Midnight Murders Read Online Free PDF Page A

put your back into it.’
    Dean lifted his spade from the barrow and pushed it into the earth. It slid in easily. The soil was loose, crumbly and fairly dry.
    â€˜Don’t put what you take out in the barrow, idiot. A deep hole’s needed here, for a – tree. There’ll never be room for everything you take out in there, and I don’t want you wasting time carting it around. Pile it up on the grass.’
    â€˜It won’t be easy to clean up afterwards. Mr Herne…’
    â€˜Mr Herne nothing,’ she dismissed. ‘All you’ll need to clean it up is a stiff brush. Pile it up. I want to see a hole deep enough for a mature beech in ten minutes.’
    Dean wanted to ask why the rush, when he couldn’t see a tree, but he didn’t dare. The woman stood over him, while he dug slowly downwards. Occasionally she looked over her shoulder, scanning the garden as though she was expecting someone. Dean presumed it was the someone with the tree. And, in between, she chivvied him as though her life depended on his progress.
    â€˜An old man of ninety could dig faster than you, boy. Put more swing into it. There’s no time for that.’ She clouted him on the arm with her umbrella when he rested momentarily on his shovel. He glared at her. Not even Jimmy Herne had dared hit him, but he pushed the shovel back in the hole, which in his opinion was already deep enough for any tree.
    â€˜What the hell do you think you’re doing, boy?’ Jimmy Herne thundered over the grass towards them, a look of fury darkening his wizened monkey face.
    â€˜He’s working for me.’
    Dean continued to dig, happy to delegate the explanations to the woman.
    â€˜A deep hole needs to be dug here, for a tree. And it needs to be dug this minute.’
    â€˜First I’ve heard of it, and this is my garden,’ Jimmy asserted. ‘This here is a flowerbed, not a tree site, and it’s been dug out enough. All it needs is a barrow or two of manure and it will be right to plant out the roses.’
    â€˜Not before this hole has been dug.’
    Something in her manner rang a warning bell in Jimmy’s mind. ‘You’re one of them , aren’t you?’ He laughed and slapped his thigh. ‘Boy, have you been had. Had, good and proper.’ He grinned at Dean, who was staring white-faced into the hole he’d dug.
    â€˜Mr Herne, look at this.’ Dean stared at Jimmy through dark, frightened eyes. The gardener stepped forward, and peered into the hole.
    Locks of blonde hair had clumped and bunched around a single eye set in a segment of grey face. It stared upwards from the earth in blank, blind terror. Jimmy gripped Dean’s shoulder.
    â€˜Inside, boy. Tell them to call the police. Tell them I said so.’
    The woman in the white jacket was dancing and skipping around the pile of earth heaped on the grass, chanting, ‘I told them so – I told them so – I told them all, but they wouldn’t listen.’ She clutched at Dean’s shirt when he passed her. ‘But you listened, didn’t you, boy? You listened, and you found her.’ Her face loomed close to his. He could see hairline veins of red in her eyes, deep pores that pockmarked her skin, her make-up caked into creases that lined the valleys of her wrinkles. ‘You hit the jackpot, boy.’
    Her cackles of laughter followed him as he ran headlong into the main building.
    * * *
    Spencer Jordan, the resident art therapist at Compton Castle, was respected and liked by both patients and staff, but everyone conceded that it took time to get to know him. New patients were intimidated by the sheer size of him. Six-foot-seven, with the slim, strongly muscled frame of a basketball player, a physique he’d put to good use during the year he’d spent after art college, studying textiles in a Californian university. His hair was long and neatly trimmed, as were his beard and