by Issy Brooke
Small Town Treason
Some Very English Murders - Book Five
Issy Brooke
Text copyright 2015 Issy Brooke
All rights reserved
Cover credit: background vector illustration Denis Demidenko via 123rf.com
Cover design and dog illustration by Issy Brooke
Author’s Hello
Lincolnshire is real! It’s a massive rural county in the east of England, with a sparse population. It’s mostly agricultural. Upper Glenfield, the town in this tale, is fictional. Lincoln, the main city nearest to Glenfield, does exist and it’s worth a visit. The only thing I’ve fictionalised in Lincoln is the layout and situation of the police station.
Just a quick heads-up on the whole spelling and grammar thing. I’m a British author and this book is set in England. Sometimes, British English looks unfamiliar to readers of other variants of English. It’s not just spelling (colour and realise and so on) and not just the vocabulary (pavement for sidewalk, mobile for cell phone) but there are differences even in the way we express ourselves. (In the US, it is more common to say something like “did you see Joanne?” whereas in the UK we would say “have you seen Joanne?” and so on.) Also, my characters do not speak grammatically correct sentences - who does? Not me. Rest assured this book has been copyedited and proofread (errors, alas, are my own and I won’t shoot my editor if you find any.)
You can find out more about Lincolnshire and the characters in Glenfield at my website, http://www.issybrooke.com
Why not sign up to my mailing list? You get advance notice of new releases at a special price - but no spam. No one wants spam. Check it out here: http://issybrooke.com/newsletter/
Chapter One
Penny May was pretty sure that gazpacho soup was supposed to be served cold. She stirred her spoon around the bowl and wondered whether to mention it.
She probably best not.
Francine had gone to so much effort with the dinner party. Had it just been Penny and Francine, old friends that they were, Penny would have not only told Francine of her mistake, but she would have mocked her mercilessly.
However, she didn’t want to start a food fight in the house of Francine’s new boyfriend, especially when that man was Inspector Bill Travis. He might be a typical British policeman, with no weapons to hand, but she was still sure he could take her down using only a napkin and a serving spoon.
So she sipped at the curiously warm starter and told herself it was just a rather special version of tomato soup.
It would have been an awkward triad but Francine’s bubbly enthusiasm could rustle up a line-dancing session at a wake. And, Penny’s cynicism aside, it was a perfectly nice way to spend an autumnal Thursday evening in deepest, darkest Lincolnshire.
Penny’s mobile phone was tucked into the pocket of her loose linen trousers, and it buzzed quietly with an incoming message. She ignored it; it would probably be from her sister Ariadne. It would be the seventh message that day.
It was Ariadne that Francine was asking about, now. Francine loved people – all people, all the time – and that meant she was incessantly interested in all of their day to day doings.
“How is her new business going?” Francine asked, in between hearty mouthfuls of soup.
Travis cocked his head and smiled but he was mostly concentrating on getting as many rounds of bread into his mouth as he could while the women were distracted and chatting.
Penny tried to turn her instinctive grimace into a pleasant smile. “Ariadne’s dog-walking business? She’s broken off from that business partnership she went into with that other woman and now she’s going it alone. It’s hard work, though. She stresses out at the tiniest thing. I keep telling her, it’s going to take time to build up.”
“Oh, I am sure she will succeed!” Francine said, her face all smiles and bright eyes. She had an angular jaw and severe black hair in a bob, and her enthusiasm for living made an angel of her otherwise harsh features. “What do you think, Bill?”
Bill Travis had butter smeared on his lower lip. He paused, before speaking carefully. “I think that those dog walking businesses need to be regulated.”
Francine slapped his forearm playfully. “You’d regulate breathing if you could.”
He shrugged, unrepentant. “You see them barrelling along, ten dogs in tow. I don’t see how they can keep control effectively. It worries me. And then there’s the poo.”
“A responsible owner will clean up after them.”
