Jelly’s latest escapade had been related tearfully over a gin and tonic. She had arranged online to meet a man with an MG Midget. Yesterday he had turned up on time in this dinky red sports car from the 1960s and taken her for a ‘spin.’ He hadn’t looked anything like his picture and was probably twenty years her senior, but Jelly was willing to compromise, assuming that any owner of a valuable vintage car knew how to treat a lady. Sadly this wasn’t the case. Somewhere north of Bristol, Cedric had said he could feel a touch of cramp in his leg. Jelly decided the reason was obvious: he was about six foot six and quite the wrong shape to fit into a car that size. A mile or two further along the road he’d started groaning, so Jelly had suggested they pulled into a layby. Conveniently one appeared almost straight away.
Jelly had expected Cedric to get out and have a stretch, but he’d made even more alarming noises and said he couldn’t move and would she massage the muscle, which had seemed to have gone rigid. Tentatively Jelly had put her hand on his thigh only to be told the cramping was lower down, in the calf, and in the other leg. She couldn’t bear seeing anyone suffer, so she’d leaned over, reached down and got to work with both hands. For a first date, this Cedric was asking a lot, because Jelly was now face down in his lap. The position wasn’t dignified or comfortable. When the muscle seemed to be responding, she’d asked if he was okay and he’d said there was a definite improvement and asked her to keep going. The groaning had given way to a kind of moan that sounded — even to the tender-hearted Jelly — suspiciously like sounds of pleasure.
This was the moment she’d been shocked to hear another voice join in. Someone had said, ‘So it’s you, Cedric. I thought I recognised the car. What’s going on here, then?’
Cedric, calm as a horse whisperer, had answered, ‘No problem, officer. A touch of cramp. The lady is massaging my leg.’
Officer? Jelly had caught her breath.
The second voice had said, ‘Same old game, then? The cramp attack? Does the lady know you’re famous for it?’
Jelly, mortified, angry and embarrassed, had stayed face down, not wanting to be recognised, hoping the policeman would go away. He must have driven silently into the layby and turned off his lights and parked and crept up on the car.
Then she’d heard Cedric say, ‘It’s not illegal between consenting adults.’
This was too much. Jelly had sat up and said, ‘I haven’t consented to anything. This man got me here under false pretences.’ After a short, bad-tempered exchange, she’d insisted on being driven home in the police car demanding to know why Cedric hadn’t been charged with deception and a whole lot of other things.
Georgina had heard all this with a mixture of outrage and alarm. She could see it mushrooming into a ruinous situation, and not just for Jelly. She could imagine what the media would make of the assistant chief constable’s own sister being led astray by this sex pest. Cedric had to be stopped from preying on gullible women. It was a dilemma. You don’t want one of your own family put through the ordeal of a court case, yet the man couldn’t be allowed to get away with it.
She’d told Jelly firmly to put the whole incident down to experience and take it as a warning about dating men online.
‘Isn’t there something in the law about outraging public decency?’ Jelly had asked her.
‘Leave it,’ Georgina had warned in the strongest terms. ‘You could find yourself being charged.’
‘Me? I’m the victim. I was innocent. He’s obviously a predator.’
‘Yes, and equally obviously known to the police. Leave it to us to deal with him.’
It had taken ten minutes and another G&T to make her sister understand what going to court would entail and what damage a clever counsel would do to her reputation. She had finally seen sense.
Georgina had promised — and half meant what she said, because she had to think of a way of keeping Jelly’s name out of it — to report the incident to Operation Bluestone, the dedicated rape and sexual offences unit. And now she was trying to put all that out of her mind and concentrate on her driving.
She shouldn’t really have been at the wheel. The two drinks were definitely over the limit. At the time, they’d been necessary, as much to control her own emotions as Jelly’s. But she’d been unwise to have them. Although she didn’t feel the slightest bit drunk, the law allowed no excuses. If she were stopped and breathalysed, her career would be over.
So she kept checking her speed and making sure her steering was faultless. Even on a quiet, safe road like this you could be stopped by some patrol keen to make an arrest. Give nothing away, she told herself. Keep the wheel steady and drive as if you have the lord chief justice in the passenger seat. Twenty minutes and you’ll be home.
Two minutes later something new appeared on the display.
A malfunction.
The bulb in her right taillight wasn’t working.
Damnation.
Her mouth went dry and her stomach clenched. However carefully she drove, she would now be pulled over by the first police car that came up behind her. She looked in the mirror and saw headlights not far behind.
What next? She could put her foot down and make sure they didn’t get close. The temptation was strong. No, no, no. Likely as not, they’d get her for speeding as well.
She saw a space in front of a farm gate and pulled off the road. You had to be careful in the dark. In some places along here there was almost no verge and a sheer drop.
She switched everything off and waited.
The car flashed by. Not a police vehicle.
Could she take the risk of driving down into Bath through built-up streets? It was the only route home. She should have stayed the night at Jelly’s. She could easily make a turn and go back, but by now she wasn’t far from Batheaston, a lot closer to home than South Wraxall.
For some minutes she agonised over what to do next. She wasn’t usually indecisive. Perhaps she’d taken in more alcohol than she thought. Jelly sometimes tipped in as much gin as tonic.
Needing to calm herself, she started going through earlier events, the humdrum routine of work. But of course it hadn’t been humdrum today. Anything but, with the Twerton skeleton and the suggestion that it was Beau Nash. When the media caught up with the latest theory there would be mayhem.
Beau Nash.
Ridiculous.
She blamed Peter Diamond, the cuckoo in her nest. Something about that bumptious, exasperating man acted as an attractant to bizarre and sensational cases. He’d deny it, of course. He’d argue that any detective working in a city with Bath’s colourful history would find himself investigating extraordinary events, but Beau Nash in a loft was the most extreme example yet.
No doubt there was an explanation. Sanity would prevail.
All Georgina had ever wanted was a low-key existence, free of sensation. Other people achieved it. She knew of assistant chief constables who complained of boredom. Ten minutes in Bath police would cure them of that.
Nothing more had come past. It was after midnight and Bath should be reasonably quiet. She made the decision to drive on.
In the last few minutes a mist had come down — or so she thought until she realised her own hot breath had steamed up the windows.
For God’s sake, woman, she told herself, get a grip.
She wiped a space in the windscreen, turned up the air conditioning and got the car back on the road to start the long descent into Batheaston.