The Distant Dead by Lesley Thomson (books for students to read TXT) 📕

Unwilling to even think about her dad, Stella recalled Roddy scribbling in the Death Café.

‘Terry’s?’

‘Roddy’s. He was writing in one.’

‘Whoa. Winding back,’ Janet said. ‘You saying you knew the victim?’

‘I only met him twice.’ As Stella described her encounter with March the previous morning by the cadaver tomb, and how he’d appeared at the Death Café, she felt herself flush with shame again for not going after Roddy. ‘The facilitator will know more.’ Then she remembered Roddy hadn’t booked. ‘She won’t have his address.’

‘No probs, we found a card for some boarding house in his trouser pocket, it’s where he was staying.’ Janet patted Stella’s shoulder. ‘Got to say, I’m made up my chief witness is equipped with the observational skills of a raptor and that you knew him is gold.’

‘We only said a few words.’

‘Let’s hear them.’

‘Roddy March was at the Death Café when I arrived. On the second night.’

‘How many Death Cafés have you gone to, Stella?’ Janet’s tact sounded effortful.

‘One, really – it was split into two.’ Stella explained that Felicity had been called away. ‘Roddy sat next to me, maybe because we’d met here the day before and he didn’t know anyone. Like I say, he was writing notes.’ Stella’s so-called observation skills felt blunted.

‘You met him here yesterday?’ Janet stopped writing, in shorthand, Stella noticed. ‘Where exactly?’

‘By the cadaver tomb. This one’s called the…’ Stella swallowed. ‘Exactly where he was attacked. By the starved monk.’

‘You didn’t plan to meet there?’

‘No,’ Stella exclaimed. ‘I was cleaning and he appeared.’

‘So that wasn’t the first time Roddy March had been to the… what did you call it?’

Stella told Janet what Roddy had told her about the tombs and that he’d received a phone call and gone off. She hadn’t seen him again until the second evening at the Death Café.

‘Did you get the impression he was expecting to meet someone there?’

‘No, the opposite. He told whoever rang him that he’d see them outside the abbey. It didn’t sound as if he expected to meet them by the tomb. I felt he expected me to know him, due to his podcast.’

‘Podcast?’ Frowning, Janet was writing rapidly.

‘He’s doing one – was doing – on men hanged for crimes he believed they never committed. No, not quite that; it was about matching the true killer to their victim, which gave the victim justice. Roddy said he’d released the first episode.’

‘Have you heard it?’

‘No.’

‘This is great stuff, Stella. Just a mo. Hey, Tony.’ Janet waved to a middle-aged man, his rumpled look suggesting he’d had to dress in the dark, talking to a woman in forensics overalls. He looked like Terry. Get a grip. In London Stella had seen Terry everywhere, but – so far – not in Tewkesbury.

‘Our victim did a true-crime podcast – check it out, has he upset someone? Who has he interviewed? What did he unearth? What’s so interesting about that chapel? Our witness saw him there yesterday,’ Janet fired at the man when he came over. She looked at Stella. ‘What’s it called, this chapel, and for that matter the podcast? No worries, that’s what Google’s for.’

‘The tomb of the starved monk. He called it a cadaver tomb.’ Up close, Tony didn’t look at all like her dad. ‘On my cleaning rota it’s called the Wakeman Cenotaph.’

‘Seriously?’ Watching Tony hurry away already on his phone, Janet turned to Stella. ‘What was March’s mood in this Dead Café? Nervous, wired?’

‘Death Café. I didn’t notice, but he wrote a lot of stuff down in his notebook.’ Stella told Janet what Roddy had written about Andrea.

‘Did she see it?’

‘I doubt it, she was on the other side of the table.’

‘Not really a motive to stab him to death.’ Unconsciously perhaps, Janet wore the same grumpy expression as the angel she was staring at. ‘Sounds like March was interested in you? First, he meets you in the abbey, then fronts up at the Death Club – could he have followed you?’

‘He wouldn’t have known I’d return the second night.’ Stella had not intended to return.

The white Peugeot van slows down, no lights. Silence. The darkness is tangible like thick cloth.

Her teeth began to chatter again. Janet reached over and pulled the foil blanket tighter around her.

‘I’m sure not,’ Stella decided. ‘Roddy only wanted to talk about his podcast. About a murder in Tewkesbury years ago. I suspect he was there to fact-find. The group was local and one man, called Clive, had known the victim.’ Suddenly Stella felt Roddy had been interested in her. A feeling she couldn’t substantiate, but couldn’t dismiss. Was he the van driver on the lane?

‘I see.’ Janet was expressionless so Stella had no clue what it was that she saw. ‘Did you think March knew who you are?’

‘I’m not anyone.’

‘Last I knew, you were running a detective agency and cleaning for half of London on the side.’ Janet raised an eyebrow. ‘Thanks to that Lucie May, you’ve been in the media. I don’t miss her. No surprise if some true-crime podcaster had you on his radar.’

‘Clean Slate is only cleaning now.’ Horrified to be on anyone’s radar, Stella didn’t say she’d given up everything to start again in Tewkesbury.

‘You sure March knew no one? Someone who might bear him a grudge? Did you notice if anyone was unfriendly towards him? You know the drill, Stella. However apparently irrelevant or everyday, give it to me raw.’

Stella said everyone in the group apart from Clive Burgess, who made clocks, had been sulky. ‘Including me, I’m afraid.’ Gladys Wren, the lodging house owner, had defended March, but Stella imagined Roddy had been charming to older women. Felicity was cross with him for gatecrashing and transgressing the rules, and on the first night she’d also been annoyed that Andrea the gardener was late. Stella presumed now that Felicity, a retired pathologist, preferred dead people.

‘Who’s Felicity?’

‘The facilitator, she ran the group, it was her first time.’

‘Felicity the facilitator. That’s actually quite funny.’ Janet did a shorthand squiggle which, to Stella, had