford thought, but all he said aloud was, ‘Oh yes?’
    â€˜I mean, from what I’ve heard, it’s an easy life.’
    â€˜Easy?’ Beresford repeated.
    â€˜Well, for a start, the pay’s not bad, is it? And you don’t have to get your hands dirty, do you?’
    Why did other people always seem to think that bobbies had such a cushy time of it, Beresford wondered.
    â€˜You’re right that
most of the time
we don’t have to get our hands dirty,’ he agreed. ‘Of course, there are always the occasions when you have to pull what’s left of a body out of a car wreck. That can be messy. Then again, we sometimes get into fights and have blood spattered all over us – usually our own.’
    But the mechanic was not about to allow his illusions to be shattered by cold hard reality.
    â€˜Still, every job’s got its drawbacks, and there are big compensations in yours, aren’t there?’ he asked, winking broadly at him.
    â€˜I don’t know you mean,’ Beresford said.
    â€˜Course you do. You get called out to visit a house that’s been burgled. Right?’
    â€˜Right.’
    â€˜The lady of the house is still very upset about what’s happened, you comfort her as best you can, and before you know it, you’re in bed together. You won’t deny that kind of thing goes on, will you?’
    The mechanic wouldn’t believe him if he did, Beresford thought. So why even try to disillusion him?
    â€˜Yes, it’s happened,’ he said, feeling, for once in his life, like a real man of the world.
    The mechanic licked his lips. ‘How many times?’ he asked.
    In for a penny, in for a pound, Beresford told himself. ‘Lots of times,’ he said. ‘So many that, if I’m honest, I’ve almost lost count.’
    He was seeing more of that part of his wife’s world outside the home in a single day than he had seen in the rest of their married life put together, Martin Stevenson thought as he approached the Crown and Anchor, a pub very close to Whitebridge Police Headquarters.
    He stepped through the door into the saloon bar, and knew immediately that he would not like the Crown. It was too barnlike, too gaudy, too noisy – and though it would have been inaccurate to describe it as actually
dirty
, its standards of cleanliness fell below those of the establishments he would normally choose to patronize.
    Rosemary was sitting at a table in the centre of the room. She was wearing her uniform, and had her arm deliberately stretched out so that her sergeant’s stripes were clearly visible to anyone who looked. She had a cigarette balanced in the corner of her mouth, and a pint of bitter in her hand.
    â€˜Did you see him?’ she asked, the second that her husband had sat down opposite her.
    â€˜This is a strange place to meet,’ Stevenson said, looking around him as if to confirm his initial impressions of the bar.
    â€˜Strange? What do you mean by that? There’s nothing strange about it. It’s perfectly normal.’
    â€˜Then perhaps what I really meant to say was that it’s an “inappropriate” place,’ Stevenson told her.
    â€˜Inappropriate?’ his wife