Reckless Endangerment by Graham Ison

that they were on to you about your other business.’
    ‘No chance of that, sweetie. And as for Krisztina, she’s in Boto ş ani visiting her parents.’ Harrison told the lie smoothly; it didn’t do for the two women in his enterprise to know too much about each other.
    ‘Good.’ Shona moved closer and put her arms around Harrison’s neck. ‘Now, where were we when we were so rudely interrupted?’
    ‘One down and five to go,’ I said, as we drove away from Fulham.
    ‘And two of those are in the States,’ said Dave hopefully. ‘D’you think …?’
    ‘No, Dave. Don’t get too excited,’ I said. ‘The commander would have a blue fit if I suggested we flew there in pursuit of our enquiries.’ I glanced at my watch. ‘Drop me at Waterloo Station and then go home.’
    I caught the train to Surbiton with minutes to spare and immediately called Gail on my mobile, resisting the temptation to use that hackneyed phrase that one hears so often: ‘I’m on a train.’
    ‘Hello, stranger,’ said Gail. ‘Is there any danger of my seeing you in the near future?’ In the course of our relationship, Gail Sutton had become somewhat blasé about my job and the antisocial hours that went with it.
    ‘I’m on my way, darling,’ I said. ‘I should be with you in about half an hour. And I’m hungry.’
    ‘Hungry for what?’ asked Gail.
    I’d met Gail some years ago while investigating the murder of her friend Patricia Hunter. They had both been appearing in the chorus line of a second-rate revue called Scatterbrain at London’s Granville Theatre.
    There is a story behind Gail’s demotion from actress to chorus girl. A year or so prior to that, she’d been appearing in the lead female role of Amanda Prynne in a revival of Sir Noël Coward’s Private Lives at the Richmond Theatre. Feeling unwell, she’d handed over the part to her understudy and returned home unexpectedly to find her husband, Gerald Andrews, in the marital bed with a nude dancer who, according to Gail, was still performing in character. That was the final indignity to be visited upon Gail by her philandering husband and signalled the end of a marriage that had fast been unravelling anyway. After the divorce Gail had reverted to using her maiden name of Sutton.
    However, in a chauvinistically unreasonable act of spite, Andrews, a theatrical director, had done his best to prevent Gail from getting any decent parts thereafter. Hence her appearance in the chorus line at the Granville. Or as she described it: ‘Kicking the air for a living.’
    Not that Gail had to worry about earning a living. Her father, George, was a multimillionaire property developer whose home and business were in Nottingham, and he gave his only daughter a generous allowance. George’s only apparent vice was a tendency to talk non-stop about the land speed record and Formula One motor racing until his wife, Sally, an effervescent former dancer, told him to shut up. But I could put up with non-stop lectures about such historical luminaries as Sir Malcolm Campbell, Sir Henry Segrave, Tazio Nuvolari, Hans Stück and their contemporaries on the odd occasion that I was in George’s company.
    Alighting from the train at Surbiton, I bought a bottle of chilled champagne from a local wine shop and took a taxi to Kingston.
    Gail’s neo-Georgian townhouse – a euphemism for a modern three-storied terraced house – was only a mile or so from my flat on the other side of Surbiton railway station. But these days I tended to spend more time at Gail’s house, and in her bed, than at my own pad.
    I let myself in with the key that Gail had given me a few months ago. In return, I’d given her a key to my flat. It was a sort of compromise; we had discussed my moving in with her, but had eventually reached a mutual agreement that our relationship might become less harmonious if we lived with each other on a permanent basis. This was especially true given the odd hours at which I was called