Judas Horse by Lynda La Plante

Author:Lynda La Plante
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zaffre

CHAPTER 15

Jack had been parked up in his blue Vauxhall Corsa hire car at the end of the driveway to Charlotte and Annie’s smallholding for about an hour. The Corsa had been another one of Oaks’s ‘jokes’ intended to make Jack feel unwelcome, just as the original, dingy B&B had been. But whereas Oaks had been able to change the B&B to his cousin’s pub, he had been unable the change the hire car.

Mason, slumped low in the passenger seat, looked like he hadn’t slept. He gazed out of the side window, but his eyes couldn’t focus on anything. He was miles away, still thinking about Mr Mulhern.

The lawnmower that, according to Canteen Barbara, Charlotte had bought from James Somerset for £1,800, was parked underneath the kitchen window. The known finances of this small cottage industry swirled around in Jack’s head: Annie’s father had died, leaving them £200,000 which allowed them to make up their mortgage payments and keep their home – but only just. Charlotte earned, on average, £30,000 a year and Annie’s sporadic wages seemed to come from her one or two shifts per week at The Soho Farmhouse. Was he right about Charlotte? Or was he about to accuse a completely innocent woman of something she knew nothing about?

Jack felt a small grin forming at the corners of his mouth. He’d underestimated seemingly hard-working, low-income women before. He couldn’t take anything at face value here.

Jack had parked so that he could see the pigsty. He knew that Annie would by now have sent Alec to slaughter, so he assumed Charlotte would be taking extra care of the others. He was right. Within ten minutes of arriving, Charlotte emerged from the house and wandered, head down and dragging her feet, towards her pigs.

‘That her?’ Mason asked eagerly.

‘Don’t get out of the car taking it for granted she’s complicit and that she’ll lead us directly to Mulhern’s killer. If she’s our connection between all of the burglaries, I doubt she fully understands how important she is. We’re not here to scare her. OK?’

As Jack and Mason approached, Charlotte was bent over with her back to them, raking the slurry into a corner, while the remaining pigs constantly got in her way. Charlotte put her hand onto the back of the biggest pig and leant heavily on it. The pig just stood there, as though it knew that she needed support. Charlotte then put the broom into the crook of her elbow, covered her face with her hand and began to sob. Jack and Mason stopped dead in their tracks.

Jack looked away in an attempt to give her a moment of private grief. Mason, on the other hand, had no clue why she was crying. ‘What’s up with her, Jack?’

Jack was looking along a dirt path that cut down the side of the smallholding. He walked in that direction, and Mason followed. The dirt path ran the length of the house before disappearing into the back field. What had caught

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