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

‘We don’t know.’ Perhaps it was time to shift Faye’s attention to himself. Everyone had bad days and the woman could be intimidating, but Jude was surprised at how Ashleigh seemed to have allowed Faye to unnerve her. ‘Single, no past relationships that we’re aware of.’

‘You’ll be inquiring further.’

‘Obviously.’

‘The modus operandi suggests they’re linked.’

‘But not necessarily a homophobic motive.’ He sensed disquiet. On the other side of the table Doddsy, who had remained silent until that point, allowed himself the faintest shrug. ‘Until I hear something else I’ll keep an open mind .’

‘As, of course, you should.’ Faye fidgeted with her cuffs.

Jude reached for his coffee and sipped at it, reminding himself who was in charge of the investigation and taking back control of it. ‘We have to consider our main suspects.’ Chris had already written the key names on the board. ‘Those who were on the spot could have done it. There’s Phil. We can’t rule him out until we find someone who can swear he wasn’t lurking round the corner waiting to happen upon the scene.’

‘Do you know Dr Garner well?’ Faye asked, still fidgeting.

Jude shook his head. ‘In passing.’

‘I’ve met him,’ Doddsy added, as if for the sake of disclosure, ‘but again it was brief and purely social.’

Thankfully she didn’t press them. Tammy was furious enough with Jude, as well as Doddsy, and she’d be even madder when she realised they were investigating her husband as a possible murder suspect. ‘There’s Claud. He was on the spot both times. And Natalie.’

‘So the only people we can name as suspects for two possible homophobic murders are someone who’s dedicated to saving lives and someone who campaigns in support of gay rights.’ Chris sat back.

‘There may be other motives. And there were other people in the area as well. We need to cross-check their movements.’

Jude’s heart had sunk as soon as Faye had raised the question of sexuality. ‘Obviously we rule nothing in or out at this stage, but equally obviously, we have to treat these two killings as linked, and we have to consider the very real possibility they’re motivated by hate.’ He tapped his pen on the table and the silence that lingered between them had a particular sourness to it. ‘But they may be random. I don’t want to cause any alarm but I think we need to warn people to take care—’

‘They’ll all be freaking out over it already,’ Doddsy said, ‘regardless of any threat level. It’s what people do. The risk to an individual might be small, but people don’t know that. The last thing we need is panic.’

Faye plucked at her collar. ‘Absolutely. Leave that with me. Naturally I reassured everyone as much as I could but it won’t help. We’ll just make sure there are plenty of uniforms about in the town. That always helps.’ She checked her watch and stood up, but she lingered. ‘Keep me informed as to what’s happening, would you? I have other things to attend to just now.’

‘Okay,’ Jude said, taking this as a signal to carry on without her. ‘Do we know what we’re doing? Ashleigh, you’ll take on the door-to-door inquiries, as usual. Doddsy, do you want to pop down the road and get up to speed with what’s going on in the town? Faye’s right. We need to make sure that the public see us about.’ Because a murder in an isolated lane was one thing, but there was nothing to put the fear of God into the local population like a violent death on their own doorstep. ‘Do your reassuring act. Be as jolly as you can without looking as if you aren’t taking it seriously. Chris, I want you to get your team onto finding out as much as you can about Gracie Pepper. In particular, I’d like to know of she had any connection to Giles Butler. And I want you to find out where Dr Butler was last night.’ He pushed his chair back. ‘I’m going into Carlisle this afternoon, to attend the PM. I don’t imagine there will be many surprises, but you never know. And as always, I’m at the end of the phone.’

He turned to give one long last searching look at the whiteboard, as if its scant information on the previous night’s murder might make any more sense, but inevitably his mind was as cluttered and incomprehensible as the material on the board.

*

‘I’m off, then.’ Jude whisked his jacket up off the back of his chair and over his shoulder. ‘Keep me updated.’

‘See you later.’ Standing up, Ashleigh reached into the pile of small change in her desk drawer and addressed herself to Chris at the next desk. ‘I’m heading to the coffee machine.’ It would be a quick fix, because there was no time to head down to the canteen. ‘Want one?’

‘Flat white.’ He was already absorbed in the next step of the investigation.

Faye had drifted only as far as the corridor and Ashleigh, leaving the incident room and walking down the corridor, ran right into the trap. ‘Ashleigh. There you are.’

Did the woman never sit down in her office and do any actual work? ‘Oh, hi Faye.’ She turned her back to her boss and slipped a coin into the coffee machine, where it rattled straight into the reject tray. At the close of a briefing meeting her habit was to go to the coffee machine, and it was uncomfortable to reflect that Faye remembered that trivial detail and had used it against her.

‘I’d like a quiet word with you. Unofficially, of course,’ Faye said, staring down the corridor and picking away at her discreet gold earring.

‘Of course.’ Because what else could she say?

‘I want to know exactly what you’ve told your boyfriend.’

In their previous shared