An Early Grave Read Online Free PDF Page B

steps, speculating on whether Peter Ramsey was considered by some as a turbulent priest and if he had been marked as a future archbishop. Tara winced. So far she had succeeded only in adding depressing thoughts to her already sad workload. Then she sat forward in alarm, her attention grabbed and shaken by another newspaper cutting, and suddenly she felt awash with sympathy for the down and out, who had just traipsed out of the station. She read a report of the inquest in Oxfordshire of the death, three years ago, of children’s author Tilly Reason, aged twenty-seven, and her one-year old daughter Emily Armour. Mother and daughter had been tragically killed at a railway level crossing near the village of Shiplake. Tara noted the verdict: accidental death. She had to assume that baby Emily was Callum Armour’s daughter. Murray said as much when they’d met Armour the day before. Surely such a tragedy would tip anyone over the edge? Little wonder that Armour was such a distant individual.
    There were many more pieces of paper within the box, but she’d read enough. She’d learned nothing to help her with the murder case. Why had he given her all this irrelevant information? What was he trying to tell her?  

 
    CHAPTER 5
     
    ‘Fancy a run out to Treadwater?’
    She’d stuffed all the papers back in the box-file, replaced it in the carrier bag, crossed the office to Murray’s desk and invited him to accompany her to Armour’s house. She didn’t feel entirely confident going alone.
    ‘Why, what’s up?’
    ‘I’ll explain on the way.’
    Twenty minutes later, Murray pulled the car into a lay-by at the front of the house, which sat back from the road and was separated from it by a pavement and a strip of grass two yards wide. Tara gazed at the house; number twenty-four, Sycamore Drive, not a tree in sight. No more appealing from the front than it had been from the rear, with a battered front door and metal screens, the colour of mud, fixed to the windows.
    ‘Wait here,’ she told Murray. ‘This won’t take long.’ She pushed open the car door, climbed out and retrieved the LIDL bag from the boot, holding it as far away from her as possible. As she crossed the strip of grass she noticed to her right a group of six young people, three boys and three girls, in their mid-teens she guessed, standing by the alley that led to the parking area behind the houses. All of them halted their conversation to watch the young woman approach the front door of Dr Stinker. When she glanced their way, the girls sniggered, and one boy, wearing a blue Everton shirt, whistled at her. She responded with a peeved stare, but he wasn’t in the least intimidated. The brief encounter merely gave rise to more laughter. Tara stared at the front door of the house, weathered yellow paint awash with scrapes, burn and scuff marks. The word ‘paedo’ had been spray-painted in green below the letter-box, although the smudged letters suggested there had been some attempt to wash it off. There was no door-bell or knocker, so she made a fist and tapped on the wood. She waited about thirty seconds before adding another, more determined, thump upon the door. Turning round, she saw Murray looking on from the car, his habitual bemused smirk playing on his face. Still no reply. She knocked again.
    ‘He doesn’t answer the door,’ one of the youths shouted.
    ‘Only opens it to kids,’ said the Everton shirt. The others laughed.
    She tried peering through the living-room window, but the screens were effective, and she saw only the grime upon the glass. A car horn blared. She looked reproachfully at Murray and he shrugged his shoulders. But it did the trick. A few seconds later she heard some movement on the other side of the door, a chain loaded in its lock. Eventually, the door opened on the chain, and the now familiar dirty face peered out.
    ‘Dr Armour, would you mind opening the door please?’ It slammed shut with a bang, a chain rattled, and