The Piggy Farmer (The Barrington Patch Book 3) by Emmy Ellis (smart books to read .TXT) 📕

two now dead, it was looking like a connection stared him in the face, one he’d have to snuff out.

How the fuck would he get the Graftons out of this one if they’d had a hand in it? Maybe she hadn’t told him on purpose. His reactions had been genuine; fellow officers wouldn’t suspect him.

Clever bitch.

He didn’t feel any guilt whatsoever about being in their pay—he couldn’t, not with the goings-on at his house. Gorley had been in with Lenny, Gary knew that for a fact, the secret whispered by the then DCI one night in The Donny, and Gary had wanted that for himself, needed it. His wages hadn’t stretched once his wife, Trish, had got ill with a muscular disease and had to give up her job, but he’d been stretched, having to work overtime while worrying about not being home enough to watch over her. Their daughter had stepped up to the plate, but she shouldn’t have to. With Francis giving him ten grand for Bob, plus a so far unspecified amount each week from now on, he could employ a freelance carer, someone to nip in two or three times a day to see how Trish was doing, and to sit with her, put her to bed on those evenings he couldn’t leave the station on time—or like tonight, where he’d gone home but had to come out again to this mess, leaving Trish a captive to their mattress.

Gary, in protective clothing himself, approached Evan, who’d moved on to the female victim. And it hit him then, that while it sounded fantastical, these two murders might not be connected to Gorley and Bob. The first two could be unrelated—Bob had pissed the Graftons off, for whatever reason, and Gorley had placed something too close to his gas fire and died.

No, the latter wasn’t right, not that anyone else knew that. Just in case it was a Grafton hit, Gary, being the first on scene after the firefighters, had spotted a padlock in the ashes, in the locked position, and carefully, with his back to the fire crew, he’d swiped it up, placing it in his coat pocket. If it had been on the outside of the shed door, it would point to murder, and he for one didn’t want to be the SIO on that situation (but he was, to cover for Francis). The post-mortem results hadn’t come back for Gorley yet, it was perhaps too soon, and Gary prayed the bloke had just been burnt and there were no signs of foul play.

This scene… Had one of their spouses finally found out about the years-long affair, following them? Had they seen what was so obviously happening, going off on one? With nowt here that could have been used as a weapon, they had to have brought one—or two—with them, so it was premeditated, a conscious decision to harm. This had all the signs of a rage attack, personal, what with the state of the woman’s face. Someone had gone to town on it, blood spatter everywhere, her cheeks ripped, one of her eyes hanging out, for Pete’s sake. Her bottom lip had been torn and, attached only by a slither of skin, had flopped over the bottom of her cheek, her lower teeth bared.

He’d have to visit their next of kin to inform them of the tragic news and, much as he detested it, ask them where they were this evening. That was standard, but it would be a loaded question because of the emotion involved in Codderidge’s murder. Most killers, in his experience, didn’t try to obliterate a face unless they were incensed with love or hate.

Or both.

“Got any thoughts for me, Evan?” Gary stood on an evidence step at the dead woman’s feet, his white overalls rustling in a soft breeze. Jesus, it was so cold tonight.

Evan didn’t turn his face to him. His bushy black eyebrows scrunched, and he swiped a gloved hand beneath blood-matted hair to brush it away from the victim’s neck, some of it clinging to the bloodied gashes there. The photographer had already been, and Gary had given the all-clear for the pathologist to do his job, allowing him to touch the body if he had a mind. It’d be in his hands in the lab anyroad.

Evan sighed, his mask puffing out. “I’m thinking… And this isn’t to tell you how to suck eggs with regards to working out what happened here.”

“I always value your input. We’re a team, all of us in it together.” He was slightly sickened by saying that. He wasn’t a full team member anymore, he was bent, but Trish… He was doing this for her, had to keep reminding himself of that. “You help with listening to the dead telling their final story, and it always gives me something to run with. Go on.”

“Kind of you to say. Gorley would have rolled his eyes—oh, and I have some news for you there, some findings from the post, although I haven’t completed it yet. I’ll tell you in a minute.”

God…

Evan shifted on his haunches, his calf muscles probably giving him gyp. “Back to this case. Knight may have been hit to subdue him, get him out of the way while Codderidge was attacked. Perhaps the real rage was against her, not him, considering she’s in this mess and he fared a little better, although that smack to his face, blunt force trauma with what I suspect was a bat—seen enough of those wounds to be certain that’s what it is—was a pretty hard one, and the wounds on his neck, they’d have finished him off if the head blow didn’t.”

“So, a male assailant?”

Evan laughed, the hoot of an owl, his crows’ feet concertinaing. “Come on now. You know as well as I do a woman could have done this. A bat, wielded by anyone angry enough, can