Page 30 of Not That Impossible

I grabbed my coat from the back, stuffed my notebook in the side pocket, and slipped my phone in my sweatpants pocket. I jogged down the road I’d parked in, turned onto the main road and kept jogging until I hit the turn into Sycamore Close and was yanked to a halt by the same policeman who’d waved me on in my car.

“Nope,” he said. “Road’s closed.”

“I’m on the pavement, though.”

“Closed. Move on.”

“What if I live down here?”

“Do you live down here?”

“…yes?”

He gave me a flat stare.

“I’m pretty sure you can’t stop people from walking along the pavement,” I said.

“I can when there is a police operation in progress.”

“Oh, is there?” I said. “Police operation? I hadn’t noticed. What’s going on, then?”

“Nice try, Jasper. I know you write for the paper. I read your blog piece on the bees.”

“Yeah?” I brightened. It was the one and only thing Ralph had agreed to publish, and he’d only put it on the blog. Not even on the main site, let alone in the printed version of the paper. I didn’t think anyone had read it. “What did you think?”

“You really like bees.”

He wasn’t wrong. I squinted at him, then snapped my fingers and pointed. “Mike,” I said.

“Yep.”

“My Wednesday Legs, Bums and Tums class.”

“Yep.” Mike waved on another car that was trying to turn in to the close.

“If you let me down the road, I’ll let you off two sets on Wednesday.”

He grinned. “No chance. Boss’ll have my head.”

“Ah. Yes. The detective in charge. Bit of a hard-arse, is he?”

Mike rolled his eyes, but didn’t say anything.

“It’s not Detective Chief Inspector Liam Nash, is it?” I said. “By any chance?”

“Yep.”

“I know him!”

“My condolences,” he said, then winced. “Don’t quote me as saying that.”

“You scratch my back—”

“I’m not letting you down there.”

“Fine. But Wednesday is going to be pretty rough for you, Mike.”

He shook his head at me, and waved another car on.

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