THE LONG DEAD: A gripping British murder mystery with detective John Blizzard by John Dean

Author:John Dean [Dean, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: THE BOOK FOLKS best-selling British detective fiction publishers
Published: 2017-09-23T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter fourteen

His mind cleared by his admissions the night before and his mood significantly lightened by the prospect of a day off, Blizzard sweated off his hangover the next morning on a ten-mile bike ride with Fee. It was the kind of crisp and bright morning when it was a joy to be alive. The ice glistened on the hedgerows and the sun glinted off the tarmac beneath wisps of blue sky that heralded a welcome end to a fortnight in which endless winter days had followed endless winter nights.

As the couple rode through the country lanes surrounding the chief inspector’s home, chatting idly about nothing in particular, Blizzard felt his alcohol-induced headache gradually dissipating and his spirits rising for the first time in weeks. That it should happen on a bike would have amazed many that knew him before Fee walked into his life. A year earlier and it would have amazed him as well because for many years the chief inspector had harboured a deep dislike of exercise and regarded those who took part in it with great suspicion.

All that had changed eighteen months before when he hosted a press conference at Abbey Road and was horrified at the photograph that appeared in the newspaper that evening. When Colley pointed it out, Blizzard’s feeble attempts to blame the double chin on a trick of the light or a bad camera angle only served to make the chief inspector realise that he had to lose some weight.

Blizzard enjoyed his Sunday morning ride that day, he and Fee chatting comfortably about anything that wasn’t linked to policing as they rode along the winding lanes to the west of Hafton, appreciating the unaccustomed warmth as the sun burnt away the mist, sending clouds of steam rising from the road surface. Yet always, behind the idle conversation, Blizzard was thinking about the case and starting to come to some conclusions. Feeling as if somehow a great weight had been removed from his shoulders at Colley’s house the night before, he soon found himself in a cheerful mood, and after the bike ride the couple went back to his house, changed and went out for lunch at the village pub. Then they drove into the city, where Blizzard spent a couple of hours with his mother in the residential home, talking properly about Frank.

During his visit, Fee visited a friend, spending the entire time talking about John Blizzard. The couple met up again just after four and went back to Fee’s terraced house near the city centre for a light tea, sitting by the fire in her cosy living room as the late afternoon gloom closed in. Then Blizzard went to view the battered body of Moira Savage.

The call from Colley came shortly after six and within twenty minutes, the chief inspector and Ellis were driving through the same roads along which they had cycled that morning, the grim expression on their faces contrasting sharply with the happy smiles of a few hours before.

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