Limestone Cowboy by Stuart Pawson

Near enough, though. I said: “Sounds fun. In that case, as we won’t be able to contact you, it would be helpful if you could issue an instruction to your managers to keep up with the co-operation.”
    “No problem, Inspector. I’ll put Sebastian onto it straight away.”
    “Smashing. Thanks for that. Now, if we can ask you a few questions pertinent to the enquiry…”
    He’d always tried to play fair, he told us, and as far as he knew had no business enemies. Some of the stores were built on greenfield sites and opposition, both local and from organised groups, had been vocal, but the applications had gone through. Supermarkets were what people wanted. He hadn’t cancelled any big contracts causing companies to go bust, and he’d received no threats or demands for money.
    “You will,” I told him, “but most will be from cranks, opportunists. It’s important that any that arrive are sent straight to us with the minimum of handling.”
    He said that he understood and he would include that in the message to his managers. When he started looking at his watch we stood up to leave. We shook hands again and as he walked us to the door I said: “Your wife’s an architect, I believe.”
    “That’s right. She’s a partner in a practice.”
    “In London?”
    “Head office is in London, but she works from home most of the time.”
    “Oh. Did she design the extension?” I tried to think of a grander word than extension, but couldn’t.
    “The leisure and office complex? That’s right. With her own fair hands.”
    “She must be a clever lady.”
    “Yes, she is.”
    But there was no pride in his voice as he said it.

    * * *
    “So what do you think?” I asked as we drove out through the gate.
    “He’s a twat.”
    “Another one! But a rich twat, wouldn’t you say?”
    “And that.”
    “With no enemies.”
    “If you believe that you’ll stand for the drop o’ York.”
    “He seemed concerned about the victims.”
    “The only thing he’s concerned about is his profits.”
    “And his golf handicap?”
    “Aye, and I bet he cheats at that.”
    “Is your ulcer playing up?”
    “It could be. Did you ring her?”
    “Who?”
    “Who! Who do you think? Rosie.”
    “No, I didn’t.”
    He snorted disdainfully and concentrated on driving . A woman was negotiating her way across the High Street with a baby buggy and Dave held up the traffic for her. She smiled a thank you and tipped buggy and youngster it contained violently backwards to mount the kerb. A Reward poster fastened to a lighting column caught my eye. I twisted in my seat as we accelerated away and saw that it was for a lost cat. Approaching the turn-off for the nick I said: “Have you got the address of that girl in your notebook? The one who was relocated by Robshaw. It was somewhere in the Sylvan Fields.”
    “Yeah. Want to go see her?”
    “We might as well. She may give us a different perspective on the cosy world of Grainger’s superstores .”
    Sylvan Fields is a rambling estate on the edge of Heckley, although it might be more accurate to say that Heckley is a small industrial and market town on the edge of the Sylvan Fields estate. Most of the houses date from the between-the-wars era, built for heroes, what was left of them, in a wave of compassion and social engineering. All went well for a couple of generations , but by the seventies the decline was well under way and accelerating. Nobody knows what the mechanism is, although thousands of theses have been written on the subject. Greater freedom, less respect for authority, prosperity, poverty, lower morals, breakdown of family life? Who can say? Alcohol and drugs, the advent of the motor car? Rock and roll and the Pill?
    How about Y-fronts? Perhaps the decline in standards and increased tendency for violence, particularly amongst young men, was brought about by something as simple as the introduction and widespread use of snug-fitting underwear, causing the testes to overheat with