Palmer-Jones 04 - A Prey to Murder by Ann Cleeves

Author:Ann Cleeves
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery, Private Investigators, Cozy, British Detectives, Thriller & Suspense, Teen & Young Adult, Crime Fiction, Literature & Fiction
Publisher: Bello
Published: 2013-08-15T05:00:00+00:00

Helen saw Molly in the town, but turned down an empty side street so that the woman should not see her. She did not want anyone to know that she had left school early. She had only gone into school to see Laurie. Her father had said that she and Fanny could stay at home and he seemed so fraught and distressed about Mother that she had felt she should have stayed at Gorse Hill to look after him. But she had needed to talk to Laurie, to find out why he had disappeared from Gorse Hill the day before, to be reassured that he had nothing to do with her grandmother’s death. So she had walked to the school on the other side of the town, as usual but when she got there no one had seen Laurie and she had left again during the mid-morning break.

In the town most of the people she passed were elderly. The small shops catered for their needs – there was a preponderance of chemists and shops selling Crimplene dresses, surgical stockings and winceyette nightdresses. The young mothers who still lived in Sarne went to the superstore on the bypass for their groceries and to Hereford for their clothes. Sarne itself seemed intent on preserving the serious nature of shopping and would have preferred ration books and Eastern European queues. There was no sense of fun or pleasure, no wine bars, boutiques or bookshops. On other occasions Helen would have been irritated by the tedium of the place but today she welcomed it and walked on without speaking to anyone.

She knew where Laurie lived though she had never been to his home. She had visited the council estate occasionally with her mother, delivering commodes and walking frames to elderly residents for the WRVS. She had never been there alone and as she walked past the pretty, well-kept gardens she felt that people were peering behind lace curtains and that everyone knew who she was and why she was there. Outside the Llewellyns’ house two toddlers with runny noses stopped playing in the jungle of long grass, pushed their faces against the bars of the broken gate and stared at her as she walked past.

The house on the end, where Laurie lived, was a little larger than the others and although the garden was tidier than the Llewellyns’ it did not meet the general standard. The grass had been roughly cut but there were no flowers in the front border and the hedge was overgrown. As she walked up the path to the front door Helen realized that she was shaking.

Nan Oliver opened the door. She had been awake all night. Michael and Carol had been reluctant to go back to sleep after being wakened by the police and even when they had settled she had been too worried to sleep. There had been no news of Steve.

‘Hello, Mrs Oliver,’ Helen said. It would have been so much easier if Laurie’s mother had not been there.

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