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

a disturbing one. It radiated feelings and, the card being upside down, they weren’t good ones. They were feelings of loss and introversion, of misunderstanding.

Ashleigh thought of Natalie, running, running, running and never escaping something when it would have been so much easier to turn and face it. Then she remembered the purpose of the whole reading, the answer to her questions and the confirmation of what she’d known to be the truth.

At least this time there were no swords.

She shuffled the cards away, packaged them up, and called Faye.

*

 ‘I’ve arranged to go and see Faye this afternoon.’

‘Good idea.’ Jude sat back and smiled at the sound of Ashleigh’s voice. There were a few people working on the Saturday, though nowhere like the full complement, and he knew he did his share and more of weekend work. He should change that. He should make more time to spend with Ashleigh and try and have a bit of a life, stop letting his dad down so they could go to the football every second Saturday and sink a pint or two afterwards, make himself more obviously available for Mikey, if he were ever needed, and just spend a bit more time with him if he wasn’t. ‘It’s the only way to sort things out.’

‘Yes, you were right about it. So was Lisa. But I was the one who had to decide to do it.’

‘Who said you weren’t?’ he asked, amused. An email pinged into his inbox. On a Saturday. Someone else was working then, too. Wonders never ceased. ‘So that’s this afternoon. I’d offer to give you some moral support, but I’ll be at the football.’

‘We can talk about it over drinks tonight, if you like.’

‘Sounds perfect.’

‘If it ends horribly, you’ll back me up, won’t you?’

He took a moment before answering trying to work out whether the question was a serious one. Faye hadn’t been around long enough for him to get the hang of the way she worked, other than that it was very much in-your-face, but he thought her bark might be worse than her bite. ‘Of course. But it won’t.’

‘But it might. You saw the story in the paper.’

‘Faye’s diversity and inclusion agenda is all very newsworthy,’ he said, as if he were speaking to Claud. But Faye herself was over-sensitive.

‘But what if the journalist comes back for more? She specifically said she wanted to talk to me because I was a former colleague of Faye’s.’

‘Don’t answer, and tell me. She can talk to Faye herself, if she’s brave enough.’ Jude doodled a series of circles on his pad. Saturday was a working day and normally he never took personal calls at work, but somehow he’d forgotten this particular rule he’d made for himself. Maybe loosening up a little wasn’t a bad thing. ‘Have you enjoyed your morning off?’

‘Yes. I walked up the hill and along Beacon Edge.’

‘The views are stunning up there, aren’t they?’

‘Yes, particularly today. Isn’t OCD a weird thing? If I was Natalie and I was going to take my ten-minute break somewhere, I’d definitely do it up there rather than in some dark alley in Drover’s Lane.’

‘I think it’s to do with how far she is from home.’ Another email pinged in, this time from Claud. ‘I’d better get on. Good luck with Faye, and you can tell me all about it this evening.’

‘See you then.’

He waited for a moment after she’d ended the call, thinking. The last thing he needed was to get involved in an internal row with Faye, but there was a line that had to be drawn.

‘Taking a breather, Jude?’ Chris, who’d traded a Friday in the future for a Saturday when he had nothing else to do, came back from the coffee machine. ‘We don’t often catch you staring into space.’ He bounced across the room and sat down at his laptop.

‘Just thinking,’ Jude said, as if he needed to justify himself and turned his attention back to business and flicked on Claud’s email.

As a follow up to my earlier comments to you, Claud had written in what felt like an unusually circuitous and possibly defensive manner, you’ll want further confirmation of where I was when the latest unfortunate victim was killed. I was at work on my own. Natalie, as usual was running. Obviously I had no computer so I have been working from my phone. I attach a screenshot showing a list of emails sent from my phone during the relevant time period.

Either Claud was innocent and doing the police’s work for them, or he reckoned he’d found out some way of establishing a fake alibi and was so sure that it was foolproof he was prepared to take on the risk that the police were smarter than he was. They might not be, but they had better resources at their disposal. They could trace the position of the phone, but Claud could have left it in the office while he made his way to William Street. Could he have faked the time stamp on the emails? That was one for the tech team. He fired off an irritable query, in case one of them was about and answering questions.

I can also establish Natalie’s whereabouts, Claud had written, and attach a screenshot showing her running route at the time in question. You will see that it takes her nowhere near William Street.

The screenshot, when he opened it, showed exactly that. Natalie had run her usual route, taken her usual ten minute rest in Meeting House Lane. Weird. He shook his head over it. Something about the case was staring him in the face and he couldn’t see what it might be.

Yet another email pinged in. This time it was a message from the intelligence unit, informing him that they’d have a look at the issue he’d raised. And