03 Murder on the Moorland by Helen Cox

Author:Helen Cox
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Fiction, New, General, Cozy, Mystery & Detective
ISBN: 9781529402292
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2020-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

Eighteen

The living room back at the let was deathly quiet. Evie and Banks had long since retired to their room and Kitt was taking a pre-bedtime shower. This left Halloran standing alone, staring along the chorus line of faces hanging above the fireplace, wondering if Max Dunwell’s really was the face of a killer.

He sighed and reached over to Liam Long’s photograph, tugging it down, and as he did so mentally relinquishing the responsibility of deciding if he had his part to play too.

He’d gone too far with Goodchild. If Banks hadn’t been there who knew how far he would have pushed it? That was one question he never wanted to find the answer to.

One by one, he continued to unstick the photographs from their place on the mantel, then crumpled them all and threw them into the wastepaper basket. He paused when he got to Amber’s photograph and tried to avoid her searching eyes. The sound of running water in the bathroom stopped and the silence in the cottage was suddenly oppressive. It was not in Halloran’s nature to give up on a case. Once he had committed himself to finding justice for a person, he always saw it through. He scoffed at himself. Justice? Is that what he’d managed to convince himself the obsessive hunt for Amber’s killer was about? After what happened earlier, after the look he’d seen on Kitt’s face when Goodchild had his outburst, he couldn’t hide behind that idea any longer. He couldn’t even claim he had been working towards further justice for Kamala. Vengeance had been a far more dominant motivator and at that thought an emptiness throbbed in his chest. How had he got so lost?

He looked again into Amber’s eyes and a thousand questions swarmed in his mind. What message had she been trying to send with those notes? Had she even been trying to send a message at all? Why was she killed and what happened to the gun she purchased from some unknown criminal on the dark web? He closed his eyes, trying with all his might to silence these thoughts. No good could come from asking them and, frankly, they weren’t even his questions to ask.

Opening his eyes, he reached out to pull Amber’s photograph down from the mantel but as he did so a sudden crash of what sounded like breaking glass sounded out. It came from the bathroom. Quickly, he strode towards the bathroom door.

‘Kitt?’

He waited a moment for some other sound. Nothing. This time, he knocked and raised his voice. ‘Kitt? Are you OK in there?’

No response.

‘Kitt!’ Halloran shouted louder, a hot panic starting to grip him. He beat his fists against the door. He rattled the doorknob. But the door was locked and not budging.

Scraping his fingers through his hair, he paused and pressed his ear to the door. That was when he heard it: a tiny whimper and some small dull thuds from the other side. It was the sound of a struggle, and it sent a chill through his whole body.

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