Lingering Shadows. Penny Jordan

not have any children. He frowned as he lifted the last sheet of paper from the file and saw the photographs pinned neatly behind it.

      There were several of Carey Chemicals, showing the run-down state of the buildings and how totally ill equipped it was to compete with even the poorest of its competitors. Without that all-important heart-drug patent which had been revised over the years to create a second patent it would have disappeared decades ago.

      There was another photograph. He stiffened as he saw the name written on the back: ‘Davina James’.

      He turned it over.

      She was nothing like what he had imagined. The file quoted her date of birth, so he knew that she was thirty-seven years old, but in this photograph she looked younger and vulnerable in a way that made his body tense with rejection.

      There was none of the glossy sophistication that he had expected about her. She was dressed in jeans and what looked like a man’s shirt, one hand lifted to push a strand of soft fair hair out of her eyes. She was wearing gardening gloves and there was a smear of dirt along one cheekbone, a fork in the ground at her feet. Her skin, free of make-up, looked clear and soft, and without even realising what he was doing Saul suddenly discovered that his thumb was touching her face.

      But it wasn’t the living warmth of a woman’s flesh he could feel, just the hard glossy texture of the print.

      He withdrew his hand as though the print had scorched him.