A Carriage of Misjustice by Charlie Cochrane

Author:Charlie Cochrane [Cochrane, Charlie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Gay, cozy mystery, romance
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Published: 2020-05-10T16:00:00+00:00

By the time the team met in the incident room late on Friday morning, they had a further wealth of information, although still no clear direction of where the case was heading. Like having a pile of jigsaw pieces and no picture on the box to guide them, as Robin described it.

Laurence had finally worked through his list of keyholders: all could give an account of themselves for the Wednesday night and none appeared to have any connection to Osment other than ones the team already knew about.

“That ex-barman was rather sheepish, though. The reason he was late returning his set of keys to the club was that he’d lost them and didn’t want to admit the fact until he’d had a chance of finding them again.”

“Which he did?” Pru asked.

“Yep. He’d been out drinking with his mates, so he had the bright idea of going to the places they’d visited on the off-chance the keys had been handed in and not already returned to the club. He struck gold at a pub—The Red Dragon. I rang them and they confirmed the keys had turned up in line with what the barman said and they’d been put away safely, waiting to be reclaimed. The manager at the pub had the sense to make a note of when they were handed in, and there’s a couple of days gap between the Friday night of the pub crawl and the Monday they appeared. Therefore, anybody who’d been in the pub during that time could have ‘borrowed’ them.”

“Great.” Pru snorted. “Why did this bloke have them with him if he was out on the lash?”

Laurence shrugged. “He says it was habitual to pick them up and put them in his pocket. I believe him, actually. My maths teacher at sixth form college told us that she’d once gone off with the keys to a National Trust property she’d visited because she’d automatically picked them up.”

“That’s that, I guess,” Callum said. “Hundreds of people go to The Red Dragon. We’ll never pin them down.”

“Maybe, maybe not. They told me it had been particularly busy that weekend, including a darts match on the Saturday night. Osment’s team, given the notes in the bookings diary, and I think he was playing because the pub manager says he has a good memory for faces and recognised Osment’s when his death was reported in the local paper. Although I clearly need to double-check that.”

Robin, whose eyes had been drawn to the incident board again, suddenly turned around at the mention of the darts team. “Might be coincidental, but it gives him an opportunity to take them, although how would he know they were from the Hartwood ground?”

“Ah, now that’s where it gets interesting, sir. The barman swore they had a label on when they were in his possession, which is why he was worried they’d be returned to the club before he could run them to ground. He’d have been for the high jump in that event. But the label wasn’t there when he picked the bunch of keys up.

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