Death at Rainbow Cottage by Jo Allen (book club books txt) 📗

of course that needn’t preclude it. We found him in a house in William Street about half an hour ago. The postman noticed blood seeping under the front door and dialled 999. The body was in the hall. We don’t have any details yet, but the officer on the scene says it looked like a single wound to the heart, and he might have been dead for a couple of hours.’

Jude paused to think. Was it conceivable the dead man knew Len Pierce, or Gracie, or Giles? ‘Do we know of any connections to the other deaths?’

‘There was a leaflet in his kitchen about the Rainbow Festival. There may be something else. They’re still looking over the house.’ She scowled at that, a woman who hated situations that got away from her, who couldn't abide a shortfall in knowledge. ‘We need to find out, though.’ She hesitated. ‘Phil Garner’s already a suspect. We need to find out where he was. And Claud Blackwell and his wife.’

‘Let me check the details and get down to William Street. In the meantime I’ll get Chris to follow up on Claud.’

‘Good idea. And get him to check up on Garner while he’s at it.’ She looked down at her paper again. ‘One more thing. I hadn’t had it down as a priority but now I wonder if it might be. We’ve found Claud’s laptop.’

‘Where?’

‘In the stream behind the Tourist Information Office. It was wrapped in a plastic bag, but it was still pretty wet. I’ve passed it on to the appropriate department to see if they can salvage anything from it, but I don’t have high hopes.’

Chapter 21

Two minutes of your time, please.

Faye, who liked to see everything that was going on, didn’t normally text and when she did she was rarely terse. Jude had scarcely had time to take his coat off when he got back to the incident room after visiting the scene at William Street, but the tone of it couldn’t be ignored. ‘Back in a minute, Doddsy. That’s Faye. Must be important.’

‘I’ll keep in charge here.’

Jude lingered. The threat that had come to Doddsy hadn’t been reported, hadn’t been talked about in the office. Doddsy might have told Tyrone but that was it. The three of them, and Faye, when the latest killing had been reported, must have had the same thought. Who would be next?

Faye had been waiting for him. When he went in she was sitting straight up at her desk with her hands folded on a copy of the local newspaper. ‘Jude. Thank you for coming by.’ She pushed the newspaper towards the edge of her desk as if it disgusted her. ‘I have today’s local paper. Hot off the press.’

Time to read the paper? Faye didn’t have enough to do. He’d thought he’d be expected to update her on the important things, like the note he’d just received from the CSI team and which Faye had been copied into. George Meadows had had a warning note just like the one that had come to Doddsy.

He reached out for the newspaper, which had been folded over to display an article — less than a quarter of a page in the bottom right hand corner of (he picked it up to check) page 7. The headline, if it could be called a headline, announced New Superintendent’s Equality Crusade and the six column inches contained a brief resume of Faye’s career, an outline of her stated intention to improve equality and diversity and a reference to the ongoing story of the local murders, concluded with the line that Detective Superintendent Scanlon, who is separated from her husband, reportedly left the Cheshire force after an affair with a female colleague.

He read it a second time for any subtext that he might have missed, then turned the newspaper over in case he should have been looking at something else. ‘Is this a problem?’

‘I’d trusted your discretion.’

‘What the hell does that mean?’

She exaggerated her sigh. ‘I’m glad you’re so sanguine about it. Did any of this information come from you?’

‘No.’ He unfolded the paper and refolded it to its normal state. The front page had gone big on the real news, a third murder, and that was where the journalists had let their imaginations run riot. It reminded him, if he needed reminding, that there were three people dead and whoever had done it had actively threatened others. Faye flattered herself. ‘Who’s interested in what a police officer once did in their private life? No-one’s going to read that article with all this going on. I wouldn’t let it bother you. No-one cares, Faye. No-one.’

‘I’m glad you think so,’ she said, though she could hardly have expected that any published article would be so anodyne.

‘I’ve seen stories about serving officers that were a lot worse and a lot less accurate.’

‘You don’t seem remotely surprised about the content of it.’

‘I’m not surprised. Ashleigh told me about it.’

Her lip quivered. ‘I thought as much. I asked you in here to give me your reassurance that you have nothing to do with this story.’ She looked down at the local newspaper with contempt.

Most of it looked as if it had been culled from Faye’s own press releases. ‘I’ve nothing to do with it. It’s way more than my job’s worth.’

‘Indeed it is.’ Her eyes narrowed.

‘Right. My advice would be to let it slide. And we could usefully spend our time working on more important things. Like trying to see if we can stop anyone else being slaughtered like a pig in the street.’ He could hear contempt in his voice. His opinion of Faye had been low and now it slipped further.

‘Thanks for your input.’ Her tone was dry. ‘I haven’t forgotten what’s going on. But I think you and I are diverging on this investigation. As