Part 34 (1/2)

He introduced himself, and inquired if, perchance, he was addressing Mrs Armstrong.

'Yes,' husked the vision, sticking her hands in her pockets, a movement which drew back her shoulders and made two very prominent nipples appear under the thin wool of her mini sweater.

'I... I, er, hadn't expected to find you at home today, Mrs Armstrong,' Buchanan told her. 'I understood that both you and Mr Armstrong were out at work.'

'Yes,' she said again, leaving it at that, without embarra.s.sment, as though she felt that the monosyllable was all she need proffer to keep up her end of the conversation.

'I should have called on you earlier to ascertain whether you could help me with the inquiries I'm making into Mrs Gra.s.sick's death. I believe you already spoke to Mr Cambridge, the insurance investigator?'

'Yes.' 211. 'Yes, well . . .' Buchanan found himself contemplating her navel and ripped his eyes away. 'I don't want to go over the same ground as Mr Cambridge, but I wondered if I might arrange a time when it would be convenient for you to answer a few of my own questions.'

'Like what?' asked Mrs Armstrong, waxing loquacious.

'Ah . . . well, for instance ... I would like to know when you last saw either of the Gra.s.sicks.'

She leaned a hip against the door jamb and thought about that. 'Mr Gra.s.sick was staying down here the weekend before the accident.'

'Just Mr Gra.s.sick? His wife wasn't with him?'

'No. She doesn't come down much this time of year.'

She straightened suddenly and pushed open the door behind her. 'You'd better come in.'

Buchanan hesitated for less than a millisecond. The postman would be there again on Monday, after all.

Mrs Armstrong took him into the sun room at the side of the house and, unfortunately, he was unable to signal to Fizz from there. However, he didn't plan to be more than two or three minutes so that didn't bother him unduly. He sat down on the end of a cane chaise-longue and carried on from where he had left off. And neither of the Gra.s.sicks ever came down midweek, I presume.'

'Now and then,' she said, perching opposite him and wriggling her way backwards into the bosomy cus.h.i.+ons as hedonistically as a cat. 'But, because our house faces the other way, I didn't always notice they were there. Sometimes I'd see them drive by when I was in Chirnside and think, oh they must be at the cottage today.' She lit a cigarette, making it a performance that wouldn't have got an under-fifteen certificate. 'Like the day of the accident.'

'You saw one of them in Chirnside on the day of the accident?' Buchanan slid to the edge of his seat, knocking a pile of magazines off the cus.h.i.+ons beside him.

'No,' she said. 'I told you, I hadn't seen either of them since the weekend before, but I saw the car that day, so one 212. of them must have been at Brora Lodge -or was on the way there.'

'Which way was it headed?' Buchanan asked.

'It wasn't going anywhere,' said Mrs Armstrong, extending the tip of a red tongue to moisten her lower lip. 'I got away from work early, like I did today, because business is so slack at this time of year. I'm a hairdresser, and the boss says it looks bad to have three of us sitting around the salon filing our nails. Anyway, I was driving home along the back road and I saw the car parked in the entrance to a field, up the road there.'

'What time was that?'

'About one o'clock. Maybe a little before that. Twelve-thirty, probably.'

'You didn't mention this to Mr Cambridge?'

'No.' She raised her perfectly shaped eyebrows. 'Should I have?'

Buchanan could scarcely believe it. 'You're quite sure it was Lawrence Gra.s.sick's car?'

'Oh, no,' she said blithely, tapping the ash from her cigarette. 'It wasn't his car. It was Vanessa's.' Fizz had started her a.n.a.lysis of the fallout secure in the

expectation that it would prove worthwhile. The certainty

that the police and the fire brigade had removed everything