THE APOTHECARY’S DAUGHTER an absolutely gripping crime thriller that will take your breath away by JANE ADAMS

Author:JANE ADAMS [ADAMS, JANE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joffe Books psychological thrillers
Published: 2020-12-08T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-three

On the Monday morning Ray drove to see Frank Jones’s wife. Her address had been in the file that Mahoney had provided him with.

Helen Jones still lived in the council flat that Frank had moved to six years before. Their child was almost seven and Ray arrived when his mother was still not home from the school run.

Ray waited, parking his car in front of the block of flats and watching the procession of young mothers, many with pushchairs, make the morning trek home. He had only the slightest idea as to Helen Jones’s appearance. Blonde, someone had told him, and Ray tried not to stare at every blonde woman that passed him by. He needn’t have worried, she stood out a mile when he finally saw her, a young woman walking alone, dressed in faded blue jeans and a tight black top. It was her face that gave her away, the strain that shadowed the eyes and put lines where no woman that age should have them. He waited until she had gone into the block and then followed, aware of the stares he got from the mothers still chatting on the street. Their interest had little to do with his scars, it was pure recognition and he had faced it a thousand times. The ‘he’s a copper’ look, and the buzz of interest as to what he was doing there. Ray had long since learned to live with it, but it seemed strange after so long a break to have slipped back into the invisible uniform. But then, George Mahoney had been retired from the army for almost a decade and, if you looked at the way he moved you’d never have known.

He didn’t bother with the lift. Hated them, anyway, Helen Jones only lived on the third floor. Even so, he was panting by the time he’d reached the top of the stairs. Got to get back in shape, he told himself, pausing to catch his breath before knocking at Mrs Jones’s door.

‘Helen Jones?’

‘Yes?’ She studied him for a moment. ‘You’re police,’ she said.

‘DI Ray Flowers.’ He still had his ID card, it was out of date but he waved it at her anyway.

‘You’d better come on in.’

She stepped back, waiting for him to close the door, then led the way through to the living room. It was clean and tidy and, he guessed, not long decorated in pale blue paper with a flower border at dado height. The suite was covered in worn blue velour but the TV and video were new. Ray remembered the report in the file about Frank Jones’s spending.

Helen gestured to a place on the sofa, but she didn’t sit down. Instead, she stood across the room, staring out of the picture window at the street below. She was far too thin, Ray noticed, and far too pale, the bright lipstick she wore only accentuating the whiteness of her skin.

‘Well?’ she said. ‘I’ve already told the other lot I don’t know nothing.

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