End in Tears Read Online Free Page A

between midnight and three in the morning. More precisely than that she wouldn’t commit herself.
    â€œA brick was the weapon, I should think,” said Carina Laxton, “but of course you won’t take my word for that.”
    â€œCertainly not,” said Burden, who disliked her. Apart from her name and her lack of a thyroid cartilage, he had said to Wexford, she might as well be a man, and perhaps she once had been. You never knew these days. She had no breasts, no hips, her hair was crew cut, and no scrap of makeup had ever settled on her virgin face. He had, however, to admit that she was good at her job, less sharp-tongued and plain rude than Mavrikian, and her attitude a far cry from the pomposities of Sir Hilary Tremlett.
    â€œShe died from that blow to the head, as I don’t need to tell you,” she now said. “It’s not of course my place”—this said with an old-fashioned primness barely concealing arrogance—“to identify the weapon. No doubt you will need the services of a plinthologist.”
    â€œA
what
?”
    â€œA brick expert.” Carina enunciated the words slowly and with great care in case he had difficulty understanding plain English.
    â€œNo doubt,” said Burden.
    â€œBecause a brick is not just a brick, you know.” Once she had left this to sink in, Carina said, “There was no sexual assault. It’ll all be in the report. She’d had a child, as I expect you know.”
    â€œI didn’t know,” said Wexford, astonished. “She was only eighteen.”
    â€œWhat’s that supposed to mean, Reg?” Carina Laxton shook her head at him and pursed her lips. “If she’d been twelve, that might have been cause for comment. Just.”
    Brand, he thought. I wonder. Is he Amber’s child, not Diana’s? And is it Brand as in Ibsen or Brand as in Brandon? He said to Burden, “Come up to my office, Mike, and later on we can go back to Mill Lane and see the Marshalsons together.”
    They worked as a team whenever they could and particularly when Wexford felt that another hour or two in the company of Hannah Goldsmith might make him say things he would regret. They got on, he and Mike. If they couldn’t quite say everything that came into their heads to each other, they got as near to doing this as two people ever can. He liked Mike better than anyone he knew after his own wife, children, and grandchildren—and perhaps not exactly after them. For those seven people he loved and no one knew better than he that liking and loving are two different things. Even the Catholic Church at its most stringent had never attempted adjuring the faithful to
like
each other.
    Up in his office with the new gray carpet, which was the gift of the grateful council-tax payers of Kingsmarkham, and the two yellow armchairs that were not but his own property, Burden took his characteristic perch on a corner of the rosewood desk. This large piece of furniture also belonged to Wexford, who kept it there along with the armchairs to show to the local media when they came nosing around, looking for evidence of police profligacy and corruption. Burden, always a sharp dresser, had lately taken to the kind of clothes known in the trade as “smart casual.” The beautiful suits had gone to the back of the wardrobe or, in the case of the older ones, to the charity shop, and the detective inspector appeared in jeans and suede jacket over a white open-necked shirt. One of the things that came into Wexford’s head which he couldn’t say aloud was that his friend was just a fraction too old for jeans. Still, it was only a fraction and Burden was thin enough to wear them with elegance.
    He had laid out on his desk the things that had been found in the pockets of Amber Marshalson’s jacket. This white cotton garment, heavily stained with blood, had gone to the lab, as had her pink miniskirt, black camisole and bra,