Whisper For The Reaper by Jack Gatland (best book series to read TXT) 📕

sticking it into crypto, trying to make the big pot, you know? Screwing around on Uniswap and DeFi groups, talking it big about the next solid moonshot coin.’ He looked to his cup of coffee, sighing.

‘Prick never had a clue how it all worked. Listened to the wrong people, screwed over a lot more online, shilling coins that had no value, rugging a lot of investors by default and walking away with sod all.’

Jess nodded at this. It was a common scam in crypto to create a coin that was similar to a big selling name coin and then, once it had made a ton of money to sell everything, grabbing a great profit but dumping the price at the same time, pulling the rug out from under the investors’ feet.

Rugging.

The problem was, it also gained people who shilled it, people like Nathanial Wing, desperate investors who needed the coin to rocket in price, telling people how great it was, not knowing that the coin was soon to disappear. And, having done the developers own work for them, they would lose their own money, and their reputations, when it died.

Rising, Jess thanked the four teenagers for taking the time to speak with her and, placing the empty glass on the counter, she left the cafe and started back towards Hurley.

She didn’t like being undercover. They were good people, and she’d lied to them.

She needed to get back to her dad’s house and take a shower.

Declan had pulled over at the side of the road, allowing Doctor Marcos and Monroe to emerge on the passenger side while he opened the door carefully, ensuring no speeding maniacs were going to take it off as he exited the Audi. Honey Lane was a narrow country road, one lane in width that ran south from Henley Road, a mile north from them, down to the T junction that Declan and his team now stood at where Honey Lane continued to the east, while a lane equally narrow and no more than a bridleway to the west led to the Dew Drop Inn, a pub that claimed a heritage that not only went back to the 1600s but also a connection to noted Highwayman Dick Turpin.

Declan chuckled to himself. What with Epping Forest and Ambresbury Banks also being linked to him, Declan and Turpin seemed to spend a lot of time together. The man was as busy as Charles Dickens for the amount of pubs that claimed he’d visited.

As you drove down Honey Lane to the junction, directly ahead of you was a public footpath that led into dense woodlands, part of the Berkshire Loop of the Chiltern Way; but before that, and on either side were more trees and a ditch on the left-hand side, a ditch that followed around to the left, and the route east.

‘So let me get this right,’ Doctor Marcos was already pacing the scene. ‘Where was your father’s car found?’

Declan pointed to the ditch. ‘Down there,’ he said. ‘I got hold of a set of copies of the case notes from a friend in the pathology office.’ He walked to the ditch where even now, a couple of months later, you could still see small glints of broken glass in it from the windscreen and side windows. The car was long gone. ‘It claimed that dad apparently died when his car, caught in terrible weather and en route to Maidenhead spun out of control at the corner, flipping over as it clipped the edge of the road, and coming to a rest, on its roof around here.’ He took a deep breath as he remembered the report.

‘Dad, smashing his head against the steering wheel with enough force to shatter his nose apparently died instantly as his heart gave way.’

’And you think it was murder.’

‘I know it was murder,’ Declan snapped. ‘People said he had the heart attack first. Maybe the road was wet and slippy. But look. We’re going uphill. How does that even happen?’

Monroe was walking west, towards the bridleway. ‘Why was he driving down here anyway?’ he asked. Declan considered the last conversation that he’d had with his dad. It had been while he was investigating the Bernard Lau case, at the moment when Declan had learned that DCI Ford had lied when she had told him that Patrick Walsh had asked her to bring him onto the case.

‘Look, I’ve got an event to go to in Maidenhead right now. Let me make some calls and I’ll come back to you.’

It was the last thing that his dad had ever said to him. An hour or so later, while in Victoria Park, Declan had been given the news of the accident.

‘He had an event that he was going to,’ he whispered. Monroe shook his head.

‘I don’t mean that, laddie. I don’t live here and I’ve only visited a few times, but even I know that this isn’t the best way to Maidenhead from Hurley. The Henley Road is way better and much safer. These country lanes are dangerous at the best of times, let alone in a bloody storm.’

Declan had wondered the same thing over the last few weeks. Patrick had worked in Maidenhead as a Chief Superintendent for years before he retired. He knew these roads like the back of his hand, but he’d still go the quickest route. And this wasn’t the quickest route.

‘Impossible,’ Doctor Marcos looked up from the impact site. ‘Physically impossible to come from there, turn here and end up there.’

‘Are you saying that he was struck?’ Declan asked. Doctor Marcos was looking to the west, and the sign that showed the Dew Drop Inn.

‘What car was he driving that night?’ she enquired as she crouched down beside one tree at the side of the road.

‘A Mondeo or a Peugeot, I think.’

‘Colour?’

‘Metallic blue.’

Doctor Marcos nodded to herself.

‘Then I’m saying your father didn’t come that way,’ she replied. ‘There’s damage to the tree on the left up here. Metallic blue