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

challenging gaze, holding it to remind him who was in charge. ‘Did you know Gracie well?’

‘No, not at all. By sight, only.’

‘But you knew her name.’

‘The nurses all wear name badges.’ His hesitation was fractional. ‘I try and remember their names. It’s good management.’

Jude allowed himself a moment of reflection. It was too much of a coincidence, surely, that two people should have died within yards of the Blackwells. ‘Was anyone else there?’

‘As I said before. The churchyard was quiet. When I realised there was a problem and that someone was hurt I focussed on what was actually happening.’ He paused. ‘I realise that isn’t what you want to hear, but I’m not trained to be the eyes and ears of everyone. I have a job to do.’

Phil would pick a fight with anyone over anything but his attitude to Jude, knowing the requirements of the job and the need for immediate action, was one of bolshie entitledness. Briefly, Jude wondered what kind of words might have passed in the Garner household over Tyrone’s relationships with Doddsy. Perhaps Phil was just too used to playing God, lord in his own home and his own clinic. ‘If you didn’t see anything, you didn’t see anything. It can’t be helped. But at least let me run you through the places you might have seen something.’

Apparently mollified, Phil took a moment to think. ‘The library closes at six, so they couldn’t have gone there. There was definitely no-one in the entrance to the arcade, but I suppose someone could have got away that way.’

‘If they did, someone will have seen them, I imagine. That’s helpful.’ Jude nodded, a quick stroke of flattery to Phil’s ego, a hint that he was adding even more value to his existing public service. ‘Nothing else?’

‘I didn’t pass anyone in the bottom half of the churchyard. Perhaps someone could have got away down to King Street or to the Market Square. I don’t know.’

Chris’s first task the next day would be checking the CCTV in the Market Square to see who might have emerged from the darkness. ‘That’s fine, Phil.’ Jude proffered his notebook, saw Phil scan and sign and took it back. ‘Thanks.’

‘The bloody police station now, I suppose.’

‘I’m afraid so. And then you can get on with what’s left of your evening.’

*

‘Come on, darling.’ Natalie regarded Claud with anxious eyes as he re-emerged into the reception area of the police station. They’d taken his blood-stained clothes away, as if finding a body made you a suspect, and he was dressed in a jumper and jogging bottoms. God knew where they came from. After all she was glad she’d washed her own clothes. She couldn’t have borne being taken to the police station like a criminal and sent home in someone else’s cast-offs. ‘I’ll drive you home. Then we’ll have something to eat.’ Because although she ate little, Claud was a serious trencherman and there was little she could think of that was more normal to him than food.

‘It’s okay.’

‘It’ll be all right.’ She felt the weight of his soul, not just the tug of his arm on hers as they made their way along Meeting House Lane. In reality her repeated concerns were as much for her own support as for his and there was room for debate as to which of them was helping the other, but as long as the two of them kept ploughing on, it didn’t really matter.

‘It’s okay, Nat.’ He squeezed her arm. ‘I’ll drive. It was a shock, but I’m over it. Poor girl.’

The fact that he called a mature woman a girl was a sign of his loss of concentration. Proper respect was a central plank of his mission. Her heart warmed towards him even more at this lapse. ‘I know. Just like it was at home.’ Now they’d been through the same thing together.

‘But the worst thing, Nat… For a moment I thought it was you.’

‘It wasn’t. It’s all right.’

‘But someone… she was someone’s, wasn’t she?’

Another non-Claud phrase. People belonged to nobody in his world, though Natalie liked to think that she belonged to him, and he to her, exclusively. ‘Yes.’

‘It’s such a mess, Nat. The things that people do to one another. I realise now, I recognised her. From one of the workshops.’

They slowed as they approached Sandgate. Reaching the car meant passing the eastern end of the church close, where they couldn’t avoid the police and the ambulance, the onlookers who didn’t understand how shocking it was to cradle the dying. And now a stranger was approaching them, and even this everyday occurrence seemed a potential trap. Natalie shrank back, pulling Claud aside on the narrow pavement to let the oncoming figure pass.

He didn’t. ‘Mr Blackwell? It is Mr Blackwell, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ Shuffling out of the darkest shadows into the streetlight, Claud kept hold of Natalie’s arm.

‘I thought I recognised you there in the churchyard. It’s George Meadows. I was at the meeting after the service a couple of weeks ago.’ Impatient to get home, as she was sure Claud must be, Natalie had no time for the concern of strangers, but Claud was different. He knew everyone, never forgot a face. ‘Of course! George. We were talking about the Rainbow Festival. Thought your input was invaluable.’ He extracted his arm from Natalie’s and shook the man’s hand. ‘Do you reckon it’s a goer?’

That was the thing about Claud. No matter what you put him through, the minute you dangled one of his pet projects in front of him he would switch into a different mode. Perhaps it was a defence mechanism. If it was, it wasn’t working for Natalie. She bounced up and down on the balls of her feet, impatient to be away from the town and get the corroding scent of death away from her