The Island Murders by James London

Author:James London
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: murder, isle of wight, shanklin, cowes, hampshire, local, detective, poirot, holmes, morse, mystery, crime, whodunnit, solve, case, police, procedural, deduction, DCI, Bruno Peach, killer
ISBN: 9781785388347
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2018
Published: 2018-07-19T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

Wednesday 30th July

That evening Bruno met Janet once again for their meal together. This time, the conversation began with her views about education on the Island. A visiting education standards chief had highlighted performance-related issues across a number of schools on the Island, and blamed them on high drug use, soaring unemployment and the local government’s methods of allocating their budget, highlighting in particular the state of many of the local education authority’s buildings, which were in need of modernisation.

But Janet did not agree with his views. In her job she met Island residents from all areas, all classes and all wealths. She knew that although the Island was in many respects similar to anywhere else in the country, but it was the subtle differences at a local level which needed to be considered, and a one-size-fits all approach dictated by London was not the answer - almost all public services could be improved with proper political representation by the local MP in Parliament.

Amongst the young twenty-something mums, there were as many married as unmarried. The sick and the elderly were in care homes starved of funds. The single mothers were housed by the local authorities and claimed the full range of benefits. Widows or widowers lived alone on the Island; many were those advanced in years who had come to retire as part of a couple leaving their families behind and were now reaching the point where they could not cope alone. The costs of their support network was much higher than in the average British town or city, but this was still borne by the Island local authorities. Although this provided many Islanders with employment, it was very much in the low-paid categories - care workers, cleaners and suchlike. Many of these workers would still need to claim benefits, and so the council’s budget tended to go on people... it left little for improvements to the infrastructure of the Island.

As the conversation moved on, Janet mentioned a daytime course in Bournemouth she’d been attending through the holidays. This was news to Bruno; definitely the first time it had been mentioned. This perplexed him slightly until Janet said the words:

“...and whilst I was there, I took the opportunity to look into Steph’s current whereabouts...”

Bruno doubted that the day time course had actually happened and suspected Janet just didn’t want to admit that she had been there especially for this purpose.

The house at which Steph lived at was a two million-pound house on a private estate, a few miles west of the city centre; it was definitely the kind of house that would only have been affordable by someone with considerable wealth.

Bruno knew that one of Janet’s skills was engaging people from all walks of life in conversation, but even he was surprised at the amount of information she had found out.

It seemed that Steph’s secretarial experience had helped her land a job as a receptionist in a garage selling Range Rover cars, a position in which she could flaunt her sexuality to wealthy purchasers - it certainly seemed like her ideal role.

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