SHADOW OVER THE FENS a gripping crime thriller full of suspense Read Online Free

thought that the older woman and the younger man made a good combination.
    ‘What have we got here?’ she asked.
    ‘White male, ma’am. Jumped from the viewing platform.’ Niall stared up at the tower almost disbelievingly.
    ‘Into the river?’
    ‘No, Inspector.’ The doctor, a usually jovial man, who carried a little too much weight around his girth than was healthy for him, turned and approached them. ‘Hit the wall first, I’m afraid. Snapped his back like a dry twig. You can tell by the way he’s lying.’
    ‘He’s out of the water then?’ asked Joseph.
    The doctor nodded. ‘Sort of. It’s a bit difficult to see him from here. He went in, but immediately drifted into the mud around a submerged derelict boat. The tides on its way out, so he’ll be going nowhere.’
    ‘Have you been down there, Doctor?’
    ‘Yes, close enough to check everything that I needed to, but you’ll need a few strong backs to get him out, I can tell you!’ He brushed mud from his trouser legs. ‘And yes, before you ask, he is most certainly dead.’
    ‘Well, we’d better take a look, Sergeant.’ Nikki walked towards the wall.
    ‘Ma’am?’ Yvonne Collins followed her. ‘Forgive me for sticking my oar in, but will forensics be taking some photos before they get him brought up?’
    Nikki frowned. ‘It’s the usual procedure. What’s bothering you, Constable?’
    ‘I don’t know, ma’am, but I’m sure this isn’t straightforward. Yes, he jumped. There are fifteen witnesses to testify to that, but . . .’ She paused, then looked directly at Nikki. ‘They all say he was either scared to death of something or someone, or he was completely off his head.’
    ‘Sane rational people don’t often throw themselves from high buildings, Yvonne.’
    ‘But the children, ma’am. I keep thinking about the children.’ Yvonne held her stare. ‘Determined suicides, those who plan to jump, are usually very deliberate and very organised. They would never pick a time when the platform was full of tourists and little kids, now would they?’
    Nikki groaned inwardly to think of children witnessing such a horrible thing. ‘Then he had to be high on something. Oh hell, poor choice of words, but he must have been wasted to do a thing like that.’
    ‘Probably was. But when you talk to the witnesses I think you’ll agree that there is a very odd feel about this, ma’am.’
    ‘Okay, I hear what you say and I trust your intuition, but before I do anything I need to go see this poor sod for myself.’
    ‘Niall will help you down, ma’am. There’s some slippery steps, and believe me, they’re lethal. Then you have to hang over a narrow ledge, an old walkway of some kind. Our man is in the mud that’s dredged into the bottom of that old boat.’
    It took a few minutes to get down to the water level, and Niall steadied her as she leaned around the slimy brickwork of the ledge.
    ‘I can see hi . . .’ Nikki’s words froze in her throat, and her mouth dried to chaff.
    Lying in the reddish-brown river mud, his body impossibly twisted, and his face half submerged in a brackish puddle of water, was a man she knew.
    Her mind flashed up a picture from earlier that day. A man in a scarlet rugger shirt and dark jog pants. A man waving happily as he rode off home. The man who had just offered to paint her gate. ‘Martin?’ Her voice crackled with emotion. ‘Oh no!’
    ‘You know him?’ Joseph moved to her side, his hand on her shoulder. ‘Guv?’
    Nikki shrank back away from the water, but the sight of the filthy scarlet shirt stayed with her. ‘He’s my neighbour. He was coming for coffee at the weekend.’ She knew the words sounded crass, but it was all she could think of. They were going to catch up. That’s what she’d said.
    Joseph exhaled loudly, and when she turned to him, his expression was full of concern.
    ‘It’s okay, it’s okay.’ Nikki gathered herself. This was a seemingly impossible thing to happen. Martin