The Ring of Death by Sally Spencer Page A

regular contact with has any idea.’
    â€˜And that’s where I think you’re making your fundamental mistake,’ Cousins said. ‘You’re keeping a secret from the boss, and if she finds out about it – and she may well do – how do you think she’s going to feel?’
    â€˜I don’t know.’
    â€˜She’ll feel as if she doesn’t really know you at all. She’ll also think that you don’t trust her – and if you don’t trust her , how can she trust you .’
    â€˜But suppose I tell her and she . . . and she . . .’
    â€˜And she what ?’
    Crane shrugged awkwardly. ‘I don’t know.’
    â€˜She starts treating you differently – as if you were some kind of freak or something?’ Cousins suggested.
    â€˜Well, yes.’
    â€˜Then she wouldn’t deserve the loyalty of a smart lad like you.’
    â€˜But then . . .’
    â€˜So the best thing you could do, under those circumstances, is to put in for a transfer and hope that, next time, you get a boss who’s worthy of you. But that’s not going to happen – not if DCI Paniatowski is the woman I think she is. Tell her, lad! Don’t blurt it out like it’s a confession – just tell her in a matter-of-fact sort of way. And I promise you, you won’t regret it.’
    â€˜Thanks, Sarge, I really appreciate you taking the trouble to talk to me like this,’ Crane said.
    Cousins shrugged. ‘It’s no trouble at all. Helping out junior officers is all part of being a sergeant. But let’s not take it too far.’
    â€˜Too far?’ Crane repeated.
    â€˜If I ever catch you looking at me like you think I’ve suddenly become your kindly Uncle Paul, I’ll smash your teeth in.’
    Crane grinned. ‘Understood,’ he said.
    Colin Beresford looked around the lounge bar of the Red Lion. The people there were not like the regular drinkers he’d have found at the Drum and Monkey, he thought. For a start, they were all roughly the same age – early to late thirties – and unlike the customers in the Drum, they were either on their own, or with one friend of the same sex.
    Other differences were becoming apparent, the longer he stood there. The customers at the Drum might run a comb quickly through their hair before they left home, but that was about as far it went. The people in the Red Lion’s lounge, on the other hand, were decked out in all their finery, and looked as if they had spent a good fifteen or twenty minutes staring self-consciously into the mirror before they set out for the pub.
    The atmosphere was different, too – and that wasn’t just because of the dim lights and the syrupy romantic music which was being pumped out of the speaker system. People who went to the Drum did so because they wanted a drink, whereas the people who came to the Red Lion were on the prowl. The evidence was there for all to see – the way the men assessed every new woman who entered the room, the women’s habit of glancing around casually, and then whispering earnest messages to their friends.
    All in all, Beresford decided, the Red Lion had earned its reputation as the most infamous pick-up place in the whole of Whitebridge.
    And wasn’t that why he was there himself – to pick up women?
    But it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t easy at all.
    He didn’t know how to behave.
    He didn’t know what to say.
    He felt like a man who’d been anaesthetized for the last thirteen years. And, in a way, that was exactly what he was.
    He’d almost become a non-virgin in his late teens. He’d had a steady girlfriend called Janet – so steady that she’d stopped saying ‘Don’t!’ every time he’d tried to put his hand up her skirt. A few more weeks, he’d been convinced at the time, and he’d have had it cracked.
    Then his mother