Small Town Secrets (Some Very English Murders Book 2)

by Issy Brooke

  Penny found it hard to believe. A day of rain would be a blessing, she thought. “So, what’s new, Agatha?” she asked, leaning against the wall to get under the shade of the shop’s canopy.

  “Not a lot, my love. They haven’t found the murderer yet, have they? Ooh, that is a bad business. Found out in the sticks, all alone, robbed and strangled. Well. Warren Martin must have been leading a double life, eh?”

  “Indeed he must,” Penny said. “Any other unusual goings-on around Glenfield at the moment?”

  “I thought you said you weren’t investigating.”

  “I’m not,” Penny said with a grin. “I’m gossiping.” With the blessing of the police, she added in her head.

  “It’s too hot for anyone to get up to much,” Agatha said. “Even whoever was harassing poor old Reg Bailey has stopped.”

  “Yes, but Drew put up the CCTV, didn’t he? That’s going to be a deterrent.”

  “True,” Agatha said, fanning herself with the paperback she was holding. “I don’t know what the world is coming to, when someone decides to target an innocent widower like Reg.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “Cuthbert Road, one of those really posh detached houses on the other side of the river,” Agatha said. “I don’t usually reckon much to the folks down there, but the one thing you can say about Reg is that he worked hard all his life, and everything that he has, he earned. I’ve got a lot of respect for a man like that.”

  “Does he have any enemies?”

  “None!” Agatha declared vehemently. “Who would want to take against him, eh?”

  “Maybe whoever was harassing him was mistaken. Maybe they had the wrong person. Had he lived there long?”

  “Twenty years, since his wife died.”

  “I’m going to wander down.”

  Suddenly Agatha was suspicious. “Why?”

  “To look at the pole that Drew made for him,” Penny said, as innocently as she could. “And I’ve nothing else to do today, and I’ve not really been down that road.”

  Agatha seemed unconvinced and Penny felt her eyes on her back all the way back down the High Street.

  * * * *

  Cuthbert Road oozed money. The houses were large and detached and had long, sweeping driveways cluttered with expensive German cars and the occasional Jaguar. The gardens were hidden behind large hedges but Penny could peep through the gates and gaps to see elegant, manicured lawns. They were the sort of lawns upon which one would drink Pimm’s while wearing broad straw hats.

  Many of the houses already had various security systems in place, but she recognised Drew’s ornamental ironwork as she got closer to a wide, five-barred gate. At the hinged side of the gate was a decorative black pole with scrollwork, and a small camera in a hard-wearing protective cage at the top.

  The gate was being painted by an old man in shirt sleeves and pale cream trousers. He looked up as she approached, and eyed her without a smile, but with no challenge or malice on his round, lined face.

  “Good afternoon,” she said politely.

  “Afternoon.” The small-town pleasantries done, he returned to his task.

  She stopped, and he looked up again, his white eyebrows wiggling with curiosity.

  “Can I help you?” he asked mildly.

  “I was admiring the ironwork,” she said. “Was that the one that Drew made?”

  “It is. He’s done a good job, that lad.”

  She gazed at it and smiled. There was a hint of bindweed about the curling scrolls.

  The man dipped his brush into the pot that was on a wooden stool next to him, to save himself the hassle of bending to the ground each time.

  “Are you Reg Bailey?” she asked. This looked like the sort of area where people employed gardeners and handymen, so she didn’t want to make assumptions.

  “That I am. And you are…?”

  “Penny May. I moved here a few months ago but I haven’t been down this road yet. It’s nice.”

  “And you know Drew,” he said.

  “Yes. He’s been really helpful and friendly. Well, everyone has, really.”

  “Most people in Upper Glenfield are decent sorts,” Reg said, drawing the wide paintbrush slowly and carefully along the top edge of the gate. “Drew deserves to do well. I don’t know much about this new thing of his, taking rich folks on country walks or whatever he’s doing, but he seems to be doing well.”

