The Distant Dead by Lesley Thomson (books for students to read TXT) 📕

Jack sniffed the smear on the railing. ‘Definitely blood.’

‘It’s down there too.’ In the torchlight, drops of blood were dotted at their feet. There was the fraction of a shoeprint, not either of theirs as it was further to the left.

‘Probably a fight.’ Jack’s gaze drifted back to the deluge below.

‘Another mugging,’ Bev breathed. ‘We should tell the police.’

‘Tell them what?’ Jack got out his phone and aimed the torch towards the gantry. ‘It’s not like we saw anything.’

‘Look, there’s more.’ Bev’s torch pinpointed a trail, the drops of blood closer together.

The drops led over the gantry and stopped on the bank. The injured man could have staggered off in any of three directions. They were about to give up when Jack found another drop by an arch on which the words ‘Victoria Gardens’ were fashioned in iron. He’d read about the Victoria Pleasure Gardens in the hotel information folder. Built in 1897 for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the arch was made when it was Elizabeth’s turn in 2012. It was no pleasure tracking bloodstains.

‘He went in there.’ Bev dropped her voice.

LED lamps lit a path beside the Avon, washing trees, shrubs and the ghost shapes of dug-over flower beds in pools of icy white light. In some places, the river had swelled over the bank. A mirror to the sky.

‘Is the river always that high?’ Beverly whispered.

‘Tewkesbury often floods.’ Another snippet from the hotel folder. Jack’s heel skidded and, envisaging blood, he saw the path had become mud stuck with twigs and leaves.

‘There’s someone on that bench.’ Beverly grabbed his arm.

Shadows of branches played tricks with what was tangible and what was in his head. Jack had a bad feeling.

They trod across the once ornamental lawns, now a quagmire. The bench where Beverly had seen someone was empty.

‘Damn, he must have seen us.’ A first aider at Clean Slate, Beverly would have been set to flex her skills. ‘Or I imagined it.’

‘You didn’t. Look.’ Outlined under the other Jubilee arch, a figure moved, swaying with the shadows of branches blown in the wind.

‘It’s not a man.’ Bev was already running towards the arch. ‘It’s Stella.’

*

Stella wheeled around as they crossed the car park beyond the gardens. She tried to run.

‘Stella. No.’ Beverly and Jack were brought up short.

In the thin LED light, Stella’s face was streaked with blood, her hair matted. Her face, where it wasn’t bloodied, was a dreadful pale.

‘My poor darling.’ Forgetting about giving Stella space or any of the rehearsed speeches he’d composed, Jack caught her in his arms.

‘Sit on this.’ Beverly pulled out a triangular canvas bag from her shoulder bag and passed it to Jack. He recognized it – Lucie had one. A shooting stick.

Standing back, he released the catch and the folded metal sticks snapped to attention. Taking Stella’s hand, he guided her onto the saddle-shaped seat.

‘Where does it hurt, Stell?’ Bev was unzipping her first-aid bag.

‘Everywhere,’ Stella groaned.

‘We’re taking you to hospital,’ Jack said.

‘I’m all right.’ Stella waved a feeble hand. ‘No need.’

‘Christ, Stell, this is a deep gash, did this happen on the weir?’ Beverly began dabbing at Stella’s face with cotton wool soaked in antiseptic.

‘I just need sleep.’ Stella’s words were slurred.

‘You’ve banged your head. We must get it checked out.’ Jack didn’t need to know first aid to realize a head injury could be serious.

‘I didn’t bang my head.’

‘What did you do?’ Jack felt a chill dread envelope him.

‘Someone tried to kill me.’

Chapter Forty-One

2019

Stella

‘You’re not allowed to work.’ Batting at Stella’s open laptop, Lucie placed a mug of slippery elm beside Stella. ‘Your gru-el, Olee-var.’

‘The doctor said my skull isn’t fractured, no haemorrhaging. Now the painkillers are working, I’m fine.’ An overstatement, Stella had the ghost of a headache.

She had woken at six and, fortified by ibuprofen, dragged on a jumper and joggers. Wandering into the front room with the vague notion of doing her usual clearing up, she had found Lucie ensconced in Stella’s usual place on the sofa. Lucie directed her to the cockpit where she draped a blanket over Stella’s legs and micro-adjusted the recliner until Stella said she was comfortable.

A martyr – as Lucie put it – to heartburn, Lucie went off to make the slippery elm drink that Lucie used as a fast-food supplement and antidote to nippets. Stella fancied a bowl of cornflakes but now accepted it graciously.

Now Lucie was back and had caught Stella setting up a spreadsheet of facts gleaned about what had become a chain of murders. Date, names, location of crime, narrative of crime, links between players. Suspects. It wasn’t work, she told Lucie; colour-coded conditional formulas were next best to slippery elm.

‘While you were being scanned and mummified in that fetching bandage, Jack and Bev told me they’ve found Roddy March’s unrequited victim.’ Legs bunched under her, Lucie consulted her notebook. ‘December 1940, a prostitute is murdered in the London Blitz, name like a tree… Here we are, Maple Greenhill. Twenty-three-year-old living at home with parents, younger brother Vernon and her baby boy. The Greenhill mum and dad had passed him off as their afterthought. The senior investigating officer – Divisional Detective Inspector in those days – was George Cotton aged… they didn’t say, but here’s the thing…’ Lucie glugged her slippery elm as if it was vile medicine. Stella was rather enjoying hers. ‘In 1979 Cotton died in Tewkesbury on the very bridge where some git lamped you last night. Fishy-wishy, yes?’

‘Janet reckons the attack was a random robbery – they nicked my rucksack, there was about a hundred quid in my purse.’ This loss hurt more than the pain in her head. Stella returned to populating rows with the Greenhills and Cotton the detective, coding 1940 green to differentiate from the grey of the present day.

‘Janet being wrong is not a first.’ Lucie slammed her emptied mug on the coffee table. ‘Thank God your notebook was in your jacket, or the murderer would now know how close we are