Evan and Elle - By Rhys Bowen Page 0,54
on our own.”
“We’ve only been here half a day, Sarge. Give it time.”
Watkins sighed again. “I’m afraid we’re barking up the wrong tree. The body in the restaurant might have had nothing at all to do with Madame Yvette or her restaurant. It could turn out to be a botched robbery or even Welsh extremists having a falling out . . .”
“Come on, Sarge,” Evan said. “Two restaurant fires in two years? There’s something going on here and Madame Yvette’s mixed up in it somehow.”
The offices of the Eastbourne Herald and Evening Argos were in a modern glass building on the outskirts of the town.
“You’ll want the archives center.” The girl at the reception desk had startingly red lips, long red nails, and a curtain of hair that covered one eye, but she looked impossibly young underneath the veneer. “It’s down the hall on the right. It’s all interactive now. The back issues are on our website.”
“Bloody ’ell,” Watkins muttered as they opened the door and found themselves facing a table with a computer on it. He looked around hopefully. “So what do we do now?”
“Do you need help?” A large, motherly woman appeared outside the half-open door.
Watkin’s face lit up. “We’re actually not very good with these things,” he said. “Do you think you could find us someone who could trace a back issue for us?”
The woman smiled, crossed the room and hit a key on the keyboard. “It’s loading now,” she said. “Just click on the date that you want. Would you like a cup of tea?”
“Just click?” Watkins looked at her dubiously. “Are you sure I can’t blow up anything?”
She laughed. “It’s ever so easy. It only took me a two-day course.” She patted his shoulder reassuringly. “So where are you gentlemen from? Wales?”
“That’s right,” Evan said.
“I thought so. I could hear the accent.” She looked pleased. “You’re a long way from home then, aren’t you? I’ll go and get you that tea.”
“Humiliating, that’s what it is,” Watkins muttered as the woman walked away. “First our Tiffany and now a woman old enough to be my mother. I feel like a proper charlie. I’m going to take a course as soon as I get home.”
“Maybe P.C. Davies will give you private lessons,” Evan teased.
Watkins grinned. “I wouldn’t say no to that, but I got the impression she’d rather be working one-on-one with you than with me.” The program finished loading, leaving them with a screen full of choices. “You could do worse,” he added.
“Oh, come on, Sarge,” Evan felt himself blushing. “She was just being friendly.”
“Friendly, my foot. She fancies you, boyo.”
Evan nudged Watkins. “Go on, then. Click on the button of the year that you want.”
Watkins pushed the mouse in Evan’s direction. “You do it. I’ll probably wipe the whole thing.”
Evan leaned across and clicked. “We don’t know what month it was, do we? So we’d better start with January and work forward.”
“I’m glad it’s only a weekly and not a daily,” Watkins said. “We could be here all night.”
Items of local news flashed to the screen and vanished again. Borough council grants for improving the swimming pool. Hooliganism on the pier. The tennis tournament at Devonshire Park . . .”
“Surely it would have made the front page?” Watkins said in frustration.
“Unless it was a big week for news—it’s not likely to shove out Martina Hingis winning the tennis tournament or the Eastbourne Show.”
They got as far as September. “Wait.” Evan put his hand on Watkins’s arm. “Page three. There it is.”
A somewhat fuzzy black-and-white picture of the devastated site came onto the screen under the headline LOCAL RESTAURANT BURNS DOWN.
Evan skimmed the article. There was nothing that the police hadn’t already told them. Fire started in the middle of the night . . . quick response of local fire brigade saved owner’s life . . . She was rushed to the East Sussex medical center burn unit.
Then the article concluded, “This is the second tragedy to strike the vivacious Frenchwoman, whose husband died in a yachting accident three years ago. Since that time she had valiantly tried to keep the restaurant going single-handedly and was gaining a reputation for her haute cuisine.”
“Nothing much there,” Watkins said.
“Except for one thing,” Evan pointed out. “Her husband didn’t just die. He was killed—in yet another accident.”
“So either this woman is a walking Jonah,” Watkins began, “or she’s good at making things look like accidents. We should check on how much the insurance policy was for—and whether there was