“I have never seen one of them businesses yet, with the person in charge carrying ten plastic bags of poo with them,” he said darkly. “Is there any more soup?”
Penny was struggling to finish her soup. It was strangely slimy as it cooled and she was suddenly grateful that it had been warmed up. Unlike unwanted vegetables, it was rather hard to hide leftover soup under one’s cutlery. She mopped up the rest with bread then left the bread on the side of the wide bowl.
“Of course there is more soup!” Francine said. “I’ve made enough to last you all week.”
Lucky Inspector Travis, thought Penny. Rather him than me. She waved Francine away with a smile when her friend offered her some more. “I’m saving space for pudding,” she explained.
“Right you are! I won’t be long.” Francine danced towards the kitchen door, but stopped before she opened it. She turned back to Travis and waggled her finger at him. “But no checking your phone or your pager while I’m gone.”
He thinned his lips. “If I’m needed, I’m needed. Criminals never sleep. You know that.”
“Hm.” She whirled away into the kitchen.
As soon as she was out of sight, both Travis and Penny delved into their respective pockets to dig out their phones; Penny had hers in her hand within seconds, but Travis began to fumble and mutter, eventually standing up to look under the chair.
“Have you lost it?” she asked.
“What, the plot?” he said. “Pretty much. No, I suppose my phone is probably in the bathroom.”
Penny grinned.
Travis tried to explain that. “I, er, play games a lot. Anyway. My pager ought to be clipped to my belt, though.”
Penny nodded sympathetically and bent to read her message. It was, as she suspected, from Ariadne.
It was the continuation of an ongoing argument.
“But what if she is like this at school too?” the message read.
Penny rolled her eyes. Ariadne was referring to her teenage daughter, Destiny. Destiny was not cut out for academic studies. She was, however, cut out for sulking, being moody, having screaming fits, and wild nail polish.
All these things were standard for a teenager. Didn’t Ariadne remember being young herself? There was such an age gap between them that Penny had left home before Ariadne hit her teenage years, but she remembered her younger sister being just as stroppy as anyone else.
Penny didn’t want to text back because it would only prolong the conversation. What else was there to say? But she knew her sister wanted reassurance that it was going to be all right. She tapped out, “Sorry, am out at dinner but don’t worry. She’s got half term holiday next week. Chill. All will be ok.”
When she looked up, Francine was standing at the doorway with the whole pan of soup held between her oven-mitted hands. “Oops,” she said unconvincingly.
“Oh no.” Travis spoke flatly.
“What? What is it?” Penny stared from one to the other.
Travis’s powers of deduction never took a day off. “You’ve dropped my pager or my phone or something else important in the soup, haven’t you?”
; Francine had the decency to look very embarrassed. “Er, yes, your pager sort of just kind of accidentally without me noticing … slid from the shelf into the soup.”
“We don’t have a shelf near the hob.”
Francine was bright red. She wisely stopped digging her hole. “I’ll fish it out and dry it on a paper towel. I am sure it will be fine. They build pagers to withstand all sorts, don’t they?”
“Even soup?”
She bit her lip. “Earthquakes, tsunamis, gazpacho, it’s all roughly the same thing.”
Travis shook his head slowly as she backed into the kitchen. Penny played with her wine glass for a moment. “So, er, work is going well, is it?”
“Yes.”
“And, er …”
“Hmm?”
“Yes.”
Penny could think of nothing to say. Inspector Travis couldn’t talk about the confidential business of work, and the last time they’d really spoken, he’d referred to her as an ‘unofficial informer’ and that phrase still rankled. It was a relief when Francine came back in, carrying a new bowl of soup for Travis. She began to talk merrily about the progress of work on the house she’d bought, and Penny was interested in that.
