Waiting For Murder by Fleur Hitchcock

Author:Fleur Hitchcock
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Nosy Crow
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

We step out of the door into incredible heat. The tarmac hasn’t actually melted but it’s so hot it burns my feet through the soles of my shoes and instantly sucks all the moisture out of my mouth. The car’s baking, the seats are sauna hot, and Mum winces when she grips the steering wheel. Jonathan waves us off and we roll slowly down the road from the museum with all the windows open, until the heat in the car goes from volcanic to desert.

“Brilliant,” says Mum. “That was brilliant – so much information. And the really exciting thing is that the necklace is almost certainly Danish. We could really have found her, Dan. Jonathan’s sending them photos to compare to other necklaces they’ve found. And they reckon the age is right. A woman in her sixties. That’s quite old for the eleventh century.”

“Good,” I say, thinking about what I found out and wishing I’d been able to discover more. I could have looked at later copies of the papers to see if there was anything about the other two siblings. They might still be around. Sarah Fear might have married someone locally, and there’d be a wedding notice. How annoying – I didn’t even think of that. As Mum chats I stare out of the window at people’s dry gardens, children playing in paddling pools, dead grass lining the road.

I try to make everything I know add up.

I can’t quite see the connections, but the coincidences are too massive to ignore.

First: Mrs Barlow’s husband disappeared just when they buried Kenneth Fear.

Second: Thomas Fear was involved in the bullion robbery.

Third: there’s a car with a hole in the windscreen, and a skull with a hole.

And then there are the crows, and the bales, and someone moving the bones. Although all of it happened a really long time ago, the car has triggered something more recent. So someone’s still around. Who?

Thomas?

But people in the village would have seen him. Someone would recognise him. And why? Why would he still be here?

We leave the town and drive through dry yellow fields with green trees lining their borders.

“All right?” says Mum. “How are you feeling? What a day!”

“I’m—”

She slams the brakes on and the car slews to a halt, nearly in the hedge. In front of us is an ambulance and a huge leaf-covered tree blocking the road.

“What the—”

A fire engine screeches to a halt behind us, and six people wearing heavy yellow jackets rush out and swarm around the ambulance. On the far side a police car has stopped with lights flashing and there are a couple of cars. Two of the firefighters run back to the engine and emerge with a chainsaw and another machine.

“Oh no,” says Mum. “Funny time of year to have a tree down – perhaps it’s the drought. Stay here, Dan. I’ll go and see if I can help move anything.”

I watch as she skirts the ambulance and stops. I can’t see what she sees but I can guess.

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