Dead People Read Online Free PDF

also shorn, and his face was weathered and tight. As I nodded at him I saw how alert and attentive his brown eyes were.
    ‘That’s quite a shock for Dinas,’ Owen commented when his mother announced the purpose of my visit.
    ‘It’s a dreadful thing.’ Mrs Jones tutted in concurrence.
    ‘Any idea who you’ve found?’ Owen asked. I was aware of Greg watching me closely.
    ‘Not yet, we’re working on it.’
    ‘Owen, it’s time to make a move,’ Greg announced.
    Owen laughed. ‘Just when things are getting interesting around here for the first time ever.’
    ‘Owen!’ his mother rebuked, but there was proud amusement in her tone. I watched the sadness cross her face as her son and Greg got up.
    He nodded at me apologetically. ‘Don’t mean to be rude, Sergeant, but we’ve got to go. Greg’s driving me to Birmingham airport.’
    ‘Going anywhere nice?’
    He smiled. ‘Not really. Not unless you’re into heat, mosquitoes and oil-rig spotting. I’m catching a plane to Lagos from Heathrow. I work in oil-field security,’ he elaborated.
    I was left in the kitchen on my own as his mother went to see him off. So that explained the suntan. I also realized that his friend Greg Thomas had not said a word to me.
    The wait gave me the opportunity to take in the room. It was shabbily immaculate, a space that retained the memory of baked scones and jam-making and damp socks drying. It was an art director’s dream of a certain rural package, from the faded Royal Worcester plates on the dresser and the vintage Rayburn cooker, down to the framed photograph of a couple of gawky-looking kids on a crocheted runner on top of a sideboard.
    Mrs Jones returned, wiping the tears from her eyes with the bunched-up corner of her apron. It was such a private and homely gesture that it brought a lump to my throat.
    ‘He doesn’t talk about it, but I know that he has to protect all those people from some very bad things that can happen out there,’ she said, explaining her lapse, and sitting down.
    ‘I’m sure he can take care of himself.’
    She nodded absently, her mind still far off in siege and hostage situations.
    ‘Does your daughter live away as well?’ I asked, nodding at the photograph, to divert her from her immediate melancholy.
    She surfaced again and looked at the photograph, a dim, wry smile forming and crinkling the lines in the corners of her mouth. ‘I’m afraid poor Rose is no longer with us.’ I winced internally at my gaffe, but she was already moving on. ‘It was a long time ago now. Things heal.’ And I saw in her expression that gleam that I had seen so often in people caught up in the excitement of terrible events that they had never expected to experience, even on the edge of their quiet lives. She shook her head wonderingly. ‘It’s a terrible thing that’s happened up there, finding that murdered body.’ She gave me a piercing look. ‘If that’s what it really is.’
    ‘What do you mean by that Mrs Jones?’
    She lowered her voice conspiratorially. ‘I’ve heard talk that it could have been the work of the wind-farm protestors. You know, if they could make it look like an ancient burial place, like the other one they’ve found farther up the hill, they wouldn’t be allowed to carry on with the construction.’
    I nodded, ‘Interesting,’ and wrote it down in my notebook. But it was an unlikely scenario. Wind-farm protestors were, on the whole, middle class, and the closest they got to civil disobedience was shaking their walking poles in the air. And even if Jeff Talbot, a civil engineer by training, had been mistaken about the ground being undisturbed, where would a bunch like that have got hold of an appropriate corpse?
    But, for the moment, without anything more concrete to work on, I was happy to entertain crackpot theories.
    ‘You must know everyone in these parts?’ I asked.
    A slyly humorous smile spread across her face. She was astute. By my reaction to the protesters