Murder On Bwytheney by Elizabeth. Newby (phonics story books TXT) 📗

“What did you find?” I asked.

“Gregory Albright is up to his neck in it. I take it that Alan Rainer was the business partner you were on about?”

“Yes, his name kept popping up.”

“Well, these two seem to constantly be moving money around via offshore accounts. It would take weeks to follow it and work out exactly what was going on. But I did find a significant payment from an offshore account to Bill Peters, The Nord Isles lead councillor.”

“What?”

“Oh, there’s more. Check this out.”

Pete was showing me some kind of planning documents that meant nothing to me. "I don't understand. What is it?"

“These are plans submitted for a holiday park in North Wales by a new company, AA Holdings. I think you can guess who’s on the board of directors.”

“Gregory and Alan?”

“Exactly. But planning permission was rejected. My bet is they’ve been looking for a new location.”

“A holiday park? How can he want to put a holiday park on our island? It would ruin it. I can’t believe it.”

“I don’t know, maybe he owes Alan Rainer? Or he's under pressure from someone? But if Gregory wants to buy that campsite, I'm pretty sure he intends to build a holiday park on it. The fact he was in a bad mood about it suggests he was desperate for it to happen.”

“You know you’ve left me with more questions?”

“Of course! What are you going to do?”

“Nothing, yet. Tomorrow’s trip to the library could be the final piece of the puzzle.”

Chapter 16

Libraries are a special place for me. Inside they hold thousands upon thousands of stories. There are adventures and travels to be had on every shelf. Over the years, I had often sought the inner sanctuary of a library. It was a place I could hide away and lose myself in other worlds.

Manchester Central Library was no different. Like Liverpool’s, it was housed in an old building with beautiful wood-panelled reading rooms and secret spaces that held books from the past. But both also had a splash of the modern with recent innovations. As I walked through the stone pillars propping up the façade, I stepped into an open, airy space. I marvelled at the modern architecture at its middle that lifted the eye to the sky many floors above.

Usually, I wander amongst the shelves, peruse the ancient texts on display and sit in the reading room with a book. But instead, I headed for the archive section. A woman named Catherine got me set up on the machine with the microfiche. She was just what you expected from a librarian working in the archives section. Her brown hair was flecked with greys and pulled back into a low bun. She wore glasses that clearly didn't fit well as she kept pushing them back up her nose. Despite being familiar with microfiche already, she insisted on running through the exacting instructions, and I could smell the morning coffee on her breath. Catherine had a quiet demeanour, but somehow you knew she fiercely protected the rules of this place.

While many records were available online, the adoption register was only available to view at a few libraries. It wouldn’t give me the details that would totally confirm my suspicions, but it would give me enough to order the adoption certificate.

I knew Melissa’s baby was born in June 1994. That would mean that he could appear on the adoption register in either quarter three or four of that year. There were thousands of entries that I would need to scroll through, and of course, it would be fruitless if I was looking for his name. But instead, I was looking for the name Peter Langley. The connection between Melissa and Pete had been bugging me all week. I'd gone over all kinds of scenarios, but the one that stuck with me, the one that kept coming up, was that Pete was Melissa’s biological son. He was the right age and had been adopted. It would also explain why he turned up on the island.

My neck ached from stooping over, and my eyes stung from scanning through names. I took a moment to pause and pulled my neck to one side and then the other, stretching it out. Looking around, I noticed that the room was beginning to fill up. As someone who loved stories and research, I couldn’t help creating tales about what each of the people here was doing. There was the woman in her fifties on another microfiche reader. I imagined she was searching the local newspaper archives for details on a relative she found while researching her family tree. He spent time in jail, and now she wanted all the gory details.

Then there was the man in a suit looking very serious. In front of him were a couple of old texts, and he was wearing the white gloves they give you to protect old books. He was slowly turning the pages and scribbling furiously. I guessed that he was researching for his masters in some kind of vain attempt to prove himself intelligent and worthy of attention. This kind of people watching was another one of those things I loved to do. Sit quietly somewhere and make up stories of the people going by. It always struck me how unhappy many people looked.

Eyes rested and muscles stretched, I returned to my microfiche and smiled to myself as I thought about what stories others might make up about me. I was pretty sure no one would guess that I was investigating a modern-day murder. That was far too outlandish. But the truth of life often was unbelievable.

And then there it was. The entry I was looking for - Peter Langley, born in 1994. The dates matched, and I started feeling more confident in my far-fetched theory. I scribbled down the index number, jumped down off my stall and logged on to one of the computers. With the details