Death at Rainbow Cottage by Jo Allen (novel24 TXT) 📕

Ashleigh looked at the whiteboard. Someone had already marked up Natalie’s route, with its times, on an OS map, a winding line looping back on itself and marked with crosses near either end where she’d stopped to stretch off.

‘What do you make of her?’ Doddsy twirled his pen between his fingers and addressed himself to Jude. ‘And her husband, of course.’

‘Did you say you knew him?’

‘I know of him. He’s a diversity campaigner. He’s been touting an idea for a Rainbow Festival around the local churches. We’re to get together and encourage LGBTQI folk to join in and feel welcome. Us Christian folk being all so straight and narrow-minded.’ He rolled his eyes.

Ashleigh struggled not to laugh. Doddsy, ploughing his own quiet furrow, quietly minding his own business and never looking for attention, was the obvious candidate for a congregation to put forward as representative of their tolerance. She could see from the twist of his lips that whatever he thought of the concept, he’d want to keep clear of the execution.

She could sympathise with that. The main thing she’d learned from her adventure with Faye Scanlon wasn’t the obvious, that attraction to the same sex was as normal and natural as it was to the opposite one. It was your own insecurities that were damaging. ‘How did it go?’

‘As you’d expect. Half of the congregation jumping on the rainbow bandwagon and the other half quoting Leviticus.’

‘And which side did you come down on?’ Jude joked.

‘I’ve never been one for hellfire and damnation. And I’m not sure about Blackwell. He means well enough, but I don’t think he understands his audience.’

‘He’s a natural campaigner. Has been all his life.’ Jude checked his notes. ‘For just about any cause under the sun. Anti-Zionism when he was a student, then worked for a disability rights charity, then moved into gay rights. I presume that’s why they’ve renamed the house. It used to be called Neville Cottage.’ He frowned a little, at a puzzle he couldn’t quite unravel.

‘He runs his own company taking equality training into the workplace.’ Chris tossed a leaflet onto the table and Ashleigh picked it up and skimmed it. Refreshing your knowledge of current legislation…exceeding legal requirements to promote positive viewpoints and a productive and healthy workforce. ‘He’s done some work for the NHS and the Council, among others, and he’s in advanced talks to do the same for us. So we can look forward to seeing how he reads his audience first hand.’

Ashleigh thought of Faye’s predecessor, the unlamented Detective Superintendent Groves, and her lips twitched. ‘This would never have happened three months ago.’

‘No harm to them.’ Doddsy said, shaking his head, ‘but if I tell them I’m gay do you think I can be excused and just get on with my work in peace?’

Jude waved the general laughter aside. ‘Let’s move on. There’s something unconventional about the Blackwells. Of the two of them, she interests me more. She’s had half a dozen different careers, I’m told, and hasn’t stuck to any one of them. Classically unsatisfiable, I’d say.’

‘Didn’t you say she has anxiety issues?’ Ashleigh sighed. ‘No wonder she can’t settle to anything. Poor woman. Finding Len must have been a hell of a shock.’

‘The PC who was first on the scene was genuinely worried about her, but by the time I got to her she was totally composed. I thought she must have taken some kind of medication. Her husband was looking after her and she seemed to have complete trust in him. Nearly had a meltdown when he tried to leave the room. She was looking to him after every question I asked.’

‘I think I’d find that rather freaky.’ Bitter experience, learned in a failed marriage to a charming but controlling man, had taught Ashleigh that devotion too often worked only one way.

‘I didn’t think so. It wasn’t as if she was looking to him for the answers. More as if to make sure he was still there.’ Jude sighed and sat back, glancing down at his empty coffee cup. ‘Next steps. We’ll get the PM results in later on today with luck, and we’ll put out an appeal for witnesses. Chris, as usual I’d like you to get digging. I want to know everything there is to know about Len Pierce and his friends and acquaintances. I need more background checks on the Blackwells. We’ll reconvene tomorrow after the early briefing and you can talk me through what you’ve got.’

The meeting dissolved. Ashleigh shuffled her notes into some sort of order and failed to stifle a yawn. Chris and Doddsy had gone. ‘Are you sure you don’t need me to do anything?’

‘Yes, but I need you to do it when you’re awake. I’ve got someone else on the door-to-door inquiries for today. You can pick that up tomorrow.’ Jude checked his watch. ‘I need to pop up and have a chat with the new boss just now, but I’ll get down to Appleby afterwards.’ He hesitated. ‘If you’ve caught up on your sleep by this evening, why not pop round to my place? I can rustle you up a curry. It won’t be as hot as your average Sri Lankan one, but it’ll be edible.’

She smiled at him, reached out and touched his sleeve. ‘I’ll see you this evening then.’ And she picked up her coat and slipped it on, wondering just how she’d manage to square the circle of working with a boss who was her lover and whose boss, in turn, was her former lover, and how long it would be before each of them found out about the other.

Chapter 3

Watching Ashleigh disappear down the corridor, Jude allowed himself a moment of appreciation and a smile to go with it. It was more than three years since the woman he’d been so sure he’d marry