Too Soon a Death: A Scottish mystery where cosy crime meets tartan noir: Borders Mysteries Book 2 Read Online Free PDF Page A

George placed his hands on his thighs and pushed himself up. ‘I’d better give the police a call,’ he said. ‘Do you know who I should speak to?’
    ‘I dealt with Detective Sergeant Trent.’
    ‘Ah, Dave. His wife’s having a baby too.’
    Everybody knows everybody round here. Zoe followed George back out to the shop floor, where she saw Kate still deep in conversation, though with a different person this time.
    George turned and Zoe assumed he was going to say goodbye. Instead, he wore a pained expression on his normally cheerful face. ‘I knew something was wrong,’ he said. ‘That boy wasn’t only in pain. He was terrified.’
     

FOUR
    ‘What was all that about?’ Kate asked when she and Zoe got back to the car. ‘One minute you were standing beside me, the next you’d disappeared into George’s little room with him.’
    ‘Just a pregnancy thing I needed his advice on.’
    Kate snorted. ‘Aye, right. All respect to George, but you’re a woman and a doctor. You know more about it than he ever will.’ Despite her uncompromising tone, she didn’t press Zoe any further but put her ageing Volvo into gear and they sped off in the direction of Westerlea.
    Used now to the silence while Kate drove, Zoe let her mind wander during the short journey. She imagined Ara—even if that wasn’t his name, she would use it until she knew otherwise—walking into the chemist with strips of dirty towelling wrapped around his hands. In life, his face had been contorted with pain, unlike the repose death had brought to it. But George said he looked scared too, so what caused that? And where did he and his cousin go after getting Ara’s hands bandaged? They couldn’t have travelled far, because the boy turned up dead a few miles away so soon afterwards.
    She looked down at her swollen stomach. Was this preoccupation with the fate of a boy she’d never met another consequence of the mothering instinct she could still hardly believe had been awakened in her?
    The car drew to a halt at the health centre’s front door and Kate turned to face Zoe. ‘Thanks for lunch. Do you want to come over to Mum and Dad’s on Saturday? They’re having a barbecue. Just a few friends and half a cow, you know the sort of thing.’
    ‘I’d love to, but I’ll be out for most of the day.’
    ‘Oh.’
    Zoe could tell her friend was itching to ask where she was going, but had no intention of telling her. ‘I’ll be back late in the afternoon. When does it start?’
    ‘Not till about six.’
    ‘Perfect. I’ll have time to shower and change. See you then.’
    The health centre’s automatic front door sat open. Convinced those early days of non-stop sunshine would cease as soon as the practice spent money on the comfort of its staff and visitors, Walter Hopkins had fought the purchase of several electric fans but was overruled by Paul Ryder, the practice’s senior partner. This hadn’t prevented him from bagging the largest fan for his own office, but Zoe saw to her satisfaction that now he was absent, Walter’s fan stood on the reception desk. She doubted he’d ever get it back.
    Margaret Howie looked up and smiled, her hair fluttering around her plump face in the current of cool air. ‘Hello, Doctor Zoe. I didn’t expect you back today.’ The lynchpin of the practice, Margaret had outlasted all the other staff Paul had employed over the years, and her knowledge of its patients went far beyond any computer records.
    ‘I had to collect my car. Did Sergeant Trent get to see Paul?’
    ‘Yes, then he asked us all if we’d seen that poor boy. And my Hector’s phoned to say it’s on the news now. They’re calling him The Boy Under The Bridge.’
    ‘Not strictly accurate but hardly surprising. I wonder if anyone will come forward to identify him?’
    ‘Why did the police think he’d been here?’
    ‘His hands had been bandaged by someone who knew what they were doing.’
    Seemingly satisfied with this response, Margaret