Bad Sons (Booker & Cash Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

probably been checking what they could of my story. It wouldn’t have been much. ‘No doubts it was your aunt this morning? None at all?’
    ‘None.’
    ‘Tell me what you told my uniform colleague, would you? I need to hear it from you.’
    ‘From where?’
    ‘From the beginning.’
    Where was the beginning?
    I told about my arrival the previous evening, what I’d done about finding neither of my relatives at home. I repeated the events of the morning. She nodded her way through it all, concentrating hard on my words and how I delivered them.
    ‘Why didn’t you phone the police this morning?’
    ‘I did. I spoke to someone here. A woman. I told her some of what I’ve just told you. She said I should phone back when twenty-four hours had elapsed. I couldn’t report them missing before then.’
    She nodded and scribbled a note to herself.
    ‘Did you get her name?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Why are you back in Dymchurch?’ It didn’t sound like a casual enquiry.
    I explained.
    She asked for a description of my uncle and jotted that down too.
    ‘I’ll try the hospitals.’
    ‘I called the Harvey and the Victoria this morning.’
    ‘They might try a bit harder for me.’
    She tapped her pencil a couple of times on the tabletop. ‘Apart from the death of your aunt, I’m more than a little concerned at what you’ve told me about the whole thing. They couldn’t have just forgotten you were coming?’
    ‘No chance.’ I explained about the calendar, the conversation with the woman in the baker’s, the beer in the fridge and finding the receipt for it.
    She raised her eyebrows at me. ‘What is it you do in Istanbul?’
    ‘I’m an English teacher.’
    She looked disappointed. ‘I’ll circulate the details of your uncle to uniform.’ She might have been about to say something more, to explore something of her professional concern at where things were, how they looked, but she changed her mind. She tapped the pencil again. ‘So you’re staying in their flat above the bookshop?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘How about I give you a lift home and come in for a look. You might have missed something I won’t.’
    I doubted it, but I needed a lift, so I agreed.
    She told me to wait there for her while she sorted a couple of things out. I spent another six minutes breathing in sick fumes and staring at the painted blockwork of the opposite wall. But I wasn’t really looking at it. I was back to asking myself the questions the police were going to be considering: how did my aunt end up dead in the English Channel? And where was my uncle?
     
    *
     
    I was surprised it was just Detective Cash and me driving back to Dymchurch and a few minutes into the journey I said so.
    ‘What did you expect?’
    ‘I thought the police went everywhere in twos.’
    ‘We do if we have cause. How long have you lived in Turkey?’
    ‘It’s my third year.’
    ‘Like it?’
    ‘I prefer it to home. At the moment.’
    ‘How long has your uncle been in business?’
    ‘Since before I was born.’
    ‘I’ve driven past the shop a few times. Never been in though.’ Something occurred to her. ‘Have you been in the shop since you returned?’
    I said I hadn’t. I nearly added, why? But we both knew why she had asked the question.
    We drove in silence along the Sandgate seafront and then she avoided Hythe town centre by continuing up alongside the Hotel Imperial golf course, hugging the sea wall.
    ‘So, he’s retiring?’ She was still talking about him in the present tense.
    ‘Yes. I’m home to help him for a week to pack up his stock. He’s selling it abroad.’
    ‘What were their plans for retirement?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ I wasn’t lying. ‘I expected to find out about that this week.’
    ‘Can I be straight with you about something?’
    It seemed a strange thing for her to say to me. ‘Please do.’
    ‘From what you’ve told me, I’m concerned for your uncle’s well-being.’
    She didn’t elaborate on her reasons for that, so