Francine had moved from London not long after Penny herself had. Now they both lived in the small town of Upper Glenfield, in eastern England, where the flat Fens met the Lincolnshire Wolds. Penny lived in a small terraced cottage with her dog, Kali. Francine, however, had bought the isolated house that once belonged to a reclusive artist, and she was slowly updating it. It was an exciting, if expensive, project.
“…but when I chiselled the tiles off, the whole wall came down too!” she was now saying. “Well, obviously, not the wall, as such. But great chunks of plaster! I near enough broke my toe. And then–”
But they were not to discover what happened next, because a seventeenth century soldier turned up at the front door.
* * * *
It was Drew, but not in his usual outdoor-gear of cargo pants and fleece. Travis stared at him, with Penny and Francine crowding to either side to peer past at the bizarre sight.
The outdoor skills instructor was wearing a shapeless red woollen coat, baggy grey breeches, and a hat that looked like it had crawled onto his head and died.
He smiled. “Hi!”
He was shoved aside by the small, round and strong figure of Cath Pritchard. She lived in Glenfield and ruled her family with the same intensity that she ruled with in Lincoln police station when she was at work as a detective constable.
“Bill!” she said, apparently oblivious to the vision beside her. “Why aren’t you answering your phone or your pager?”
Francine took a step back and made a face. Bill sighed. “It’s a long story. I don’t even know where my phone is.”
“Um, maybe check behind the pile of toilet rolls in the bathroom. Perhaps. Just as a guess,” Francine muttered. “It might have sort of slipped down there.”
“I see.”
“Enough of that,” Cath said crossly. “You’ve got to come down to Upper Glenfield. There’s been a …”
“Murder!” chorused Penny and Francine.
Cath glowered. “There’s been a suspicious death.”
Chapter Two
“You might as well jump in with us,” Francine said, holding open the rear door of Travis’s unmarked car which was parked on the driveway.
“Us?” Travis said, pausing as he was about to get into the driver’s seat.
“It will save her getting a taxi home,” Francine said, and pushed Penny into the back seat. “And me.”
“That is not what I meant,” Travis said.
But the unstoppable force that was Francine was taking no prisoners. This led to an uncomfortable and crowded ride down the busy main road that led south from Lincoln. Cath took the front passenger seat, and Drew was wedged in the centre of the back seats, book-ended by Francine and Penny. He clamped his legs and arms together, and tried not to be too large. It was the sort of position that always made big men look bigger.
There was a very strange odour of rotting eggs seeping through the car. No one mentioned it. Penny wondered if it were coming from her; she supposed that everyone would worry that they were the source of it, and be too afraid to say anything.
“Okay, I have to ask,” she said as they swooped through the night. “Drew … Why are you dressed up? Hallowe’en isn’t for another week yet.”
“That’s harsh,” he said. “I’m not trying to scare people. This is educational, this is. I’m a teaching experience.”
“You’re an experience, I’ll grant you that. But why?” Penny was rather enjoying being pressed so close against the burly ex-blacksmith. She didn’t try to squirm away. He had been a good friend to her since she’d moved to the small town. He was like an enormous, dependable and predictable rock.
She wouldn’t have predicted his answer, however.
“There’s a town history day coming up at the weekend. It’s usually just a small event but they are trying to broaden it out a bit. Way back, when I was a young buck, I used to take part in historical re-enactments so I thought I’d dig out the old clothing and volunteer my services. I’m a musketeer.”
“Ooh, with swords, like D’Artagnan?” Francine exclaimed.
“No, with muskets, like … uh, roundheads and cavaliers.”
“And do you have a shotgun licence?” Travis butted in from the front of the car.
“Yes, I do.”
“Hmm. Good.”
Penny could almost hear the inspector’s mind making a mental note to check. There was silence for a moment, which was suddenly broken by Francine being unable to contain herself any longer.
“So who has been killed?” she burst out. “And how? And where? And when? What happened? I promise I’m not prying,” she added, unconvincingly.
