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Nelson considers this. ‘I don’t think I am. When I spoke to Cathbad on Monday it was clear he was hiding something. And he even said he was in love with Emily.’
‘But she was so much younger than him.’
‘He was thirty-six, she was twenty. It’s not impossible.’
‘It’s not very ethical either.’
‘Not very wise,’ says Nelson, ‘but I wouldn’t say unethical. He wasn’t her teacher. Ballard was. He wasn’t married. Ballard was.’
‘Ballard certainly said some very creepy things today. All about women being taken down into the mines as an initiation ceremony. Even giving birth down there.’
‘I’m going to have a word with Ballard myself.’
‘And Cathbad?’
‘I’ll pop in to see him tonight.’
There’s a pause as if they’re both waiting. Then Nelson says, ‘I could come over to yours afterwards?’
‘OK then,’ says Ruth. But it doesn’t sound like a concession. It sounds as if she’s smiling.
Nelson is smiling too but he consciously rearranges his face into a frown when there’s a knock on the door.
‘Come in.’
It’s young Tony. He’s holding out his mobile phone. ‘Sorry, boss,’ he says. ‘I’ve been pinged.’
For a moment, Nelson doesn’t understand.Pinged.Is that something young people do? But then Tony says, ‘Must have been on the train or the Tube. I’ve got to isolate for ten days.’
He’s talking about the NHS app, which tracks your movements and tells you when you’ve been in contact with someone who has tested positive for Covid. A great idea, in theory, but in practice half the workforce seems to be off sick at the moment. Well, not sick, thinks Nelson resentfully, just lazing about at home.
‘That’s bloody inconvenient,’ he says. ‘We’re short-staffed as it is.’
‘I know. I’m sorry.’
‘Well, if you have to isolate, you have to isolate. You can go through all the material on Emily Pickering. All the evidence from the first enquiry. Let us know if we’re missing anything.’
‘OK, boss.’
Tanya will have to go to London and interview Tom Westbourne. Then she’ll probably get ‘pinged’ too. Not for the first time, Nelson curses Covid-19 and the horse of the apocalypse it rode in on. He hardly notices that his own phone is buzzing.
It’s not the NHS app but something more surprising. His old friend Sandy Macleod, now retired from Blackpool CID.
‘I’ve got a proposition for you, Harry.’
Chapter 15
‘A proposition?’ says Nelson. ‘I’m married.’
As soon as he says this he wonders if heismarried any more and the thought gives him a sudden stab of pain.
‘Aye,’ says Sandy, who likes to adorn his Lancastrian accent with vestiges of childhood Scots. ‘I saw your missus in town the other day.’
Did Sandy wonder why Michelle was in Blackpool without Nelson? There’s no clue in his voice but then Sandy has always specialised in Deadpan Copper.
‘What’s your proposition?’ says Nelson.
‘Top brass got in touch with me because they’re looking for a retired murder detective. I’m not looking to do any work. It would interfere with my golf. So, I thought of you.’
