5. 1 Introduction
People often ask me if I resent allowing another man to come into my family and take up so much of my wife’s time. It’s a funny thing because that wasn’t how it happened at all. However, there have been times when seeing more of Jonah Porter would have been the very last thing I would have hoped for. When we worked together under DCI Richard Paige, I often felt that I was given all the routine stuff to do while Jonah was allowed to indulge himself with investigating his own, sometimes rather fanciful, ideas. It didn’t make it any better that those ideas so often seemed to turn out to be right!
I think that probably the people who knew us both at that time are the ones who find it most strange that Bernie and I have welcomed him into our house as a permanent part of the family. I’ve actually heard some of them suggesting that it’s unfair of Bernie to be inflicting him on me – which isn’t what it’s like at all. And others seem to think that I’m some sort of saint or hero to put up with him – which is nonsense as well.
So, here’s my attempt at setting the record straight. I hope that by the end of it you’ll have realised that none of us – least of all me – is as heroic or unselfish as some people would have you believe. I’m also hoping that you’ll get to understand that, contrary to outward appearances, I do have a say in what goes on in my own house and nobody has been inflicting anything on me at all!