  But you are “rich folks”, yourself, Penny thought, living here. Maybe Reg didn’t see himself as the same as them. “What are your neighbours like? I’ve never met anyone who lives down this way.”

  “Oh, you wouldn’t,” Reg said with a snort. “They don’t shop in Glenfield and they don’t work here, either. Except for the doctor. She actually lives and works here, but she gets those online shopping deliveries. That lorry comes and parks outside twice a week, sometimes. She’s all right but some of them that lives along here, well, they seem to make money without working.”

  “Criminals?”

  “Bankers, which is much the same thing. Working in ‘finance’ or ‘information technology’ or ‘public relations’ – they’re not jobs, they’re really long dinners that happen to make money.”

  “I imagine that you’ve worked hard all your life,” Penny said mildly.

  “That I have! Oh, I did. That was what we did in them days,” he said. “We worked and we earned what we got. Not like now. Even if you set a good example, kids these days just ignore it.” He shook his head, and jabbed his brush into the paint pot again. “They bring shame on their parents, they do.”

  “Do you have any children?”

  It was the wrong thing to ask.

  Reg’s pale eyes turned on her, and his face grew red. “That’s who I’m talking about! My son, John!”

  “I’m so sorry…”

  He flared his nostrils and began to wheeze. She stepped back. “I’m so, so sorry,” she repeated. “I didn’t mean to upset you.” This was what Drew had warned her about, back when she’d first moved to Upper Glenfield – he’d reminded her that she didn’t know enough about people’s histories to avoid asking painful questions.

  Reg looked away. “I need to get on with my gate. Good day, Miss May.”

  She decided not to correct him to her preferred ‘Ms’. Reg was clearly a man of old traditions, and she was going to respect that.

  Poor Reg, she thought. And she wondered what his disappointing son, John, did. Or didn’t do.

  * * * *

  She pondered small town life as she wandered home. There was a core of Upper Glenfield residents whom everyone knew, but there were so many others who simply lived there but didn’t take part in the town life. Maybe they did, she thought as she walked past the Church, but in different circles. She began to see it like a Venn diagram, those mathematical pictures from school, where groups were put into circles and in some places, those circles overlapped.

  And with the murder, she thought, she needed to look at Warren Martin’s circle, and see where it overlapped with other circles. He overlapped into the camera club – Eric. And Nina, she added to herself. That young woman had a strong centre, standing up to her father as she did. Warren overlapped into the urban exploration group – Lee and Blue, who didn’t like him but didn’t seem full of enough hate to kill him. And he overlapped into the online dating world, and more specifically Clarissa de Castille, who was positively repellent and also something of a mystery.

  Her head was clouded with it all. Kali greeted Penny enthusiastically when she entered her cottage, and she let the dog out into the back garden for a good sniffing session amongst the dehydrated plants. Penny brought her laptop outside to a small round table. She also fetched her folder of passwords and administration information, and decided she needed to tackle the issue of her website. First, though, she needed the information sent to her by the hosting company that should be enough to get her back into the admin panel online. She opened up her email.

  E
xcept that she couldn’t.

  “Please re-type your password,” the pop-up box instructed.

  There’s no need, she thought. My browser has it saved. But, to humour the humourless machine, she typed it in anyway.

  “Please re-type your password.”

  With gritted teeth, she tried a third time, deliberately and slowly slamming each letter and number into the box.

  “Login attempt failed.”

  And that was it. She was locked out of her email account now.

  Penny shivered. This was a clever and concentrated attack, and even Drew’s CCTV on a stick couldn’t help her.

  She felt nervous and violated, and the nausea began to return.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Drew called her later on Tuesday but she wasn’t in the mood for talking, and after a few polite sentences, she excused herself, claimed to have a headache coming on, and he withdrew from the conversation gracefully. Then she felt even worse for having taken out her grumpiness on him. That night, she rang Cath, and let rip.

  After listening to a non-stop tirade for three minutes, Cath butted in. “So, how is your blood pressure these days?”

