Small Town Secrets (Some Very English Murders Book 2) (6 page)

When Kali had come from the dogs’ home, she’d been
embarrassingly and worryingly aggressive to other dogs – “reactive”, the staff
had called it, which had led Penny to naïvely downplay the ramifications of
such behaviour. But, months of training and behaviour study later, and she
finally had a dog that was a pleasure to walk, at least most of the time. Kali
didn’t seem likely to ever be one of those dogs who would frolic playfully on
beaches with other dogs, but the fact that she no longer tried to rip their
throats out was enough.

It was funny how your aims and ambitious adapted over time,
Penny thought. And when you achieve what you want, it isn’t always what it
cracked up to be.

Her phone buzzed and vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it
out to see she’d missed a call. Mobile phone reception was patchy in some
areas, and she’d often find a notification of a call that had never apparently
rung the phone. The number was unfamiliar, but there was a voicemail message
waiting.

She lodged the phone to her ear as she ambled along the
path. Swans floated gracefully down the river, and Kali’s ears were pricked
forward as she tried to work out whether it was worth trying to chase them.
Penny did a quick about-face to avoid them as the voicemail service finally connected.

It was Cath.

“Hi Penny. This is a bit strange but … can you come up to
Lincoln police station? If you can pop up today, sometime before five, that
would be great. Give me a call back on this number if you can’t, though, and
we’ll arrange another time. Thanks!”

Oh, really?

Penny frowned. Like most normal citizens, she couldn’t help
that clutching feeling of guilt whenever she crossed paths with the police. Had
her probing on the dating website and then the urbex groups triggered
something?

Was she now on some kind of watch list?

Did she have the expertise to get home, destroy her laptop
in a mysterious fire, move house, and deny all knowledge?

Unlikely.

She walked home quickly, doubt and worry making her regret
having had any breakfast that morning.

The desk sergeant in the public reception area was the same
man who had been there when she had gone in to make her great announcement
after the murder of David Hart. He was one of those admin staff who usually
wore a professionally bored expression, but today he peered at her with
curiosity. “Ms May,” he said. “Now then.”

“Hi. Er, now then. I’m here to see Detective Constable
Pritchard.”

“You said that last time,” he informed her. “It got messy.”

“Well, this time, she is
actually
expecting me. She,
ahh, asked me to come in. I don’t think I’m in trouble. Am I in trouble?”

He raised one eyebrow and reached for the internal
telephone. “Oh right,” she heard him say. “I see. Yes, that’s what she said,
too, but … okay then. Cheers.”

He looked up and nodded at Penny. “She’s on her way.”

Penny was greeted by Cath, looking very formal in a dark
grey suit, and ushered through a door and along some winding corridors.
“Inspector Travis will tell you everything,” Cath said. “So don’t panic.”

“I’m not panicking.”

“I would be,” Cath said, knocking on a wooden door that
said “Interview Room Four.”

“You just told me not to panic!” Penny heard her voice rise
and end on a squeak. Now she was panicking. Thanks, friend, she thought.

“Well, no … ah. Bill. Here’s Penny. Penny, this is Detective
Inspector Travis.”

DI Bill Travis had thick features that, individually, would
have been too large for his face. Yet they fitted together and formed an
appealing whole. He had thick black eyebrows that looked like they had been
drawn on with a marker pen, a wide nose, and eyelashes that some women spent a
fortune recreating in salons. He grinned broadly.

“Now then! So you’re the cause of all the trouble!”

Penny stopped halfway through the doorway. “I didn’t kill
Warren! I didn’t like him but then, who did?”

Cath burst out laughing. “We know. Or, we’re pretty sure,
at least, that you didn’t kill him. Come in and sit down. Can I go and get you
a cup of tea?”

“Poor woman, she’s not here to be tortured,” Inspector
Travis said. “Remember the Geneva Convention and all that.”

“I was going to make it in our staff area, not use that
disgusting machine in the custody suite.”

“Oh, well, that’s all right then. So if you’re offering … my
mug is somewhere on my desk,” the Inspector said. “Ms May? Tea? Coffee?”

