The Advent of Murder (A Faith Morgan Mystery) Read Online Free PDF Page A

fumbled in the depths of her bag for her phone. It barely rang twice before Ben picked up.
    “Shorter.” He’s in a mood , she thought. There was no use beating about the bush when he was like that. Faith took a deep breath.
    “Lucas Bagshaw – he could be the…”
    “The victim at the river?” Ben cut across her. No small talk. No preamble. Just straight in, the way it always used to be.
    “His face is on a flyer for a choir. I think. He is – was – a member of a youth choir performing around the diocese.” There was a pause at the other end of the line.
    “Where are you calling from?” She had a sudden vision of herself sitting on the covered toilet in the bathroom of an attractive man she had only just met. She felt the heat rise up her cheeks.
    “The cathedral,” she answered. Bother! That sounded defensive. What was she – sixteen? Faith screwed up her face, waiting.
    “Where abouts in the cathedral?” Ben’s voice asked in her ear.
    There was a gentle tap at the door.
    “Are you all right in there?” Jim asked.
    Faith muffled the phone in the towel hanging by the sink.
    “Fine!” she called out, cheerily. “Be out in a minute.” She heard him retreat down the corridor.
    “Got to go,” she said hurriedly in to the phone, and rang off. She depressed the toilet handle and washed her hands, drying them carefully to buy herself some time. Until Ben confirmed the ID, she’d keep this to herself. “Bluff,” she told her reflection. “Just bluff.”
    “Anything wrong?” Jim asked as she reappeared. There was a steaming mug beside the mince pies.
    “Had to take a phone call,” she said breezily. “Mobiles are convenient, but so inconvenient sometimes – don’t you think?” She smiled at him, picking up her tea and taking a sip while she sat back down. “Tell me more about your choir,” she resumed. “Where do you draw the kids from?”
    “They come from all sorts of places.”
    “But all from Winchester and hereabouts?” She paused to drink more tea. “Do you not worry about them, these kids, when they fail to turn up or drop out all of a sudden?”
    “I’m not a social worker. If they join my choir, they do so as individuals, not children. I don’t need them to account for their lives or their families. It’s the secret of my success,” he said, with a lopsided smile. “So long as they show commitment to the choir – that’s good enough for me.” He apparently read the doubt in her face. A pulse of energy bent him toward her, his forearms on his knees. “Some of these kids – they don’t have good relationships with adults.” She liked the conviction in the way he spoke. “If I want their trust, I don’t pry. They talk to me about non-choir stuff only if and when they want to.”
    “But you care about them.”
    He sat back in his chair. “What I do is about building their confidence. But I can’t pretend to take responsibility for them,” he stated with unexpected emphasis, as if he held a long-running argument with himself. “That would be a lie. They’ve had enough people letting them down.”
    Faith looked down at the flyer lying on the table between them. She remembered this feeling from the interrogation rooms, back in the old days – the feigned ignorance, playing the innocent. She shouldn’t be using the ploy now, but she couldn’t help it. She told herself it was wrong to tell Jim until she could confirm her suspicions. She pointed to the black-haired boy.
    “This boy, he looks familiar – Lucas, you said? Is he local? I wondered if I’d seen him somewhere…”
    “Lucas Bagshaw. You might have seen him about town. He’s a Winchester lad.”
    “He’s not sleeping rough?” Her question caught Jim mid-swallow. He gulped down his tea and shook his head.
    “No. Lucas has a home. I think someone said his parents are dead. He lives with a relative. He joined the choir with a couple of friends.”
    If Lucas had a home and friends , Faith thought to