Death on the Lake by Jo Allen (early reader books TXT) 📗

No two people ever gave the same version of an event, or interpreted it in the same way. Becca had been distressed and Jude was always, unequivocally, professional, but the tiniest element of doubt lingered in Ashleigh’s mind. She herself suffered from too much empathy with strangers, a constant weakness that influenced her career. Who would blame Jude for overstepping a line in a genuine attempt to comfort his ex? ‘Did you hug her?’

‘In the coldest way I could. Yes. I could hardly throw her off.’

‘And that was all?’

‘Yes. I know why she did it, of course. Adam must have seen it and he’ll have put her up to it. I expect that’s why she did it anonymously. She’ll guess it can’t go any further and he’ll know I’ll have heard about it. But it’s on file.’ He reached for his coffee. ‘I should have told you at the time. I’m sorry. Let’s not talk about it.’

He rarely showed hurt. She sensed it was the insult to his professionalism that outraged him, even more than the perceived betrayal. ‘Not if you don’t want to. There’s plenty more to talk about. Two deaths with no evidence, for a start.’

‘You know there’s nothing new we can do about either.’

‘I think that’s a coward’s answer.’

‘I don’t need insults from you, too.’ A half-smile took the sting out of it. ‘It’s purely practical. It’s about available resources and time and priorities. The minute you can come up with something more, or another person dies in an apparent accident in Martindale, I promise you I’ll be crawling all over the place in full Sherlock Holmes gear with my magnifying glass. But until then, we do nothing.’

The reality was inescapable. ‘I wonder how many criminals get away with it because we don’t have the capability to follow up?’

‘You know the answer. Too many.’

She stretched out a hand and placed it on his knee, receiving return a wry smile. ‘Why don’t I read the tarot for you?’

‘You’re a charlatan,’ he grumbled. ‘You know I don’t believe in that garbage.’ But he reached onto the side table where the deck of cards she’d brought back for him from a holiday in Sri Lanka had been sitting gathering dust and handed her the pack.

They were cheap cards, and had attracted her because of their garish colours and the grey cat that lurked in the corner of every one of them, yawning, stretching or toying with a mouse. They smelt faintly of incense, overtones of patchouli and some sort of spice, scents that ought by now to have faded. ‘We’ll just do something simple.’

‘Tell the cards I want to know what happened to Summer. And if they come up with the right answer I’m prepared to concede the point.’

‘They won’t tell you. If you listen to them they’ll help you think it through for yourself. But what we’ll do is look at the problem, ask for a suggestion and then that will lead us to a solution.’ That was a sensible way of approaching any problem, and one he could hardly object to. ‘Pick three cards and lay them out.’ She made space between them. ‘Here. Here and here.’

‘I don’t know why I’m doing this.’ He did as he was told.

‘Humour me. Good. Now.’ She laid her forefinger on the first card. The paper on the pack was already beginning to peel away. ‘Turn it up and we’ll see what our problem is.’

‘I have too many problems.’ He turned the card face upwards and looked at it. ‘Do you know what, Ash? I don’t need a pack of cards to tell me that my main problem is evil.’

‘This isn’t evil. You really ought to know better than to take things at face value. The card is the Devil.’ With amusement, she noted that the little grey cat which lurked under the scowling shadow of the Devil wore a vicious expression of its own and had one paw, claws extended, clamped on the dead body of a small bird. ‘All cards have positive and negative associations. In a positive sense this suggests we’re all restricted by other people’s expectations, which to an extent is true of all of us. But today we need to address a problem. And what this card says to me — and to you, if you’ll listen — is that the problem we face is deceit and manipulation, and addictive behaviour.

‘Yes, Madame Vera. But seriously — does that tell us anything we don’t already know?’

‘Fair point. If I was reading for myself I’d be looking to see what my own demons are, but in a reading like this it tells me I should be looking at the demons of others.’ She thought, briefly, of the Neilson twins and their dabbling in cocaine. Who knew where that would lead? Not everyone was as lucky, or as soundly brought up, as Mikey Satterthwaite. ‘Let’s look at the next one. If you can approach this with an open mind, it’ll help. This will suggest how you might approach the problem. Turn it over.’

When he turned over the Four of Swords he sat back, as if to indicate his disengagement. The battle between the two of them went on, she trying to persuade him of the benefits of alternative thinking, he resisting. ‘Sit back and think,’ she said, looking at the image of a god stretched out, eyes closed with the cat in contented slumber beside it. ‘Don’t rush anything. Let the answers come to you.’

‘I wish it were that easy.’ But he turned over the next card without any prompting. ‘The Eight of Wands. And that tells us?’

Ashleigh frowned at it, though the cat in the corner, bemused by eight flies buzzing round its head, amused her. Sometimes the cards didn’t deliver and this looked to be the case, but it was almost judgemental to say that. The whole objective, as she kept telling him, was to focus your thinking. ‘This card tells you the importance of identifying the