“Er – oh. Tea, thanks.”

Cath disappeared and Penny regretted it immediately; now
she was alone with the detective. The Detective Inspector waved her to a
spindly-legged chair at a plain table. He sat opposite and regarded her coolly.

“This is somewhat embarrassing,” the Inspector said,
looking completely unembarrassed.

“Er …”

“For the police as a whole,” he said. “And for me, of
course. You see, we’re investigating the murder of a man that you knew. A man
that everyone knew, but generally they knew him for unfortunate reasons. Warren
Martin. A man whom no one is really mourning; he was a pest and a menace to
womankind, in a low and irritating kind of way. He was never a danger to anyone
but he was, I will concede, usually to be found in the wrong.”

“Right.” She was forcing herself to stop saying “er” but
she couldn’t think of what else she could say.

Inspector Travis stroked his cheek. “And here is where you
come in. Throughout the course of this investigation, one name keeps getting
mentioned, Ms May. And that name is yours.”

“I … er. Oh.” Penny shook her head slowly. Yes, she was an
outsider to the community. Yes, she was from “down south” which made her both
something to be admired and something to be feared. Yet, in spite of the
stereotypes of the rural people being unfriendly to incomers, she had received
nothing but warmth and acceptance. Now she felt sick. Behind her back, were all
the residents of Upper Glenfield convinced that she was really a murderer?

“Yes,” the Inspector went on, almost as if he was oblivious
to the reactions his words were having. “You’re quite the local celebrity,
aren’t you? The people of Upper Glenfield have been frankly horrified that we –
the police – have been turning up on their doorsteps.”

“But that’s nothing to do with me,” Penny protested. “None
of this is my fault.”

“I am not saying it is.” He spoke kindly. Cath re-entered
with the cups of tea on a tray.

“Tea, tea, tea,” she said, dishing out the mugs. “Right.
Where are we up to, Bill?”

“I’m just telling Ms May about how everyone we ask about
Warren seems to ask about
her.
”

“It’s quite bizarre,” Cath said, sitting down.

Inspector Travis jerked his thumb in Cath’s direction.
“What Cath isn’t telling you is this: she’s actually quite miffed. It used to
be that Cath was the ‘local’ in Upper Glenfield. If there was anything going on
there, she could get to the bottom of it, through gossip and eavesdropping. But
now you’re there. It’s you, now.”

“Me? I don’t understand. I really don’t.” She still felt
panicked but she had no idea why.

“You can be very useful to us, Penny,” Cath said. “Ignore
him. I’m not miffed at all. Honestly. It’s a relief to me that Agatha doesn’t
chase me round the market any more, trying to tell me about someone she thought
looked a bit suspicious because they were buying aubergines in the mini-market
at seven in the morning. Seriously, that has happened.”

“But I don’t see it,” Penny insisted. “Not the aubergines,
though that is weird. People have been asking me about the murder but I’m not
the police.”

“People have expectations of you, now. And don’t mistake
me,” the Inspector said, his voice becoming harder. “We are not asking you to
investigate anything. We’re simply suggesting that you do, indeed, open
yourself to the possibility of gossip. People want to talk to you, Ms May.
People want to tell you things. We would like you simply to listen. Oh, and
report back to us, of course.”

Penny was stunned. Thrilled and alarmed, but mostly
stunned.

“Er. Okay, then.”

Cath and Inspector Travis beamed widely, their expressions
identical.

“Great. Of course, this is all off the record and totally
unofficial. We deny everything. All we want is for you to keep an ear to the
ground and ask questions and listen to replies. We may as well make you into an
asset, all right?”

“I have one question, though,” Penny said, as her
excitement faded a little at the edges. “With the Warren Martin case, do you
think it was a targeted attack? Or something random? I suppose I really mean to
ask: am I in any danger? Are any of us?”

“It is impossible to say,” Inspector Travis said. “But we
are reasonably sure it was a targeted attack. I promise you that I would not
ask you to do anything that might put you at risk. Except, of course, the risk
of drinking our tea.”

Penny sat back and held her warm cup, thinking.

“Do you still want to do this?” Cath asked.

