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

a bottle of Merlot, empty now, on a coffee table. One glass, tipped on its side, was blocked from rolling onto the threadbare carpet by the splayed arm of a corkscrew.

Curled up on a leather sofa, a diminutive champagne-coloured poodle snoozed, chin resting on a stuffed rat whose greyed fabric indicated he was the dog’s favoured companion. The scene – tossed cushions, the contents of an upended waste-paper basket, screws of paper, several scrunched-up packets that had contained dried figs scattered on the carpet – suggested the aftermath of an alcohol-fuelled fight.

The dog’s ears pricked. A woman, tall and perhaps too thin, in workaday jeans, a fraying Christmas jumper (reindeer whose antlers reached her shoulders), black police issue boots, stomped into the room. Pushing back her hair, Stella Darnell viewed the mess with a critical eye then, taking the bin bag snagged in the back pocket of her jeans, set about clearing up.

The poodle, ecstatic to have company, danced around Stella on his hind legs as she moved about. Stopping to scruffle Stanley’s ears, she had soon restored order. Plumped cushions were arranged on the sofa. Stella stacked the takeaway dishes and tipped them into the bag. As everyone in the Clean Slate office was saying at that very moment, Stella Darnell was never happier than when tackling a mess.

In the kitchen Stella cut a wedge of dog food from a plastic container, mashed it and placed the bowl on a mat patterned with paws.

‘Stanley, breakfast.’ ‘Breakfast’ was a key word in Stanley’s relatively extensive vocabulary and the dance became dervish-like. As Stella lowered the bowl, he abruptly sat down by the mat. Pummelling her aching temple, Stella commanded ‘Release’. Leaving Stanley to his food, she wandered back to the living room.

Lucie had drunk most of the bottle. Stella’s headache was due to tossing and turning for what remained of the night. She had kept seeing Roddy March beside the cadaver tomb. The coppery smell, his expression, soft locks of hair when she stroked it from his face. Stella had shouted at Janet because for Janet, Roddy’s murder was simply a case to be solved. For Stella it was more profound. All she could think was, Roddy March had been alive – and annoying – and now he was dead.

Roddy’s murder had kept Stella awake, but so had her conscience. She had told Lucie about the murder. Ultimately Lucie would have found out, a BBC Breaking News alert had come in at two thirty – Man found dead in Tewkesbury Abbey – but that wouldn’t have been down to Stella spilling the beans.

After she’d accepted Auntie Lucie’s prescription of a hot shower, capitulated to wearing one of Lucie’s panda-bear leisure suits and drunk a glass of Merlot, Stella had basically run off at the mouth. She gave the veteran tabloid reporter the full story.

‘Of course, off the record, Sherlock,’ Lucie had cooed. Hours later – the last chimes of the abbey Stella remembered were 3 a.m. – Lucie started a new notebook.

Coshed by drowsiness, Stella had begun clearing up until Lucy shooed her to bed. ‘I’ve got this, honey-bunch.’

Now, hunched on the sofa, Stanley on her lap licking his toes, Stella fretted about exactly what Lucie had ‘got’. Not the clearing up, but that suited Stella.

Stella hadn’t told Lucie the SIO was Janet, that would have definitely put flames to petrol. In Hammersmith, where Lucie was chief crime reporter on the Chronicle, Lucie had claimed Janet was jealous of her being with Terry. Lucie was as convinced as Stella’s mother that Terry and Janet had been an item. She took it personally when Janet embargoed her stories or didn’t pick her to ask a question at press briefings.

Some forty years ago, in the heat of separation from Stella’s mother, propelled by a broken heart Terry had had an affair with Lucie. For him it was an affair on the rebound; for Lucie – self-styled truth warrior – it had been love.

It wouldn’t be personal, Stella knew. It riled all police detectives when journalists subjugated reality for hypotheticals. When facts failed to fit her stories, Lucie defaulted to fiction. Yet Janet wouldn’t allow her personal feelings to get in the way of her work. Lucie, on the other hand, gave resentments and animosities free rein.

Stella had no qualms about keeping back from Lucie that Janet was in Tewkesbury, but she should have told Janet that, convalescing from a head injury, Lucie May was Stella’s flatmate.

Two months ago, Stella’s friends – and Jack – had deemed it ludicrous that Stella would share a flat with Lucie. Jackie and Beverly warned Stella that money and domestics were always the stumbling blocks. Stella’s mum, despite having left Terry, had been jealous that he’d taken up with Lucie and now told Stella that ‘Lucie May will skin you alive’.

However, Stella and Lucie had surprised everyone by getting on famously. Stella accepted that Lucie’s fulsome offers to shop, cook and clean never translated into deed. Stella preferred to do these tasks herself. Stella’s own idea of cooking was an array of ready meals – shepherd, cottage and fish pies with frozen peas as a concession to Jackie’s frequent suggestions that Stella eat more greens. Every week, Lucie treated them to a takeaway. This week, Indian.

Stella dreaded the day when, fully recovered, Lucie must inevitably return to London. Stella had no plans to go back, but in the last weeks distantly recognized that she liked life in Tewksbury because Lucie was there too. She had tried encouraging Lucie to stop researching and actually begin writing her true-crime bestseller. But, easily side-tracked by other stories or another avenue of research, Lucie hadn’t progressed to page one. If Stella had planned a way of keeping Lucie in Tewkesbury, nothing was more effective than telling her about Roddy March’s murder.

Stella placed her empty mug on a Tewkesbury Abbey coaster and going into Google Play Store, she downloaded a podcast app.

Her brain a fug, Stella had forgotten the title of the