Cath sighed and half-turned, looking back over her shoulder through the gap between the front seats. “It’s a suspicious death, not a murder. And I am sure that the local paper will have all the details that are available to the public. You will understand that I cannot say any more.”
“Oh, Cath!” Francine said in a long, drawn-out whine. “Bill?”
“Nope.”
The car’s occupants lapsed into a shared sullen silence.
Eventually Travis, who was driving at a very responsible one-mile-under-the-limit speed, said, “Is there anything you can tell me, Cath, that will also keep these vultures in the back happy?”
“Hmm. Okay, the woman’s name is Julie–”
“Just the first name,” Travis interrupted.
“Yeah. So, she is called Julie. She’s been found dead at home. She’s not married, no kids, but she lives with her uncle; he’s a wheelchair user, mostly, and needs her constant care. So it’s a bit of a worry about what will happen to him.”
Everyone made the respectful and expected noises of sympathy.
“Anyway, I suppose the main thing is that she was found dead in the bathroom. The locked bathroom. But the manner of death is not … not exactly clear-cut,” Cath said.
“And that’s it?” squealed Francine. “Penny, you ask her. You’re her friend.”
“Can we put the radio on?” Cath asked, and stabbed at the controls before Travis could even answer. A local talk station filled the air with a question and answer session about the most effective pesticides to use on potatoes.
* * * *
The student population of Lincoln meant that it had a vibrant nightlife, even when it was midweek. Upper Glenfield, however, was quiet and dark. Travis pulled to a stop in the town centre. Penny’s street was over the road from where they had stopped, and it was a dead end, lit by alternate orange street lights that faded out to the end. The town centre itself was peaceful.
“I’ll get out here and walk home,” Drew said, prising himself out of the car after Penny.
Travis didn’t make to drive away. He waited, the car engine idling.
“Wha
t’s up?” Francine said.
“You can’t come,” he replied. “Sorry. But you’ll be okay walking from here…”
With an exaggerated sigh, she slid over the seat and joined Penny and Drew on the pavement. She slammed the door shut, but went to the driver’s window. He wound it down, and everyone looked away as she planted a kiss on his lips.
Then the two police officers were away, leaving the three friends watching the car’s red lights disappear down the street.
“Come on,” Francine said. “We can follow them!”
“No!” Penny and Drew said as one.
“Seriously,” Penny repeated. “And don’t pull that face. You’re not twelve. Honestly, I’m really happy that you’re in a relationship and everything, but stop acting like a teenager.”
“Am I?”
“You are.”
“I feel like a teenager again, though,” Francine said, hugging herself, and she looked so blissfully happy that Penny couldn’t stay mad at her.
“You should start dressing up with Drew and go trick a-treating,” Penny said, nudging Drew in the ribs.
“I told you, this is for the history day! We don’t go in for the Hallowe’en stuff around here much,” he said. “I mean, I think the kids are starting to do it more and more, because who doesn’t want free sweets?”
“I know; I’m pretty tempted, myself,” Penny said. “You’re never too old for free sweets.”
Drew laughed. “Nah, the big thing here is still bonfire night, though. That’s what everyone’s going to be looking forward to. Hotdogs and burgers and fireworks and general debauchery. Have you seen what they are building on the slipe?”
“Oh my goodness, no. What is it, a wicker man or something?” Penny asked. “I’ve seen the film.”
“No, don’t be daft. It’s an enormous bonfire. They collect the wood for weeks. How have you not seen it?”
“I’ve been walking Kali in the woods mostly,” Penny explained. “And doing some agility stuff with some other folks in a farmer’s field that he lets us use.” Kali was doing well at the agility; or at least, as well as a stocky Rottweiler could do. She was built for battering herself against cattle to herd them, and to pull butcher’s carts in old Germany, not for dashing up and down ramps. Penny was always mindful of her dog’s hips and the potential for harm. But Kali enjoyed learning new things, and she certainly enjoyed the treats she got for working hard.