“Yes, I do,” she replied decisively. “What sort of leads
have you got already?”

The two police officers exchanged a quick glance. “Not a
lot,” Inspector Travis confessed. “And what we do know – from the pathology
report – we’ll keep to ourselves. I don’t want to prejudice anything you might
come to us with.”

“Right. Okay. Well, I do have some information but you
probably already know it…”

Inspector Travis tensed up, leaning forward. “Go on.”

Penny felt herself blush. “I checked out his online dating
profile,” she said, refusing to meet Cath’s eyes. She knew that she would be in
for a grilling from her friend later. “And from there, I found myself on his
photography portfolio. He’s really good, you know, by the way. So, have you
heard of something called urbex?”

The officers shook their heads. “Where’s that?” Inspector
Travis asked.

“It’s not a place. It’s an activity,” she explained. “It’s
short for urban exploration. It seems that Warren was into exploring abandoned
and derelict buildings, and taking photographs. I know the rumours said that he
was found somewhere remote. Was he taking photos?”

The Inspector pursed his lips. “Okay, I suppose we can tell
you some of what we know, because it fits. This urbex thing is new to me. He
was found with nothing. He was fully clothed, and dressed for the outdoors. But
he didn’t even have his phone or his wallet on him, never mind a camera.”

“It doesn’t mean that he wasn’t taking photos,” Cath put
in.

“True.”

“Can you tell me how he died?”

Again the police officers looked at one another. Inspector
Travis nodded. “Keep this to yourself. He was strangled.”

“What with?”

“We don’t know. Nothing was found. We’d asked your friend
Drew about things that could be used. That was one of the reasons we called him
in. That, and for tracking. One of our officers was waffling about nettles and
so on.”

“Oh yes,” Penny said. “The fibres inside …” Drew had once
gone into a detailed demonstration of how nettle could make rope.

Inspector Travis waved his broad hand in a dismissive
gesture. “Well, it wasn’t anything like that. The marks around the deceased’s
neck were caused by something wide and flat.”

“Ah.” Penny thought back to the day of the photoshoot at
the dogs’ home. “A camera strap, then.”

Silence stretched out between them.

After a long few seconds, Inspector Travis nodded
carefully. “Well. Yes. That would do it. Exactly like a camera strap.”

Cath began to grin again. “Excellent.”

“We would have come up with that sooner or later,
Pritchard,” Inspector Travis said.

“Sure.”

“Hmph.”

Penny felt buoyed by this immediate success. Maybe it was
going to work out just fine. Listen to gossip? Yes. She could do that.

She could certainly do that.

* * * *

Penny wandered around the streets of Lincoln, trying to
make sense of what had just happened. Cath accompanied her, leaving her formal
suit jacket back at the station, claiming to be off duty. As they made their
way through the pedestrianized area, Cath told her a little more about the
demise of local policing.

“Everyone talks about the old-fashioned bobby on the beat,”
Cath said. “It was before my time. But the older coppers talk about it, those
few that are left from those days. They really did know everyone on their beat.
One chap was telling me about how it was, when it all changed for him. His
patch was a large rural area but it included a few small towns and lots of
villages. And he knew all the shopkeepers and he went in the cafes and had a
cup of tea with the staff and they told him what was going on, and when things
happened, he knew where to go and what he’d find.”

“It sounds idyllic.”

“The thing was,” Cath said, “most of what the police were
doing was intangible. That doesn’t satisfy the people who fund it all. They
want graphs and charts and targets and achievements and statistics.”

“It’s the same in healthcare, and in education,” Penny said
sadly.

“True. So this old guy was telling me about what happened.
One day this new inspector turned up. He told them they were going to be
‘policing by objectives’ now. He went round all the shops, this new inspector,
and told the staff not to serve the constables when they were on duty. No more
wandering, no more gossiping. They had to have a reason to be anywhere. They
had to justify it. Why were you walking down the High Street? No crimes have
been committed on the High Street. Go to that other part of town. Someone’s
house was broken into. You need to be there. Well, okay, but no crimes have
been on the High Street because
I’m walking down the High Street.
”