Peter Diamond - 09 - The Secret Hangman by Peter Lovesey

so was the large blonde riding him like a three-day eventer.

12
    H e didn’t check the time, but he guessed it was about ten fifteen in the morning. He hadn’t imagined this kind of thing going on in Bath when other people were sitting at their desks or doing the shopping. And his arrival didn’t affect the performance. The bouncing blonde came to a resounding climax. Literally resounding. She repeated ‘yes’ seven times, as positive an endorsement as any lover could wish for.
    After the last ‘yes’, Diamond looked away and discovered Marietta had disappeared with her shopping.
    The blonde disconnected and stood up. She was built like a ship’s figurehead. She spotted Diamond and padded across the wood floor, slapping the fronts of her thighs. ‘It really gets you here,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t have a ciggy, by any chance?’
    From the floor, Corcoran called out, ‘Who’s that? Who are you talking to?’
    ‘One of your muso friends, I guess,’ the blonde said.
    Corcoran sat up. At the sight of Diamond, he put his hand over his crotch. ‘Who let you in?’
    ‘Does it matter?’ Diamond said, doing his best to emulate the blonde’s self-possession. ‘I tried phoning first.’
    ‘What do you want this time?’
    ‘To find Amanda.’
    The blonde put her hands on her hips. ‘And who the fuck is Amanda?’
    ‘I take it she’s got Sharon and Sophie with her,’ Diamond said, trying to confine the conversation to Corcoran and himself.
    ‘A threesome?’ the blonde said in an outraged voice.
    ‘They’re little girls,’ Diamond said in an aside to calm her down.
    ‘That’s disgusting.’
    ‘Her grandchildren.’
    ‘I’ve heard enough,’ she said. ‘I’m off. Do you mind? You’re standing on my bra.’
    She was right about that. He moved his foot. Her clothes were in a heap just inside the door. It seemed she’d stripped the moment she’d arrived. Whether she was here on a professional visit or out of friendship he didn’t ask. Whichever it was, Ashley Corcoran hadn’t wasted much time grieving for his former lover.
    Diamond took a few steps towards him, allowing the blonde to get dressed out of his line of vision. ‘She must have told you where she was going.’
    ‘The noticeboard above the kettle.’
    He crossed to the kitchen and found the address scribbled on the back of an envelope pinned to the board. Amanda had gone to friends in Bradford on Avon.
    Back in his car, driving out of town, he thought about the effect this scene had had on him. He hadn’t seen a naked woman for a long time, let alone having sex on the floor. Strange that the experience hadn’t turned him on. Was he past all that? He’d gone three years without sex. Hadn’t felt deprived. Hadn’t fancied anyone. The celibate life wasn’t of his choosing. Steph’s murder had put everything into a different perspective. Was his abstinence out of loyalty to Steph? Partly. There was also the thought that no other woman could compare with her.
    Steph wouldn’t have insisted he remained a lonely widower. One evening they’d had the conversation most couples have at some stage in their marriage: what if one of us dies suddenly? They’d agreed it would be selfish and unloving to deny the surviving partner another relationship. ‘But only after a decent interval,’ she’d joked. ‘I wouldn’t want you chatting up my sister at the funeral.’ He’d promised her solemnly that he wouldn’t trouble Angela, ever. Then Steph had said she couldn’t make any promises if some gorgeous bobby representing the Police Federation was sent to offer condolences. ‘I often wondered what “condolences” meant,’ he’d said, and they’d laughed and poured another glass of wine, and sudden death had seemed remote.
    So there it was. Three years of the monastic life had left him indifferent to a spectacle that would have turned most guys into rampant studs. The blonde had been on the large side, true, but she was pretty, young,