  It brought Penny up short. One of the reasons she’d left London and her career, and taken early retirement, was because the stresses of the job was changing her into someone she didn’t like. Just like she was behaving now, in fact. She drew in a deep breath. “Sorry. Pretty high, I’d imagine, at the moment. But I feel so–”

  “Exposed and vulnerable, yes, yes, you said. Many times. I agree with you. You’ve annoyed some of the bigger fish in the regional craft world and one of them is out to get you. Don’t forget, Penny, this is your hobby but it’s a livelihood for some of these people. Their families depend on their income.”

  “It’s a business for me, too. I take it seriously.”

  “I know you do,” Cath soothed. “But consider what’s at stake, okay? Don’t take it as personally as it seems to be.”

  Penny was slightly mollified, and went to bed early, but could not sleep.

  * * * *

  She felt rubbish on Wednesday morning. The successive nights of poor sleep were beginning to tell on her, and her eyes were gritty and her mind seemed fogged. When she got back from the early morning walk with Kali, there was a message waiting on her mobile phone. She’d left it on the kitchen table in her half-awake confusion.

  It was from Cath. “I told the Inspector about your website issues and he wants to look into it a bit more. He’s sending one of our techy whizzes down. Taz. About midday, but can you send me a text to confirm that’s okay? I’ll be in court this morning so don’t bother trying to ring me.”

  “Ugh. I’ll have to tidy up,” she said to Kali, as she hammered out a confirmatory text and prepared for the arrival of the technical man.

  * * * *

  Except that the techy man was a woman, and a very girlie girl at that; Taz turned up in a short, floral dress of stunning pinks and reds, with her long blonde hair cascading in curls over her shoulders. She carried a large, functional black rucksack, and smiled broadly. She was the sort of woman who could get away with wearing glittery, metallic make-up even in her mid-twenties.

  “Come on in!”

  “Thank you. Shall I take my shoes off?”

  “I have a dog. You might want to keep them on for your own protection.”

  Kali burst through the kitchen door. She’d been in the back garden, distracted by butterflies, and was distraught at being late to meet the guest.

  “What a sweetheart!” Taz exclaimed as Kali rolled over to proudly show everyone her belly. Penny decided that she liked Taz, and offered her a range of drinks as she led her to the kitchen, where her laptop was set up on the table.

  “Okay. So I’ll get my stuff out, and then you can show me what the issues are.”

  While Penny set about with the kettle, and broke open a nice new packet of biscuits that she had been saving for a special occasion, Taz unloaded her own laptop, and a small square box that plugged into the mains and into her laptop, an iPad, and an array of small thumb-drives.

  “Okay,” Penny said, sitting down at last. “I had a website, and my business email attached to it, and my personal web-based email, and they’ve all … gone.”

  “Show me.”

  There followed a tedious and confusing and sometimes infuriating hour. Penny could only sit, helplessly, as Taz stared at the screens, clicked buttons, plugged things in, asked complicated questions, analysed whole walls of code that flickered over the laptops, and occasionally sighed.

  “Well, I can tell you that you have been systematically hacked,” Taz said at last.

  “I did guess that. I mean, I’m no expert, but…”

  Taz shook her head. She wasn’t finished. “It was a seasoned hacker who did this to you, you know. Cath mentioned you thought you’d made enemies in the crafts world. Do you know of any of them that might be capable of this?”

  “Seriously? No. I barely know any of them, full stop, though, so maybe. Anyone can be capable of anything, can’t they?” She was thinking of secrets and the murder case.

  “This is plain malicious and it’s by an expert. They are good. They’ve left very little trace. But I just want to follow one thing up …” Taz tapped furiously, swapping from Penny’s laptop to her own, and back again.

  “Okay,” Taz said. “What are your online names? Screen names?”

  “Penny May Designs, but all one word.”

  “Anything else? Have you signed up to any sites like twitter?”

  “No, not twitter. I’m on a photo site, but I’m PMDesigns there.”

