Page 35 of Her Deadly Promise

Grabbing a box of tissues, Gavin hurried over. ‘Here, have a seat.’ He and Candice ushered her over to a chair at the patio table. ‘I’m so sorry. I hope they catch this monster soon. It’s hard to believe that there’s a murderer roaming around out there.’

‘Me too,’ she blurted out and she meant it. Please let it not be Ed. She couldn’t cope if it were him. She sobbed. ‘I caught William playing weirdly last night with my old doll’s house that’s in his room. When I asked him about it, he said that Kayden was scared and often hid under his bed or in the cupboard because of Billie’s screaming. Kayden told him this and it’s tearing me apart. What she must have gone through and poor Kayden.’

‘It’s okay. Billie probably had lots of secrets. We never truly know what’s happening in another person’s life or what they’re capable of. How could we?’ Candice wrapped her arms around Nadia. That was true. She wondered if Candice would be this nice to her if she knew her secret. That’s why she had to go home soon and wait for Ed. She had to know if it was him. If it was, she could use it as leverage. It could be her way out of her farce of a marriage.

TWENTY-TWO

For a Thursday the Angel Arms seemed quiet. Gina glanced through the corridor that passed the toilets and she could see that a few tables in the beer garden had been filled. Elouise, the licensee, tottered back in on her strappy kitten heels and placed a tray of empties on the bar. Her black hair was piled high on her head and neatly kept up with a red scarf.

‘Ouch.’ She peeled the rest of a torn pink nail away. ‘Another one gone. Detectives, what can I do for you today?’

‘There’s been an incident.’

‘Not my CCTV again?’

Gina nodded. ‘Sorry.’

‘I can’t believe how this area’s going down the pan so fast. I still can’t walk down that lane out the back.’ Only a short while ago, Elouise found the body of a murder victim there. Gina tried to remember that while speaking to her. The landlady hadn’t seemed the same since.

‘I know, it’s worrying. Can we talk in private?’

Elouise removed her apron and called over the young man who peered over the cellar flap. ‘Bradley, can you take over the bar for a while. Just call me if a mad rush of people come in.’

‘Yep.’ He closed the flap and hurried to the bar.

‘Follow me. You know the way.’ Gina and Jacob were soon upstairs. ‘Take a seat on the couch.’

Gina avoided knocking over the packs of juice and miniature bottles of tonic that were piled up everywhere.

‘I need to sort all this out but as you can appreciate, time seems to run away. So, what’s happened now?’

‘A young woman was murdered yesterday.’

‘I heard the news. I tell you something, I checked all the doors and windows three times last night before going to bed.’ She splayed out her spotty sundress as she sat on a chair. ‘I don’t know her, though. I saw the photo that was shared on the news. She doesn’t come in here.’

‘We’re checking out an alibi and the man in question says he was here, drinking in your beer garden.’

‘Okay, what time?’

Gina remembered him saying he left at lunchtime and was at the pub the rest of the duration. She knew the walk from his house would take him past the Cleevesford Cleaver bed and breakfast and along the high street, that would take about twenty minutes. ‘From around two fifteen, maybe two thirty.’

‘We had a busy afternoon with a christening bash, so the place was pretty full. They didn’t book the place out so the public could still come in too. They used the garden. Is he a regular? What’s his name?’

‘He’s only just come back to the area so you may not know him.’

‘Try me, if I got his name while he was here, I’d remember it. I’m nifty with names.’

‘Shaun Brock. Late twenties, buzz cut, muscular and about five feet nine.’

She smiled and squinted, emphasising her long dark lash extensions. ‘I remember him. He came in wearing a crisp white vest and tight jeans; thought he was God’s gift as he attempted to chat up the drunken baby’s mother. There was something odd, the label was still on the top. I told him and he pulled it off.’

‘Did you speak to him?’

‘Yes, a couple of times when he came up to the bar.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He was full of stories about his time in Australia and New Zealand, but he said he was back for good and how he was trying to settle back into the area. He asked if I knew of anyone renting a flat out as his mother’s fussing was driving him mad. Things like that.’

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