Resurrection Bones (A DI Fenella Sallow Crime Thriller Book 6) by N.C. Lewis

Author:N.C. Lewis [Lewis, N.C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-08-30T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 34

I'll binge my cod and chips in the warming sun on a bench by the lighthouse, Shirley Bickham thought. She'd keep an eye out for greedy gulls and relax to the ebb and flow of the vast sea.

As she approached the arched entrance to the pier, a fierce-faced police officer stomped toward her. His boots clacked on the wooden slats with an angry snap. He was after her, she was sure of it, and there was nowhere to run. She didn’t deserve to be locked behind bars; she was a mother with a pregnant daughter to look after. She thought of her dad and Ginger and her mam and wanted to cry. It wasn’t her fault. None of this stinking mess was her fault.

Then she noticed the plump girl, twelve or thirteen, at his side, and beyond another uniformed officer followed.

"Now we'll be havin' no more of your bleedin' lies," Shirley heard the officer say. "And I'll be having a word with your dad. You ought to know better, Penny. You are going straight back to school."

Shirley strolled to the end of the pier and leaned against the railing. No one sat on the benches. The two police officers and the girl waited on the boardwalk. A patrol car skidded to the kerb. They climbed in. The patrol car didn’t move for a full five minutes, then drifted into the traffic.

Feeling suddenly elated at having the pier to herself, Shirley slumped on a bench near the lighthouse. The building rose to the heavens like a strange castle in a fairy tale. Painted white, it had a huge dungeon-style door made of wooden slats and held together by giant iron braces. The door might once have been black, but had weathered to faded grey. And it looked thick and Victorian solid. If you were locked inside and trying to get somebody's attention, nobody would hear your pounding fists. You could scream until your throat was raw, and nobody would know.

She recalled a story about a castle with an evil ogre inside or was he hiding under a bridge? She shrugged away the half-remembered memory, stretched out under the warming rays of sun and started on the cod and chips. They were still warm and delicious.

She chomped on the last of the battered fish, crunching the bag into a tight ball and tossing it onto the ground.

"Biodegradable," she grunted as a gust of wind blew it along the slats.

It clattered to a stop by the railings, tottered for a moment then plunged off the edge.

Overhead, gulls screamed. They hovered over the lighthouse looking down with beady eyes. If she'd been in a woo-woo mood, she might have taken their shrieks as a warning. She'd eaten her food without yielding a scrap to the flying rats. She closed her eyes and relaxed as her stomach digested the meal. Good things were coming her way, she could feel it. Only one question. When?

Shirley heard the low scrape first. A sound above the slush of the waves and below the racket of the gulls.

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