Date with Deceit by Julia Chapman

Author:Julia Chapman [Chapman, Julia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

17

Sitting at the large table that spanned the length of the dining room, Sergeant Clayton didn’t know what to think. On the one hand, things were turning out to be less of a nightmare than he’d first feared. Still a nightmare – the town’s mayor was dead, for goodness sake. But with the angle the Harrogate detectives were taking, it would at least be a manageable nightmare.

Suicide was what they’d decided on, having heard the testimony from the key witnesses. It was the sergeant’s opinion too. They had three people all stating that the doors on the Land Rover were closed when they got there, Bernard Taylor already shot inside it. At which point Ana Stoyanovic had raced to the passenger door, opened it, and the shotgun had fallen out. The preliminary findings of the forensics team backed up what the witnesses had said. It seemed clear beyond all doubt that Bruncliffe’s mayor had taken his own life.

So, pending the more detailed results from the crime scene, it was looking like the investigation could be tied up in a neat parcel. No need to arrest anyone – although they were discussing the steps to take against the big Bulgarian lad who’d been found to have cocaine in his possession. The cocaine that seemed to have kicked the whole thing off. But other than that, it was looking like the incident, while tragic and devastating, wasn’t criminal.

And yet, Sergeant Clayton was uneasy. He could tell from the drawn appearance of his constable as the lad joined him in the dining room, that he felt the same.

‘What a mess,’ Danny muttered, taking a seat next to his boss as the two Harrogate detectives came back in from the courtyard, where they’d been having one last look around the stables and the gunroom with Gareth Towler.

‘Look on the bright side,’ said the younger of the detectives, his smile jarring with the sergeant. ‘Better than it being murder.’

Sergeant Clayton bit his tongue. What did they know? They came from a large town where something like this wouldn’t reach into every corner of every home and shake the very foundations. Where there wouldn’t be repercussions that would echo down the years amongst people blessed with long memories and a predisposition to condemn. A town that hadn’t already been set reeling by murder and mayhem over the last six months. And when you considered who was going to get some of the blame for this latest tragedy – a black sheep cast out fourteen years ago and reluctantly welcomed back only recently. The same person who’d been at the centre of the dramatic events that had rocked the place of late. Forgiveness would definitely be in short supply.

But worse than that was the other person who was going to be implicated. Someone a lot less able to take on the role of town pariah. Someone the community would be horrified to learn was at the heart of what had happened here today. She was one of their own, after all.

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