Lost Souls by Jenny O'Brien (android e book reader txt) 📕

‘Helped?’

‘That’s the word she used.’

‘What about the person with her?’

Jax shook his head. ‘She didn’t take any notice. A posh car though, James Bond like, she called it.’

‘Okay, thank you. Carry on with the interviews and let me know if you come up with anything, even if you think it’s not important.’ She turned back to Owen. ‘Put your foot down; we may be in time to save a life.’

He shifted into gear. ‘I still don’t reckon you’re right about Hayley Prince. She couldn’t have been more helpful when I met with her yesterday at the funeral home.’

‘Because she’s what? Young? Pretty? Dresses well? So what and who cares? Except you, it seems. You concentrate on driving and I’ll see if I can find her on the system. While I’m searching her up, tell me everything you can remember.’

‘Smartly dressed in a grey two-piece business suit, similar to yours but …’

‘But what?’

He cleared his throat. ‘High-end.’

Gaby rolled her eyes. ‘So she has money to burn, excuse the pun. What else?’

‘Married.’ He paused a second. ‘That’s right. Something about having a brother in the force. Whitstable, off the top of my head.’

‘Okay, here she is,’ Gaby said, peering down at the screen. ‘No priors. Hayley Elizabeth Prince, widow. An only child.’ She paused, sending him a look laden with sympathy. He wouldn’t be the first man to be taken in by a pretty face but Owen would take the slip-up personally. ‘Prince inherited the business from her husband five years ago,’ she continued, tilting the phone in his direction briefly to share a photo of the grieving widow. ‘There was a spread in the Llandudno Chronicle. Apparently she’s done wonders in turning the funeral home into a flourishing business with her PAYG model, even so far as being nominated for North Wales businesswoman of the year on three separate occasions. Oh, this is interesting.’ Her finger slid over the screen as she read further. ‘Her father used to be headmaster of St Gildas, retired three years ago when presumably …’

‘Paul de Bertrand took over. A coincidence that consecutive headmasters are both tied up in murder inquiries.’

‘And St Gildas is also the place Miss Jane worked as a teacher – you know how I feel about coincidences, Owen.’

‘Have you heard anything from the de Bertrands, by the way? Having your wife wake up beside the dead body of her flatmate appears to have been the glue needed to repair the fractures in their relationship. I was surprised that the school didn’t offer him his job back in the end. After all, none of it was their fault.’

‘They did,’ Gaby said, checking her phone for messages only to return it to her lap, her fingers resting on top. ‘I’ve had one or two postcards. They’re travelling around Europe at the moment working from dig to dig. A middle-aged gap year is how she put it.’

‘Lucky them!’

‘As if you mean that. You’re more than happy with your little family.’ She scowled, unwilling to compare her own relationship failings to both Owen’s and the de Bertrands’. No one, least of all her, knew what would happen between her and Rusty but, if history was to repeat itself, it was a disaster in the making.

‘If it wasn’t for the fact that Prince lied to you about having a brother,’ she said, forcing the conversation back on its tracks, ‘I’d have had to agree with you about her being an unlikely candidate for a double murder but she has so …’

‘She’s played me for a complete fool,’ he said, adding in a curse for good measure, which was so unlike him that Gaby’s eyes widened in surprise.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that, Owen. Turning on the womanly charm in order to get what you want has been around since the very start of time. It would have taken a better man than you to suspect what she was up to but it was pretty stupid of her to make up a fictitious brother to put you off the scent, when you had no reason to suspect her in the first place.’ She lifted her gaze from her phone, her brow lowering. ‘Hey, where are you going? This isn’t the way to her—’

‘No but it’s about time I used my head for once,’ he interrupted. ‘It makes no sense to take Ms Fry back to her house when she has a perfectly legitimate means to dispose of her body at her place of work.’ He indicated right at the traffic lights up ahead before taking a sharp left and squeezing in between two cars with the expertise of someone who wasn’t even thinking about what he was doing: a reverse parallel park of such precision that Gaby smiled, deciding to hold her tongue. No point in congratulating him on something she often struggled with, she thought, again blaming her lack of height for her inability to skilfully manoeuvre a car into any space that wasn’t the length of a bus.

‘What now?’ She glanced across the road at the shiny plate-glass window featuring a tasteful display of headstones, a wreath of red and white flowers the only thing to offset the scene.

‘You stay in the car while we wait for backup, bearing in mind that they currently think that we’re going to Prince’s home. In the meantime, I’ll head round the rear.’ He unclipped his seatbelt or at least tried to. Gaby’s fingers suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

‘Oh no you don’t. And have all the fun while you leave me hanging around for the boys in blue?’ She released his hand only to work on her own seatbelt, remembering to position the ‘officer on duty’ card in the window.

‘Gaby!’

‘Don’t you “Gaby” me in that tone of voice, Owen,’ she said, climbing out of the car. ‘You need to remember that while I might be your boss, we’re also a team and a bloody good one at that. We go in together or we wait for