Miss No One, Mark Ayre [romantic love story reading .TXT] 📗

a scenario, your aim would not primarily be to investigate Davesh, but one or more of your new fellow officers. You said last night Davesh was a crook, but no one except you viewed him as such. He was involved in charities, but might he also be partial to a bit of police bribery? That would certainly ensure his European imports didn't fall under too much scrutiny."

Christine nodded slowly, fighting with the desperation of a cat against a bear to avoid showing any emotion. Taking her drink, she finished the pint. It was a decent distraction, but it revealed her trembling hands. Her speed drinking told Abbie plenty as well.

"Who are you?" Christine asked when she'd lowered her drink.

"You're really getting a lot of mileage out of that question, aren't you?" said Abbie.

Christine flushed from embarrassment, then anger.

"You've not given me a satisfactory answer. You said you're Miss Nobody, but that doesn't fly. You told us at the station you're a contractor who likes to go for late-night drives and walks in unfamiliar towns when you can't sleep, but that isn't true. You've already told me you came here because you knew Isabella was in danger. How does a contractor learn a child she's never met is about to be kidnapped if she's not involved? And what kind of contractor reacts to the arrival of a team of armed criminals with the kind of cool confidence that tends only to come from experience?"

Abbie resisted another smile, hiding any glimpse of it by taking her glass and downing the rest of her lemonade. Christine's questions were pertinent. Abbie had sat in plenty of police stations and, though she was rarely arrested, had been interviewed tens of times. The questions tended to run along the same lines. The most obvious and understandable batch revolving around why Abbie had arrived in a town she'd never previously visited and how had she immediately become entangled with one drama or another.

Ben and his team had created Abbie's contractor persona, which explained why she wasn't tied down by office hours. She liked to explain why she arrived in new towns late at night by saying she went for long drives when, tormented by insomnia, she found herself restless and feared she might go mad if she stayed within the confines of her home.

The police often struggled to swallow these excuses. But they were plausible enough and hard to disprove, which worked in Abbie's favour.

This time had been different. Kilman asked the questions, but Christine sat by his side. Abbie remembered well enough already mentioning Isabella to Detective Lakes and wondered if she was better off using an alternative excuse.

But it was apparent right away Christine hadn't told Kilman about her meeting with Abbie, and she had kept quiet while the interview got going. Wondering about this but not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, Abbie had rolled out the usual excuse. When Christine didn't pipe up with opposing facts, Abbie had been relieved.

Now Abbie saw Christine was no fool. She had kept quiet out of a sense of self-preservation but had been analysing and unpicking everything Abbie said. Abbie needed a little time to think about that. It changed the dynamic.

"It isn't 'Miss Nobody'," she said in the interim, "it's Miss No One."

"What's the difference?"

"There is no difference," said Abbie. "But it's my moniker, and I prefer Miss No One. So there."

Christine rolled her eyes. "You're being evasive."

"Don't worry, it's temporary.” Abbie collected her glass, nodded at Christine's. "Another?"

Christine looked at her glass and appeared a little surprised it was empty. Abbie had seen that before. Touching the glass's base, Christine began to twist it on the table, scratching a sound from the wood.

"You won't avoid my questions," she said.

"Nor you mine," said Abbie. "This is an interlude, not an escape. I want another drink. Do you?"

Abbie watched Christine's thought process play out on her face. The detective was on duty. One drink had been too many, hadn't it? But she was in a pub, and this was a witness interview, even if an informal, off the books one. The key to interviews was making the witness feel comfortable. One way of achieving that was not making them drink alone.

Abbie was ordering soft drinks, so Christine could do that. But what about the landlady? There was no money in soft drinks. They were in a pub, taking up space, so wasn't it only fair Christine had a proper drink to pay her way? You wouldn't go into a restaurant and only have a stick of celery. Besides, two drinks wasn't really worse than one, was it? It was okay to have just one more.

"Please," said Christine, pushing the empty towards Abbie.

Smiling without comment, Abbie took the empty glasses to the bar and ordered two of the same from the nosy landlady. She wondered briefly how many lunches per week Christine persuaded herself it was okay to have a pint via one excuse or another. Just the one, because one pint was always okay. Then maybe just one more because two was hardly worse than one, even though it doubled the intake. Sometimes, Christine could probably even stretch that logic to three. And the best thing about "just one more" was it reset at dinner when the whole internal dance began again.

The landlady returned with the drinks, and Abbie paid. Turning, she saw Christine playing with her hands, biting her lip. Nervous. Which wasn't surprising. Lying to her colleagues, living under the shadow of a dead body she couldn’t explain, carrying out unauthorised witness interviews and break-ins. That was a lot of pressure, and Abbie pitied the young detective. She wouldn't say anything because this wasn't about Christine, but she felt more empathy for the younger woman than she might have liked.

Returning to the table, Abbie placed the pint in front of Christine and took a sip of lemonade. On the way, she had decided she would have to give a little to get