Cherringham--Death on a Summer Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

hmm?”
    “Now that was a cheap trick,” she said smiling.
    Jack watched a pair of swans coming in low to land on the water. Across the river he saw the meadows bleached yellow from two months of sun.
    He could just hear the sounds of the fairground drifting upriver on the hot air from beyond Cherringham Bridge.
    This time of the afternoon the place would be fairly empty under the burning sun.
    But come evening the rides would be full, not just with the Cherringham crowd but with the hundreds of summer visitors too.
    He took another sip of his coffee.
    “Tim Bell was going to do something to Dinah Taylor that night. My guess, he took her up there for one reason only.”
    “Drunk and stoned too. He was out of control …” said Sarah.
    “Maybe. I’m not so sure,” said Jack. “Despite the booze, the pills, I think he was in control. Even this morning, talking it through, he could remember every tiny detail.” Jack took another sip of coffee. “He couldn’t have been that far gone.”
    “He sounded … almost as if he was … proud … of what he’d done,” said Sarah. “Getting Dinah Taylor up there …”
    “But that doesn’t make him the killer. I took him through his story three times — and you notice how it never changed?”
    “Really? I thought it sounded a bit different each time.”
    “That’s what makes me think he’s telling the truth. Different — but no contradictions. It’s not a practised statement. Something he’s got off pat. It’s real memory. The words change each time he tells it — but the events are solid.”
    “You don’t think he killed her?”
    Jack shook his head: “I’m really doubting it.”
    Jack had rarely seen Sarah looking so thoughtful. But he knew he had to ask the big question.
    “So — you on the case?” said Jack, expecting her to take a while to reply.
    But she came straight back.
    “I trust your instinct, Jack. And if you’re right, this has got to be the biggest miscarriage of justice since—”
    “Since your ex got half the house in London?”
    “Maybe not that big,” she said, laughing.
    It was good to hear her laugh again.
    “Even though the guy’s a total bastard?”
    “In spite of that, yes,” she said. “And you know why I’m up for it?”
    “I think I do. Because if Tim’s innocent — there’s an even worse bastard still out there somewhere.”
    “Absolutely,” said Sarah. “The real killer. And that makes me angry. Angry and scared, for me, for my teenage daughter, for every woman in this village.”
    “I can see that.”
    “You know, in the past, we’ve worked cases together because we liked the people, we felt sorry for them, we were sticking up for the underdog …”
    “And they always came to us — they wanted our help.”
    “Exactly. But this — this feels different. As if it’s … I don’t know … A duty.”
    Jack nodded. He knew that feeling. It had driven him throughout a thirty- year career as a cop. And it would never go away.
    “I want to catch Dinah’s killer,” said Sarah. “How do we start?”
    “Usual way — by talking to people.”
    “Such as?”
    “Anyone who’s still around. Dinah’s parents — get a handle on what home sweet home was like. Her friends — best friends if we can find them.”
    “It’s over twenty years ago …”
    “I’m sure you’ll be able to track them down.”
    “I can try,” she said. “How about Tony?”
    Jack always thought of Tony Standish as a kind of Cherringham institution — like local Royal family. As a solicitor he’d been in the village for nearly forty years, and whether he’d worked a case or not, he always seemed to have a good handle on events.
    “Good idea. Maybe some of the cops who first handled the case are still around. I want to see the list of cars they traced. If they traced any, of course …”
    “And don’t forget — the fair’s in town,” said Sarah.
    “Same fair?”
    “Same decrepit rides from the look of it. Maybe some