A Taste for Death

It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.

But he still lingered, feeling the wind lift his hair and grateful for another minute of peace. He was grateful, too, that Kate Miskin could share it with him without the need to speak and without making him feel that her silence was a conscious discipline. He had chosen her because he needed a woman in his team and she was the best available. The choice had been partly rational, partly instinctive and he was beginning to realize just how well his instinct had served him. It would have been dishonest to say that there was no hint of sexuality between them. In his experience there nearly always was, however repudiated or unacknowledged, between any reasonable attractive heterosexual couple who worked together. He wouldn’t have chosen her if he had found her disturbingly attractive but the attraction was there and he wasn’t immune to it. But despite this pinprick of sexuality, perhaps because of it, he found her surprisingly restful to work with. She had an instinctive knowledge of what he wanted; she knew when to be silent; she wasn’t overly deferential. He suspected that with part of her mind, she saw his vulnerabilities more clearly, and understood him better and was more judgmental than were any of his male colleagues. { by Adam Dalgliesh, of his teammate Kate Miskin }

one of the things he deplored about the loss of religion, it meant that people elevated politics into a religious faith and that was dangerous.

People, like countries, needed someone weaker and more vulnerable than themselves to bully and despise.

Dictating condolences to the mother of a murdered husband whom you’ve been busily cuckolding for the last three years would take more than his limited social vocabulary.

Love, Lust, Loathing, Lucre, the four L’s of murder, laddie. And the greatest of these is lucre.

Henry James, he remembered, had said of his approaching death, “So here it is at last, the distinguished thing!

You know when you can trust a person about something like that, don’t you find? If you can, why ask? If you can’t, there’s no point in asking.

that was one of the things he deplored about the loss of religion, it meant that people elevated politics into a religious faith and that was dangerous.

know an old lady who, in her place, would say: ‘No one wants my books, I’m poor, I’m lame, and I live in a damp cottage with only a dog for company.’ She says: ‘I’ve got my health, my pension, my home, Makepeace for company, and I go on writing.

You couldn’t cut people out of your life and expect to find them complaisant, readily available, just because you needed to feel human again.

the oddness of human relationships in which people could describe themselves as friends who were content not to see each other for years, yet when they did meet could resume their intimacy as if there had been no interval of neglect.

So here it is at last, the distinguished thing!