Cold Blood by Jane Heafield (great books to read txt) 📕

warrant card and was waved on. The officer didn’t seem to recognise him as the man who’d found the bodies and who was supposed to be on the motorway by now.

He turned off the street, onto another, and parked outside a semi-detached house with a pond in the garden and a stack of cuddly teddies in the living-room window. A single police car here, but no officers in sight. They would be in another house, asking the resident if he or she knew of a raving lunatic in town. Bennet wanted this task done and dusted before he was spotted by a fellow blue.

The gateposts were house-brick towers with stone lions the size of cats atop. One, at least. The other was a jagged shard where the lion was missing.

The door opened. A craggy old lady appeared on a tiny three-wheeled mobility scooter. She had curly grey hair with red tips, as if long-ago dyed, and eyes sunken and cloudy. Combined with a droop to one side of her face, as if from a stroke, she looked little better than a zombie. He’d never met her before, but had heard from Lorraine that the lady had been a professional diver who’d nearly gotten a medal at the ’56 Summer Olympics.

‘Lorraine Taylor,’ he called to the old lady. ‘She was once a resident here. You never met her. But she’s very sorry. She was coming home a bit drunk one night and fell into your stone lion, and broke it. She was always very sorry about it. She just never got the courage to come here and apologise.’

His words didn’t seem to register. She just stared.

‘She was a very nice person. I think I loved her. I might still do. It’s all very weird for me at the moment. She’s dead now.’

Knowing the lady wouldn’t really understand had made it easier to say those words aloud. But voicing them made it more real for Bennet. He had loved Lorraine, he realised. Because she had given him Joe, he still did. He had not once been in her company in the last decade, having followed her life via digital words and pictures, but he would miss her immensely.

‘I want to kill the person who killed her,’ he told the old lady. Thankfully, those words didn’t seem to register, either.

42

Partway down the hill into the main road into the Well at Lampton’s centre was a terrace of convenience stores converted from houses, including Hughes’ News. Hughes and his wife had run the little newsagent’s since 29th July 1981, the day Prince Charles married Lady Diana. The last Bennet knew, ten years ago, the old pair had been saving for relocation to the Isle of Man, where they had family. When he saw a young woman behind the counter, he knew they’d achieved that dream. She put down her newspaper and stood with a smile.

‘Janine, isn’t it?’

She lost the smile. ‘I’m not supposed to talk to reporters. Are you one?’

‘No. So, is it Janine?’

She seemed to take a moment, looking him up and down, before speaking again. Clearly, she’d decided he didn’t look like a reporter. ‘How do you know my name? I don’t recognise you.’

‘You’re the Hughes’ daughter, right? You lived on the Isle of Man.’

She nodded. ‘My parents emigrated over there, about two months ago now. They gave me the shop to run. I’d just got divorced, so I thought, why not have a change of scenery? But I thought I’d met everyone who lives here. They like to introduce themselves. I don’t remember you.’

‘We never met. I left Lampton ten years ago. I lived with a local girl called Lorraine Taylor. She used to come in on Thursday mornings to collect the Buxton Advertiser for her dad. She taught your mother a knee-strengthening routine.’

‘Oh, wow, yes, Mother told me about some knee exercises. She said they worked so well she could get up the stairs without the handrail. I don’t think she mentioned anyone called Lorraine, though. I’m sorry. So, that’s why you’re here? To visit? You picked a strange old day. Have you heard what’s happened up at Lake Stanton?’

‘I sure did. I bet the rumours are flying already.’

‘No one knows anything yet. The police are interviewing everyone. God, what a thing. And then we had that missing little girl that other time. People won’t like that being brought up after so long.’

‘Out of respect to the mother, right?’

‘Yes. Best if she is just allowed to move on, in her own time. Poor woman. Every time I see her in here, I just want to hug her and ask if she’s all right.’

‘But it would open old wounds, break her healing process, right?’

‘Yes. Poor woman. I don’t mention it.’

So it wasn’t just visitors who got sold a line. Even residents who hadn’t been part of the world back then had been brainwashed by Turner’s bullshit about respect and compassion and doing the right thing. ‘Are people talking to the police?’

‘Sure, why wouldn’t they? Look.’ She picked up a leaflet from the counter. It announced a meeting tomorrow at 9.30am at the village hall, which everyone was invited to and expected to attend.

‘The police say they’ll give us updates then. God, this is so shocking. Too much for such a little place. To think we might have a killer in the village.’

‘Yes, it is. And Councillor Turner hasn’t tried to veto the meeting yet? Or called his own?’

‘Richard? Oh, he’s meeting some high-ranking police today, I heard. He rushed off to do it. He’s going to try to get the journalists kicked out. He’s warned us they’ll be all over the town once they’ve finished taking photos up at the lake. There’s a few hanging round. I thought you were one.’

Liam put a pound coin on the counter. ‘About Lorraine. Your dad undercharged her one time, years ago. A bag of Maltesers missed off the bill. I’d like to pay it. Lorraine always wanted to pay it, but never got