Murder on a Cornish Isle by Jo Silva

Author:Jo Silva [Silva, Jo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008622824
Publisher: One More Chapter

Chapter Twenty-Five

While the Pimpernel Club gather in the library, Joe asks Jane to leave the bedroom and puts in the necessary but dreaded call to Penworthy. He’s sitting with Donna on the edge of Miles’s bed, the door to the bathroom remaining well and truly shut. Joe would prefer it to be hermetically sealed and never opened again. In fact, he’d like his life to be hermetically sealed and not opened again if that meant not having to put this call through. His finger hovers over Penworthy’s private number. They have an agreement that if a dodgy call needs to be made then they are to phone each other on their private, rather than work phones. ‘And don’t WhatsApp me and don’t even think about using the police radio,’ she once said. ‘We don’t want the whole bloody world to know!’

Where should he start, he wonders. How about, ‘Hi, ma’am, the thing is, the Home Secretary is dead. In fact – and try not to laugh – she’s not just dead but her body is missing.’

No, that won’t do.

How about a bit of a lie to save his own skin? ‘Ma’am. Enys here. About the Home Secretary. She’s done a runner. But she left a note that said not to send anyone looking for her because she’s nipped off to the Maldives and isn’t coming home.’ Actually, that might just work. Donna puts up both thumbs in encouragement and quickly presses ‘call’ on the phone on his behalf.

‘Jesus Christ on a bike!’ shouts Penworthy once he’s explained that the Home Secretary is both dead and missing. Despite the hurricane, she’s gone to Truro on a shopping spree because her daughter wouldn’t stop pestering her for a trip to TK Maxx. ‘I gave you one job,’ she shouts. ‘One bleeding job! All you had to do was keep the woman alive for forty-eight hours! Wait a minute, Joe – I said no crop tops, Keris. No, not that one. Absolutely not. I don’t care if Sennen wears the same thing or what her mother lets her do, I want that belly button covered up. What did you say? Right. One more dirty look from you, young lady and you can forget Boardmasters this year. I’m back, Joe. The tide’s in at the moment, you say? When does the causeway open again?’

‘Eight-ish, although with the storm, it might be later, depending on the swell. It closes again at midnight.’

Penworthy takes a very deep breath. ‘That might be just the thing that saves us. Except that if you’ve got a rampaging psycho on your hands over there, you might be screwed. Maybe one of them has gone mad, PTSD type thing? What the hell happened, anyway?’

Joe explains as much as he can with the limited knowledge he has, keen to point out that he carried out security rounds on a number of occasions last night (missing out the detail pertaining to the samurai ghost), watched over Pinky while she was swimming, and that he did all of this despite her having ordered him to leave her alone.

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