MURDER IN THE PARISH an utterly gripping crime mystery full of twists (DI Hillary Greene Book 20) by FAITH MARTIN

Author:FAITH MARTIN [MARTIN, FAITH]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joffe Books crime thriller, mystery and suspense
Published: 2023-04-05T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

That Monday morning, three people prepared for the day in various states of heightened tension, excitement or anger.

Clara-Jane Coltrane was undoubtedly excited but also a little tense. As she pulled her scruffy second-hand car off the side of the single-track lane and onto a wide grass verge, she glanced around thoroughly, glad to see that the place was as deserted as she’d expected and hoped.

This was not surprising, as she’d chosen the spot very carefully, after much scouting around. Way out in the sticks but not three miles as the crow flies from Lower Barton, the nearest B-road was even further away. She’d taken gradually narrowing lanes until now she was the sole occupant of a single-lane byway used mostly by the farmers of the surrounding land, lazy hikers who didn’t want to tramp cross-country too much, or extremely lost tourists.

On one side of the copiously pot-holed lane was a large copse of native shrubs and trees, and on the other, a recently ploughed field that was attracting the attention of a lot of landlocked seagulls and argumentative jackdaws.

A noisy rookery, set up in a stand of trees a mile away, provided a soundtrack as she drove the car carefully under the low, overhanging boughs of a lime tree, and climbed out.

Once on her feet, she carefully pulled up the concealing hood on her black hoodie and tied it firmly under her chin before opening the boot of the car. There, she lifted out of it her old racing bike, originally bought to help her keep in shape.

Clara-Jane had had her fortieth birthday a few years ago and hadn’t liked it much. It had made her feel robbed of her youth and her resentment had been growing ever since. It was a trait that she knew she shared with her loser of a mother, Moira, and that moment of self-awareness hadn’t improved her mood either.

Although for a while, back in her halcyon days, her life and future had seemed bright and promising enough, that, too, had somehow inexorably faded.

With the death of her uncle Keith, her mother had become her grandparents’ only child. But given her addictions and inability to look after herself, let alone her offspring, her grandparents had tied up their money carefully — and were wise to have the foresight of doing so.

So it was that Clara-Jane and her brother had found themselves the happy recipients of trust funds, which released the cash in monthly payments, starting on their respective twenty-first birthdays. Both grandparents had died some years before, passing in close succession following the death of their beloved son.

The amount of money paid — when shared between the two of them — hadn’t been huge enough to buy them a house each or anything like that, but still. After a childhood of upheaval and wearying poverty, it had felt like winning the lottery.

The day after she reached twenty-one, she chucked in her dead-end job at a supermarket, said goodbye to her bedsit, and began to thoroughly enjoy her Cinderella moment.

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