Whisper For The Reaper by Jack Gatland (best book series to read TXT) 📕

nodded. ‘I wasn’t on shift that day, but I heard about it. Old man, right? Heart attack at the wheel?’

‘That’s what we’re checking into,’ Anjli replied. At this, Kenny’s face fell.

‘Are we being blamed for it?’ he asked. ‘Nobody came to us and we hid nothing.’

‘Do you think you should be blamed for it?’ De’Geer responded angrily, but Anjli held a hand up, stopping him.

‘At the time we believed he was driving south, from Hurley,’ she explained. ‘We’ve now learned that there was a slight chance he was in your pub before the accident.’

Kenny nodded. ‘He was, but we didn’t do anything that could have caused it,’ he replied. ‘We overwrite all CCTV though, so that footage is long gone.’

‘Is there anyone we can speak to who worked that night?’ Anjli looked around the car park as she spoke, as if expecting a member of staff to magically appear out of nowhere. Kenny shook his head apologetically.

‘New management,’ he explained. ‘When we closed for refurbishments, we knew that we’d be closed for a good month or more, Most of our staff were casual, couldn’t take that much time off. I think Lisa works at the Rising Sun now, she might have been on shift that day, but that would have been about it.’

‘Thanks anyway,’ De’Geer replied, already turning back to the motorbike as Anjli passed Kenny her card.

‘If you hear anything, could you call us?’ she asked. Kenny nodded.

‘I don’t think I’ll be able to help much more than you already know, most likely,’ he admitted. ‘The guy didn’t really stand out apart from the age difference.’

‘What do you mean?’ Anjli stopped at this.

‘I mean we’re an out of the way pub,’ Kenny replied. ‘We get ramblers and cyclists, dog walkers, all that sort of thing; but at night there’s a small group of regulars that turn up and the rest are people who…’ he paused as if not sure what to say here.

‘The rest are people who pick us because we’re out of the way,’ he finished. ‘You know, clandestine meetings, usually between couples who have other halves, if you get my drift.’

‘And you think Patrick Walsh was here for a meeting like that?’ Anjli looked to De’Geer, who shrugged.

‘His wife died years earlier, maybe he was.’

‘He definitely met with a woman, but she was much younger. I remember someone mentioning that they even thought she was his daughter until they heard her speak.’

Anjli looked up from the notebook, finally connecting the dots. ‘She had a German accent.’

‘That’s right!’ Kenny exclaimed. ‘See? You do know as much as we do. Anyway, from what I was told they shared a drink, had a row and then he left. About half hour later the bar staff heard the ambulances down the road. Went down there, saw the crash.’

‘Do you know what they had a row about?’

Kenny shook his head. ‘As I said, Lisa might know more. I wasn’t there.’

‘Well, that definitely helps us,’ Anjli smiled. And help them it did, as now they had concrete proof that Patrick Walsh came to the Dew Drop Inn before his fatal accident, where he met with a woman who could only be Ilse Müller. They needed a more reliable witness, though. ‘We’ll see if we can find Lisa at the Rising Sun.’

‘Tell her she’s welcome back when we open,’ Kenny was already walking back towards the pub, and the contractors. ‘We should be done in a couple of weeks and the regulars loved her.’

‘One last thing,’ Anjli shouted out. ‘I get Mister Walsh left in his car, but you’re pretty out of the way here, even for a local. Do you know how the German lady got home?’

‘No idea,’ Kenny said, looking back. ‘I heard she left with another man, but that’s it. Apparently the same age as the other guy, but likely her dad.’

Anjli nodded. ‘Because he was German as well.’

Kenny smiled. ‘See? You had it already.’ And the conversation finished, he entered the building. Anjli looked to De’Geer, who had already reached the same conclusion.

‘Karl Schnitter was in the pub when Chief Superintendent Walsh met Ilse,’ he said. ‘The question is whether Walsh saw him.’

‘We also have two more leads here,’ Anjli was pulling on her helmet. ‘We know Patrick lost control after leaving and crashed. He either had the heart attack before or after that. And Karl is the village’s mechanic. He could have easily fixed the brakes while Patrick was inside. Or, Ilse spiked his drink which caused the crash.’

‘Or both,’ De’Geer started up the engine. ‘Spiked drink causes him to overcompensate, and if the brakes aren’t working…’ he let the thought hang in the air as Anjli climbed onto the bike behind him.

‘We need to speak to Lisa at the Rising Sun,’ she said. ‘We need a witness who can confirm for sure if the Germans were indeed Karl Schnitter and Ilse Müller. And if they were, I think we can pretty much confirm Ilse’s tale last night that Karl’s her father, making Rolfe the legitimate child of Wilhelm Müller.’

Jess had intended to keep her word to her dad, to stay away from the case and let him carry on, but at the same time she wanted to help, and sitting with Billy, watching a CCTV feed while he coded on another laptop was a little dull, even if she was impressed with his computer skills. And so she decided that finding out anything else about Nathanial Wing, information that could help the case while staying away from the case, was a good idea.

Within twenty minutes of deciding this, she’d explained to Billy that she had urgent homework to do back at home, caught the bus to Henley and made her way back to the Regal Picturehouse cafe on Boroma Way, hoping that some of the teenagers that she’d spoken to before might still be there. As it was, only Prisha sat at a table, working on a laptop, a green juice of some kind by her