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

may need a SOCO to check it out for me. Thanks. Over and out.’ Nikki relayed what had been said to Joseph and for the next five minutes they drove in silence, until she pulled the car into Buckledyke Lane
    ‘Wow! What a place to live!’ exclaimed Joseph. Then added quickly, ‘And I mean that in a good, if somewhat remote, sort of way.’ He stared across the vast expanse of marshland, to the distant horizon that shimmered and sparkled like a strip of silver foil.
    ‘You should see it at sunrise,’ said Nikki softly. ‘My childhood bedroom looked in this direction, and my father told me I was truly blessed to wake to this sight every day. I never really appreciated it when I was five, but now I know he was right.’
    ‘The cottage looks very neat, guv. Are we going to have to force an entry?’
    Nikki threw him a withering look. ‘This is a Cloud Fen, two up, two down cottage, Sergeant. We turn the handle and open the door. And if he’s actually locked it for some reason, the key will be under the door mat.’
    ‘You don’t lock your doors?’ asked Joseph in amazement.
    She began to walk slowly up the path to the front door. ‘I do these days. But then a farmhouse may be considered fair game for rich pickings. Not that there are any, but the thieves wouldn’t know that until they got in. I think it’s being a copper, I feel it my duty to think about security.’
    ‘And the flak would be pretty heavy if your colleagues knew you went out and left the place wide open.’
    ‘There is that, of course.’ She arrived at the door, then veered off right along a narrow path and went around to the back. ‘No one uses front doors out here.’ She smiled. ‘If you’re going to tread mud in, do it in the kitchen, not the best room.’
    She moved slowly across the backyard, then paused. She’d been in here so many times that she knew exactly what she would find even before she opened the door.
    ‘Shall I?’ asked Joseph. ‘This can’t be very pleasant for you.’
    ‘No, I’m fine. It just seems so odd, I’m having trouble getting my head around it.’
    ‘Maybe he will have left a note. That may explain things better.’
    Nikki shrugged. Somehow she knew there would be no note. Just a mystery, and even if it never became a police matter, it would be one she would have to solve.
    The door was unlocked.
    ‘Surely, if you were going to go out, never to come back, you’d lock the door?’ mused Joseph, half to himself.
    ‘Would it matter? If things meant so little, and you wanted to die, would you care?’
    They stepped onto the quarry-tiled floor of the kitchen, and a feeling of warmth greeted them. Partly because the place was a little time warp of old country living, clean, fresh and welcoming, and partly because a heavy iron pot was simmering gently on the solid fuel stove.
    Joseph looked at Nikki and bit his lip. ‘I don’t think we are going to reason our way out of that one, do you, guv?’
    She didn’t answer. Something had happened to Martin Durham, between the time that he had spoken to her, and his fateful trip to St Saviour’s Tower. Something devastating. ‘You take the ground floor, Joseph. I’ll check upstairs.’
    ‘Are you looking for anything in particular, guv?’
    ‘Just a good reason for a sane, happy man to top himself.’
    ‘Oh, simple then.’
    Nikki climbed the stairs. She had only been to the upper floor once before. It must have been many years ago, because her daughter Hannah was still coming home on the school bus, and she’d been keeping an eye open for the familiar blue-and-white coach that stopped at the end of Buckledyke Lane. Martin had picked up some kind of bug, but had been too proud to ask for help. She had had a bad feeling that all was not well, and called in. Lucky she had. An hour later an ambulance was tearing towards Greenborough General with a blue light flashing.
    The main bedroom was like the rest of the cottage. Well cared for, and although a little basic,