Killing Me Softly by Marjorie Eccles Page A

sake, pull your finger out, and get something moving.’
    â€˜Who was he? The boy who OD’d?’ Abigail asked, thinking Skellen looked as though he hadn’t finished arguing the point.
    â€˜Damien Rogers. Fifteen. Pupil at Woodmill Comp,’ the divisional man, Steele, recited. ‘Good school, good home. No reason for it.’
    Abigail thought of the grey, faceless tower blocks where drugs were pushed as a matter of course, needles were left around for kids to find, where unemployment was the norm, crime was rampant ... No reason?
    â€˜E, was it? Ecstasy?’
    â€˜Smack.’
    This raised her eyebrows. Not many of his age had the money to spare for hard drugs like heroin. Solvent abuse, glue-sniffing for the kids, the twelve- and thirteen-year-olds, progressing to marijuana, amphetamines, Ecstasy, LSD. Grass, uppers, downers, acid. Pocket money drugs. Anything else usually indicated too much money to throw around. But Damien’s parents were an insurance salesman and a hairdresser, with nothing to spare and too much sense to be over-lavish with pocket money. Damien was a certainty for one of the number who’d turned to crime to pay for his habit. A dead cert, unfortunately.
    Clare had no need to get out of the car to see that the house they’d come to view was a non-starter. What amazed her was that David Neale, shrewd, sensible and used to a comfortable, even luxurious mode of living, in one of Lavenstock’s most upmarket houses, had ever dreamed it would be. Set in a field, half-way down a muddy lane, miles from anywhere, the house was simply lacking in any sort of charm. It had been erected nearly forty years ago for a farmer, from the profits made by selling off his original Georgian farmhouse to a Birmingham company director who fixed coach lamps outside the front door and made the farmyard into a patio. The farmer had been happy enough to end his days in the New House, a brick-built, flat-faced, utilitarian construction with mean windows and an ungenerous roof overhang, standing in a garden which had been mainly given over to cabbages. But who else would be?
    Clare told herself the bad impression may have simply been due to the grey lowering skies and the soaking drizzle, but inside, it was no better. Walking from one square, box-like room to another, taking gloomy note of the out-of-date central heating and bathroom facilities, the cold, bare kitchen, she felt it had a mean soul.
    â€˜Well?’ David asked, watching carefully for her reactions. ‘I dare say it’d look a whole lot different with the garden landscaped, it needs modernizing, and a few gallons of paint...’
    â€˜Depends on how much money you’re prepared to spend, of course,’ she began cautiously, not wanting to disappoint him, if he’d set his mind on living here, though privately she considered he must be mad if he thought a bit of tarting up would make much difference.
    Suddenly, he laughed outright. ‘You don’t like it, I can see – and you’re right, of course,’ he said to her relief and perhaps, she thought, to his own. ‘I was taken in by the price, and the possibilities of the garden. I can see it won’t do.’ He wasted no more time on fruitless speculation, but slammed the front door firmly behind them.
    While they’d been inside, the lowering cloud had settled into a persistent, heavy rain. Now the heavens opened. Nothing for it but to make a dash, umbrella-less, down the concrete driveway, before diving into his car, laughing and breathless. He peered doubtfully through the streaming windscreen when they’d finally mopped themselves up. ‘I’d thought of a walk, perhaps, if we’d had time, but this has put paid to it ... Shall we look for a café and a cup of tea?’
    â€˜Why don’t you drive me back home and we’ll have tea by the fire?’ she suggested. ‘No sense in staying out in this