Fire Damage (A Jessie Flynn Investigation, Book 1) Read Online Free Page B

that more than ten cars a day used this lane that came from nowhere important and led nowhere.
    Her tyres crunched on gravel as she drove through the wooden five-bar gate, rotten, leaning drunkenly off its hinges, and parked in the circular drive behind a green mud-splattered Land Rover Defender. The house must have originally been three cottages that had been knocked into one. It was long and low, a couple of hundred years old at least: two storeys high, of red brick with wooden beams cutting through them, a clay-tiled roof which undulated like the surrounding hills. It looked to be – as was her own cottage, on a more modest scale – a money pit of maintenance. She passed two olive green painted front doors, the first with pot plants crowded around its base, the second, a rusting metal pig-trough filled with soil that looked as if it had been purchased as a garden feature and never planted out. The third door was clearly in use as the front door to the combined dwelling: a letterbox stuffed with an overlarge catalogue that prevented it from closing, and a hedgehog-shaped boot cleaner to one side, its bristles worn and caked in mud.
    Jessie yanked out the catalogue, knocked and waited. The whole place had an air of isolation and neglect. The utter silence was oppressive; she couldn’t even hear birdsong. Though she loved her own cottage, she also liked having Ahmose next door, within shouting distance, if she ever needed him. This place was too secluded, felt as if it could almost be alone on the planet. Being a psychologist hadn’t anesthetized her to imaginary fears. It was actually the opposite. Accessing the dark side of other people’s minds had made her imagination more feverish. She knew that if it were she out here alone, in darkness, every sound would be a window being cracked open from the outside. Shivering, she rubbed a hand over the back of her neck. It was cold today, the sky flinty-grey with clouds and she wished that she had put a thicker coat on.
    A woman of around sixty opened the door. She wore an apron, bearing the legend,
You must be confusing me with the maid we don’t have
, accompanied by a photograph of a cone-breasted woman in a pencil skirt and twinset.
    ‘I won’t shake your hand,’ she said, holding up a marigold-gloved hand coated with soapsuds. ‘I was in the middle of washing up.’ Jessie noticed a slight Midland twang underneath a voice that was brisk and efficient. ‘I’m Wendy Chubb, and you must be Dr Flynn.’
    Jessie smiled. ‘Please call me Jessie.’
    ‘Come in, won’t you.’ She closed the door behind Jessie, face wrinkling at the cold air that blew with them into the room. ‘Sami’s upstairs in his bedroom playing with his toys. Major Scott’s in the sitting room. He asked me to tell you to pop in and see him first before your session with Sami.’ Wendy smiled. ‘Must be interesting being a psychologist. Satisfying too, sorting out people’s minds for them. I could do with a bit of that myself.’
    Jessie laughed. ‘If only it was that easy. Sometimes I think that we psychologists create more problems than we solve.’
    ‘Well, I hope you can help Sami. He’s a delightful little boy, he is. Intelligent too. He helped me make a cake the other day. Managed to weigh all the ingredients out with hardly any help.’ She met Jessie’s gaze, pale eyelashes blinking. ‘What do you think is the matter with him?’
    Jessie shrugged. She wasn’t about to break patient confidentiality, even if she did have a clue at this early stage, which she didn’t.
    ‘I’ve only seen him once.’ Subconsciously, she touched a hand to the scar on her head. ‘He seems scared and very troubled.’
    Wendy nodded. ‘Been in the wars?’
    ‘A brief scuffle with my car door,’ Jessie lied.
    ‘Car doors can be dangerous.
Any
doors can be dangerous. I got my thumb jammed in one of Nooria’s kitchen cabinets. Some of them were damaged and she asked me to help her replace them, make