Asking For Trouble by Ann Granger Page A

Clash of personalities, call it. An office of any kind is a claustrophobic place. You get that.’
    She’d said more than she’d intended and looked away, embarrassed.
    I was thinking of the blow to Terry’s head. She would have to have been disabled in some way or she’d have put up a fight. Perhaps she did put up a fight and that’s when he hit her. I must have sat there thinking for long enough to make Janice curious.
    ‘Remembering something, Francesca?’
    ‘Nothing that matters.’
    ‘Why don’t you let me decide that?’
    I was in no mood to be patronised and said so.
    ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean it to come out like that. But if there’s anything, tell me. You want the killer found, don’t you?’
    ‘Of course I do,’ I said. ‘He chose to string her up from the light fitting and leave her there to strangle to death.’
    ‘People get sexual kicks all ways. Maybe he sat there and watched because that’s the sort of thing he likes. There are a lot of very sick people around, Francesca, and a lot of them act and look normal – most of the time.’
    ‘You don’t have to tell me! Do you think I haven’t come across enough weirdos?’ I couldn’t help sounding exasperated. ‘This wasn’t a sex game gone wrong. This was someone who wanted her dead. Someone who hated her enough to do what he did, quite deliberately and for no other reason than to kill.’
    ‘So,’ she was watching me carefully with her pale grey gaze. ‘Any ideas who? If you’re so sure, you must have some theory.’
    ‘I don’t have a theory,’ I told her. ‘But I do know there was someone else in the house that afternoon while we were away. The place reeked of one of those male colognes when Nev and I got home. Ganesh saw a stranger earlier, acting odd. He told one of your boys in blue about it.’
    ‘He told Sergeant Parry. We haven’t been able to find anyone else who saw the man he described. He’s a friend of yours, Mr Patel, isn’t he?’
    ‘Yes. Sometimes I lend a hand in the shop on a Saturday. But he didn’t make up seeing someone just to help me out.’
    ‘I didn’t say that. Why should he have felt it necessary to do that?’
    They like doing that, the police. They like asking you the sort of questions which, however you answer them, you sound guilty. They have suspicious minds. Even when they try to be fair, as I suppose Janice was, it comes out sounding like a caution. They can’t help it. It’s the mentality they have or the way they train them at police college. I could have told her that Edna had also seen a stranger, well dressed, and too intent on sneaking through the churchyard to notice her or that he’d dropped his cigarettes. But what use was Edna as a witness? Even if I could get her to talk to Janice? From what I’d seen earlier, Janice herself hadn’t been having much luck with Edna. I wondered suddenly why she’d been trying.
    ‘For about the hundredth time,’ I said, ‘I didn’t have anything to do with her death and I don’t know who killed her or why.’
    ‘Neither do I, Francesca,’ she said cheerfully. ‘But by the time I’ve finished, I shall!’
    ‘Bully for you!’ I muttered.
    The stallholder, squat, grubby little fellow, had had enough of us sitting there chatting. He came storming up and mouthed through Janice’s window.
    ‘Listen, darling, this undercover obbo or what? I’m selling a few yards of nylon net, not bleedin’ heroin!’
    ‘Got a stallholder’s licence?’ Janice asked.
    ‘Do me a favour, doll!’ he pleaded. ‘Haven’t you coppers got anything else to do but harass honest businessmen?’
    ‘Get a licence!’ Janice told him.
    I could see something was bothering her as we drove off. After a moment she asked, sounding bemused, ‘Francesca, tell me honestly, do I look like a policewoman?’
    ‘To some people, perhaps,’ I told her diplomatically.
    She seemed puzzled.
    When I got back to the flat, Ganesh was waiting for me, sitting on