Written In Blood

Chapter Twenty-Four

Zack saw Sophie almost as soon as he walked into the Litten Tree Restaurant; his, former, sister-in-law was sipping a drink at the bar. She was looking away from the entrance but seemed to sense his presence, for he had barely walked through the door before she turned towards him.

The smile of pleasure that lifted the corners of her lips when she saw him, changed to a look of curious concern at the sight of his limp, and the grimace that crossed his face with each step. The moment he reached her, and before he could say hello, Sophie asked, "What's with the limp?"

"Hi, nice to see you," Zack said, kissing his ex-wife's sister on the cheek before taking the stool next to her.

"It's good to see you too, Zack, but what's with the limp? Does it have anything to do with you needing Izzy's help so urgently yesterday? Why was that, by the way, she didn't say."

Zack had to smile. He always forgot, when he hadn't seen Sophie in a while, just how energetic and full of questions she was; she never stopped, either moving or questioning what was going on, not until she had worn herself out completely, which never happened until everyone else was exhausted, and she knew everything that had happened or was happening.

He did not respond to any of the questions until he had caught the attention of the bartender and ordered himself a glass of wine; even then he settled for saying, "I'll tell you everything that's been going on, but let's see if our table's ready first, I'd rather not be interrupted, and I could do with taking the weight off my ankle."

Be right back then." Sophie hopped off her stool and went to check on their table. "Right, now that's out of the way," she said once they had given their orders to the waiter, "what have you been getting yourself involved in? Why did you need Izzy's help yesterday?"

"I was arrested for murder." Zack laughed as he anticipated the response from his friend; he was not disappointed – she reacted almost exactly as he had expected her to.

"What the hell? What d'you mean you were arrested for murder?" Sophie flushed when she realised she had asked the question more loudly than intended, and that it had drawn attention. "Sorry," she apologised.

"Don't worry about it," Zack told her, ignoring the curious looks being thrown his way from the neighbouring tables. "Like I said, I was arrested for murder. I found the body of a teen first thing yesterday on my run..."

"You still go running first thing? What the hell for? You're retired, you can go running whenever you want, if you really must do something that stupid. Personally, I don't see why you do it, I can't see the point in running and getting all sweaty just to stay in shape. Eat what you want, drink what you want, and do what you want, that's my philosophy. It's better to be happy than to be in shape."

"Easy for you to say, you can eat and drink whatever you want without putting on weight, so you never have to worry about staying in shape. We're not all as lucky as you, and some of us don't fancy ending up resembling a fat blob." Zack got on with his story then. "When a second teen was found in the woods, and the sergeant in charge of the case discovered I was the last person to see her, he decided that I killed both girls." It took him a short while to fill Sophie in on everything that had happened from the moment he discovered Georgina Ryder's body to when he was released after being questioned the previous evening.

"It sounds to me," Sophie said once Zack was finished, "as though the sergeant is a complete moron. Is that where you got the limp? Did the sergeant try to beat a confession out of you?" Her eyes swept over Zack, searching for other injuries.

"What?" The question surprised Zack so much he spluttered and sprayed Sophie with the wine he had just taken a sip of. He apologised quickly, but still had to laugh, both at the question and what had resulted from it. "You should be the writer with an imagination like that, not me. Of course he didn't try and beat a confession out of me, but now you mention it, I think he might have tried that route if Izzy hadn't been there. I don't think I've ever known anyone to be so fixated on a suspect without a scrap of evidence to back it up.

"Would you believe he even wanted to know where my Aston Martin is – he seemed to think there might be some evidence in there, that I'm kidnapping teen girls, stuffing them into a car with a small boot and just enough space for a willing person, and taking them away to kill them." He shook his head disbelievingly.

"If you didn't get the limp through the sergeant trying to beat a confession out of you, how did you get it?"

"After Izzy persuaded the sergeant to let me go, told him to is probably closer to the truth, I suppose," Zack remarked. "The cousin of the girl I found, who's also the boyfriend of the other girl that was found, decided to get drunk and break into my place with a couple of friends so he could attack me – he decided not to say that Oliver Ryder's intention had been to kill him, it sounded too melodramatic, and was likely to prompt an overreaction from Sophie, which he didn't need just then - Izzy called the cops while I dealt with them..." He could not help thinking, as he listened to his own description of events, that his actions sounded a lot braver and less fraught with danger than was the truth.

"Jesus, Zack! In the space of, what, four months, you've gone from investigating murders, to writing about them, to being accused of them. "Sophie could not keep either her amazement or her concern from her voice as she stared across the table at her friend. "What's next? No, I don't even want to think about that. You should never have moved to that village," she told him. "I know you wanted to get away from Cathy and all the trouble she caused, but there was no need to move so far away, or so quickly, especially when it makes it so tough for you to see Jo, she misses you."

Zack could not deny that he disliked not being able to see his daughter as much as he wanted to, nor could he deny that his decision to move more than two hours away from where he had lived had been a hasty one. He was stuck with the move he had made, however.

"You know how the saying goes, 'act in haste, repent in leisure'. I'm repenting in leisure." He gave a short, humourless laugh as he said that. "And this investigation, led by the idiotic Sergeant Mitchell, is my punishment. Fortunately, Izzy should be able to make it go away soon enough; she's already made it clear she's not happy with the way things have been handled so far. Maybe once I'm no longer in the frame for murder, times two, I can try and figure out what I'm going to do – I'm not sure I fancy staying somewhere that finds it so easy to consider me a murderer – but that's going to depend on what money comes in over the next two or three months."

"Are things as tight as all that?" Sophie knew her friend's finances had been strained by the divorce and the actions he had taken afterwards, but she had not suspected to just what a degree he had overextended himself in trying to get away from his troubles.

Zack answered with a shrug that suggested the problem didn't matter, though he did admit, "Tighter than I'd like. Tighter than I anticipated. It'll be alright," he said. "It'll just take me a bit of time to get myself sorted, and into a more comfortable position. The new book's going alright, though, so I'm sure everything will be okay. That's enough about me, though, what's going on with you, has anything exciting happened since we last spoke?"

"Hah," Sophie snorted in response to the question. "Even if we hadn't spoken only a week ago, there's little chance of anything exciting happening to me, I don't live an exciting life, you should know that by now. About the most exciting thing that happens to me is the coffee machine at work having a fit and spraying hot water everywhere; thankfully, that hasn't happened in a couple of weeks. I swear, it doesn't matter how many times the bloody thing breaks, Larry's not going to replace it until someone gets scalded."

"Still not getting on with the boss I take it," Zack said.

Sophie shook her head. "I honestly don't know why he made me assistant manager, he doesn't listen to a thing I say; I've told him about the machine I don't know how many times now."

"Maybe because he'd be out of business in next to no time without you, and if he goes out of business, he's got no hope of selling the coffee shop, at least not for a price worth getting." He knew why Sophie had not bought The Roasted Bean, which she wanted to do, but he still thought it was the best thing she could do; if he were a different kind of person, he would have advised her to let the business fail so she could buy it at a knockdown price.

The two friends continued talking about the things that had happened to them since they last spoke while they finished their meal.