Murder at the Music Factory by Lesley Kelly

Author:Lesley Kelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sandstone Press
Published: 2023-04-28T00:00:00+00:00

9

Bernard flicked through one of the notebooks, wondering how to categorise it. It was full of fairly random rantings, many of which were quite unpleasant, particularly about women.

Marcus, who somehow had still not headed home, picked up one of the other books, perused it for a second, and hastily put it back. ‘Yuck. Some deeply unpleasant views there.’

‘I know. What I’m reading isn’t any better.’

‘Do you think Bryce actually believed any of this?’ asked Marcus.

‘You’d know that better than I would. You were best friends.’

‘Were we?’ Marcus shook his head. ‘I was best friends with a Northern Irish computer geek, who liked Buffy the Vampire Slayer as much as I did, and was well versed in Tolkein, Lovecraft and Pratchett. Except that person didn’t really exist, did he? As for the real “Bryce”, or whatever his actual name is, I didn’t know him at all.’

He looked so miserable that Bernard felt obliged to attempt to cheer him up. ‘I’m sure the Buffy stuff was real, Marcus. I heard the two of you discussing plot lines for hours at a time.’ The weeks he’d spent sleeping on Marcus’s floor were hard to forget. ‘That took real depth of knowledge, beyond any mere job.’

‘You’re probably right.’ He perked up at the thought. ‘Can I help?’

‘If you can stomach it, I’m trying to catalogue what we have in here to see if any of it is relevant.’

‘OK.’

The two of them sat in silence, broken only by an occasional ‘Dear Lord’ from Marcus when he’d found something particularly objectionable. Bernard’s attention was caught by a string of figures which had a box drawn round them. He wondered if it was a code.

‘What do you make of this, Marcus?’ He turned the book round so that he could see it.

‘A mysterious code – just my cup of tea!’ He stared at it for a moment. ‘Except I don’t think that this is a code. I think this is a much more prosaic ordnance survey point.’

‘You think it’s directing us to a place?’ Bernard turned the book back towards him. ‘Actually I think that’s far more interesting than a code. Much easier to crack.’

Marcus pulled out his phone, turned the book round yet again, and tapped the numbers into an app. ‘Does this look familiar?’

Bernard stared at the picture. The whole screen was entirely green. ‘It’s a field, Marcus, it looks like every field everywhere.’

‘I think there’s something there if we zoom in on it. Look! There’s an old farmhouse or something. Let’s go and explore!’ Marcus’s eyes glistened behind his little round specs. ‘Let’s do some “fieldwork”.’

‘I’m not sure. We’re supposed to be keeping a low profile, and not getting shot.’ Even under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have been keen to go exploring with Marcus. Marcus’s skill set was far too similar to his own, and lacked the proficiencies that he tended to rely on Mona or Maitland for. Like, for example, the ability to hit people, or make decisions.

‘But our colleagues are quite sure that Bryce is north of here.

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