Too Much of Water Read Online Free PDF Page A

and expected no answers from the lean young man, who said little and was not curious about them.
    It took Denis nearly an hour to ride to work, but he set off at five thirty in the morning and was there before the rush-hour drivers were peering blearily at the queue of vehicles in front of them. When Denis hinted that there might be work for him on a building site nearer to his new base in Gloucester, the farmer gave him an extra ten pounds a week, which helped to pay for his room.
    He was still cheap labour, with no card to be stamped and no records to be kept. And Denis had picked up enough now to know that the farmer was acting illegally in this law-conscious country. His employer wouldn’t talk to the police, wouldn’t even acknowledge the presence among his workforce of this quiet, industrious man from Eastern Europe.
    Things were going well for Denis. As well as they could go for one in his desperate situation. And then, on the longest day of the year, when things had seemed to be at their brightest, came the setback.
    In the days which followed, he tried to keep to his maxim of putting things behind him, of looking forward rather than back, of preparing himself to cope with the next challenge. But this was bigger than any other thing which had happened to him. This could blow his whole world apart, if the police ever got to the bottom of it. And they would. He listened to people talking in the house, at work, around the streets of this old city where he had begun to feel safe. They all said that the police in England got their man, when it was murder.
    He tried desperately to put the events of that fateful Saturday out of his mind, to tell himself that there was no way anyone could connect him with what had happened in the darkness on the banks of the Severn.
    But even now, five days later, he could not get it out of his mind.

Five
    T hursday evening. The weather still warm, but unsettled, as it had been ever since the thunderstorms of the weekend. A brisk shower fell as the police Rover moved through the Gloucestershire countryside, darkening the sky above the high treetops of the Forest of Dean.
    Bert Hook sensed the unease in the young uniformed woman constable next to him. He knew it stemmed from the mission they had, but he chose to divert it to the more general theme of their surroundings. ‘Race apart, the Foresters. That’s what they used to say when I started to work round here, afore you were born, girl.’
    She was reassured by his soft Herefordshire burr, felt comforted rather than patronized. ‘So I’ve heard. Keep themselves to themselves, they say. Close ranks when people like us come among them.’
    DS Hook smiled as he swung the car round a wide bend through the woods, keeping his eye on the sheep which roamed unfenced in this part of the Forest. ‘It’s less so than it used to be. But you still get it, in the villages especially. I don’t object to it, myself. Part of that community spirit which we’re asked to foster, if you ask me.’
    He was content to make small talk, to try to relax the girl. It was the first time she had been to break the news of the sudden death of a daughter to unsuspecting parents. And this one was much trickier than most.
    For a start, they weren’t certain that the corpse from the Severn really was their daughter. People didn’t thank you when it turned out to be a false alarm. After their first overwhelming flood of relief, their next reaction was usually a fierce resentment against the police bunglers for putting them through such an ordeal.
    And it was much worse when the child was a murder victim. Parents always found this much more upsetting than a random tragedy like a road accident. But it was much more difficult also for the police who brought the awful news. You had to be conscious that it might not be news to them at all. Beneath your compassion for them as parents suffering the worst loss of all, the death