  “Okay.” Taz stared thoughtfully at a pad of paper where Penny had written her email addresses. “And these are your only emails?”

  “Yes.”

  “So who is MzzRazzr?”

  “Wait. What did you say? Let me see. How are you spelling that?” Penny leaned over, and Taz wrote it on the pad of paper.

  “Is it yours?” Taz asked.

  “No. But I know who it is. Can I have my laptop? Okay. Thanks.” She called up her history and found the entertainment blog that Clarissa de Castille ran.

  “Who is that?” Taz peered at the screen and her face twisted in distaste. “Oh, why do people enjoy being so nasty about other people? Sorry – is this your blog? I thought you didn’t have any other sites…”

  “I don’t, and it’s not, and don’t apologise. The woman who runs this is a right nasty piece of work.” Penny sat back and felt her face slacken. “Oh. Oh, wow. So here’s the link … MzzRazzr is Clarissa de Castille. Do you know of the Warren Martin case that Cath is investigating?”

  “Yes; we’ve all read the bulletins.”

  “Clarissa went on a date with Warren. They met online.”

  “Really? The impression I got of Warren was that he was a bit of a bumbler, if you know what I mean. Did he get many dates?”

  “Only this woman, and she was totally not his type. It was very odd indeed.”

  Taz’s fingers flew over the keys, and her hand darted back and forth to the mouse she’d plugged into the laptop. “Well, this MzzRazzr – or Clarissa – is quite the competent geek, I have to tell you.” She grinned. “It’s always nice to see women doing well in the technology field.” Her smile faded as she dug deeper and deeper into Clarissa’s online activities. “Wow. She’s raking in the money, you know.”

  “How? We did wonder about that, when we met her. She looked awfully high maintenance.”

  Penny then got a crash course in the monetization of blogs which made her head spin. “And look here,” Taz said, after a long explanation of affiliate links, “she’s got a YouTube channel. Oh … my goodness. Look at this.”

  Penny and Taz sat and stared in horror at the segments of spite that were paraded in front of them. The videos on Clarissa’s channel were all apparently taken by hidden camera, and they were of dates.

  Dates with men.

  Dates with men like Warr
en.

  “There – click that one,” Penny said as they scrolled through the available content. “That’s him. That’s Warren.”

  It was excruciating to watch. Warren was dressed in a white shirt that was a little too small for his fleshy frame. He had dark circles of sweat under his arms. They appeared to be in a swanky restaurant, but it was hard to make out the details. A neatly-dressed and dapper waiter floated behind them from time to time. The camera must have been hidden on Clarissa’s person, somehow, as it only showed Warren. Taz turned the sound up and they could hear his awkward bad jokes and attempts at ingratiating himself with Clarissa.

  Watching anyone have a rough time on a date was hard. Clarissa, however, had gone further. She had added little boxes of text on the video at certain points; they were mean, spiteful and nasty comments, designed to hurt and to mock. Penny knew better than to ask to see the comments by the general public that would be listed below the video.

  “This is horrible. Please stop it,” Penny said, and Taz closed the whole browser down.

  “So that was Warren, was it?” Taz said, her mouth twisted with distaste. “Was that their date, do you think?”

  “Yes, and yes, I am sure of it. Well, that opens a new line of enquiry, doesn’t it?”

  “She was obviously out to get you,” Taz said. “But why?”

  “We met up. Me, Cath and Clarissa. She was unpleasant and arrogant and I couldn’t stand it. She knew my name and that I was doing crafts online, so she could easily find me. As for why, though, I don’t know. We were in a café and she had hidden a dog in her bag, and I let management know. But would that be enough to have her take it out on me like this? It’s way too petty.”

  “Of course,” Taz said. “She seems spiteful and she’s a hacker. You would simply be a great excuse for her to practise her skills.”

  “Ugh. And now, the question is this: had Warren found out about the video she put online? Did she attempt to blackmail these men, or was it a secret from them? If he found out, did he threaten her? Would she kill him, just to keep him quiet?”