Cherringham--Death on a Summer Night Read Online Free Page B

Oxford, didn’t last long.
    A string of witnesses stepped up to the stand to say Bell had been drinking, dropping tablets, bragging about what he and Dinah were going to get up to that night.
    Others said that in the weeks after she disappeared he didn’t seem to show any remorse, just carried on going down to the Ploughman’s as if nothing had happened.
    And although the evidence was — in Jack’s eyes, by NYPD standards — circumstantial, the jury returned a unanimous verdict.
    Guilty.
    Jack read the final report — the sentencing.
    Twenty-five years at her majesty’s pleasure …
    Then Jack rewound the last microfilm, put it in its case, and turned the machine off.
    He sat back in the hard wooden chair, trying to imagine serving a sentence like that for a crime you hadn’t committed.
    No wonder Tim Bell looked dead inside when he came into the pub. Jack knew from talking to plenty of ex-cons that many only survive a long stretch behind bars by suppressing all emotions.
    Without emotions, it’s just time passing, day by day, month by month, year by year.
    The man might be guilty. But there sure as hell wasn’t enough evidence to convict him if he’d been standing trial in an American court.
    And that made Jack doubt the whole story.
    With this one thought: Bell could indeed be innocent.
    He got up from the table, locked the files away in the cupboard, and left the library.
    But outside there wasn’t any fresh air. He wiped his brow: hardly midday, and it must be eighty degrees already and so humid.
    He looked across the street at the little building where Sarah worked. Her web design company had the top office, above the estate agents. She used Saturday mornings to catch up on paperwork, so he knew she’d be in there.
    He realized this was a first.
    Usually somebody came to them, asking for help, needing an investigation. But now this was being driven by him. By a sense of injustice.
    He was going to have to be careful. Get too involved in a case and you make mistakes.
    Which was why he couldn’t do this without Sarah. Even though it wouldn’t make her popular.
    And what if she turned him down?
    He made a quick decision, and headed up the road to Huffington’s.
    Funny thought: maybe an iced frappe latte might just make the difference between a “yes” and a “no” …
    He smiled at that.
    It wasn’t bribery. Just good tactics.

6. Lost Years
    Sarah and Jack walked side by side down Gibraltar Terrace, checking the door numbers, looking for Tim Bell’s house.
    Sarah rarely came to the old council estate on the edge of Cherringham which had been built in the fifties. She could see that some of the houses had been done up — but most were tatty, with paint peeling and overgrown lawns and hedges.
    The poor end of the village.
    In the bright sunshine, some people sat outside their open doors. As they walked by, Sarah smiled at kids splashing around in a little paddling pool. But as she and Jack passed a group of older kids sitting on a wall, she felt their suspicious gazes following them.
    “Not what the tourists see,” she said.
    “Same the world over,” said Jack. “People are poor and we never seem to be able to solve that.”
    They reached the door number they were looking for and Sarah stopped.
    “Guess this is it,” said Jack.
    Sarah looked at the tiny terraced house: grey pebbledash walls, tired curtains dangling at the windows, the front garden just a patch of dry grass, a few miserable shrubs.
    She could see cardboard taped to the door where the glass should have been. Broken glass was scattered across the weed-covered path.
    … and slogans were sprayed across the front door in lurid colours.
    “ Leave or die”
    “Killer!”
    Obscene words of hatred. Violence. Fury.
    She turned to Jack, aware now that people were watching from the house opposite, and that the teenagers they’d passed were now heading down the street towards them.
    “I’d say we’ll be safer inside than out here,”