Page 1

Chapter One

Chief Superintendent Ware stared Tilly up and down, and she had a momentary quiver in her stomach. She was pretty sure that she hadn’t done anything wrong, but then, could one ever be certain?

The Chief Superintendent squinted at her. “The suspect is believed to be intoxicated and when tracked down, is found in a local accident and emergency department having what is clearly a whiplash injury treated, an injury almost exclusively found in those involved in car accidents. Do you perform an arrest?”

“No,” Tilly said confidently. “A suspect can’t be arrested under section six, paragraph five of the road traffic act 1988 when in hospital as a patient.”

“Good, very good.” He smiled a little. “You’ll be off then?”

Tilly relaxed slightly. Well, as much as she could relax when a half-naked Chief Superintendent could barrage her with questions from the sergeant’s exam at any moment. “Just about to leave, dad. Er, sir.” She was technically in uniform.

“Let me change out of my pajamas and I’ll drive you to the station,” he said, heaving himself up from the breakfast table. “It’s not out of my way.”

Matilda Ware had wanted to be a police officer for as long as she could remember. Probably longer, to be honest. Seeing her dad come home in his scratchy uniform every night, hearing his stories, knowing that he was out there protecting people, she’d been fiercely proud of him and wanted nothing more than to be exactly like him. Well, minus the beer belly, maybe.

And she was firmly on her way, quite literally, as he waved from the train platform and she blew kisses from the window. With her sergeant’s exam coming up, the opportunity to work in a small police station was exactly what she’d needed.

Not that she’d been convinced at the beginning. A tiny town with only one policeman? It didn’t sound like the opportunity of the year. But as her father wisely pointed out, a small town with only one officer meant that she’d be called upon to do things that she wouldn’t normally have the chance to do. And besides, Max Browning was one of the finest police officers that he knew and they’d been on a training course together. She had a feeling that her dad saw Max as some kind of mentee.

Tilly grinned to herself as she settled into her seat.

A few months of the kind of no-holds-barred policing she’d get in this tiny town and then she’d be moving onward and upward, well on her way to becoming Chief Superintendent, just like her dad. Or, and she shivered a little at the thought of it, maybe even Chief Constable.

She sighed in satisfaction and pulled out her copy of the police training handbook. A little light reading for the short journey to Whitebridge.

THE TOWN WAS tiny and perfect, perched in a little valley with higgledy-piggedly houses in pastel colors lining narrow streets. Tilly dragged her suitcase down the high street, passing a pub, a bookshop with a gray cat sitting in the window, a villageshop, and a little cafe that smelled of roasted coffee and made her stomach rumble.

Just the place, she thought. It was pretty quiet, though. Maybe there was actually no crime at all here. She felt a bit sick at the thought of it. She couldn’t afford to be stuck in a back-water, she had career milestones to hit and she had no time to waste.

Then she saw an SUV parked on a double yellow line and calmed down. There was crime everywhere, no matter how peaceful a place looked. There’d always be a dark underbelly, a seedy side to things.

Her mum had always hated that. Always hated that she and her dad were looking for the maggots in the apple, looking for what was out of place or just plain bad. It was probably why she’d left in the end.

Tilly didn’t like remembering that day, didn’t like the ripping feeling she’d had when she’d had to choose, even though she knew that she’d chosen right. She’d had to stay with her dad. He’d needed her. Her mother hadn’t.

Even now, her mum only rang once in a blue moon and forgot her birthday more than she remembered it.

She stopped, her case bumping to a halt behind her. A blue sign over a crooked door marked the sandstone building as the local police station. Tilly took a second to check her uniform, to square her shoulders, then nodded to herself and strode confidently in through the front door.

A man was leaning on the wooden counter inside, a pipe clamped between his teeth, and a disgruntled look on his face.

“We’ve already got a copper,” he said when he saw Tilly.

“Well, now you’ve got two, haven’t you?” she said.

He grunted. “S’pose.” He brightened up a little. “Unless you’ve come to take over from Max? Like, he’s going on holidayor something? Wouldn’t open cases need to be suspended or something if that happened?”

“Nice try, Dave.” A tall, freckle-nosed man came out from the back room. He was wearing what was possibly a uniform, but without a tie and with no jacket, and with shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, Tilly couldn’t be quite sure.

“You’ve got a visit,” said Dave, pulling his pipe out of his mouth. “Probably some big city copper come to reign you in, keep an eye on you and the likes.”

The man turned to Tilly and grinned, light dancing in his blue eyes, and Tilly thought he looked rather handsome when he smiled. Not that she was interested in men and definitely not in her superiors.

“You must be Constable Ware, I’m Max. I’ll be with you in a minute. Let me deal with this old reprobate first.”

“Don’t go calling me names now, young Max. It’s bad enough you’re taking my license away.”

“I’m confiscating it temporarily,” said Max. He held out a large brown envelope. “Go on, drop it in there.”