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“Well then?” Jules asked Sophie.

And Sophie had a sudden flash of memory. “Right, you were just telling me at lunchtime about Billy. But… a choir? Really?”

“Think about it,” said Jules, leaning on the bar. “Your brother and his friends aren’t likely to join, are they? It’s a safe place, so no one’s going to worry about you being there. And if some nights you don’t quite end up at rehearsal and end up, say, on a date or something, no one will suspect a thing, will they?”

“But… don’t you have to be able to sing?” asked Sophie.

“Everyone can sing,” Jules said with authority. “Billy was telling me that just this morning. She says that no one thinks they can, but everyone carries a beautiful instrument with them every day. Or something like that.”

“Yeah, I’m not convinced.”

“So?” asked Jules. “If you don’t like singing, just mouth the words, it’ll be alright. And I’ll be there. There’ll be loads of people, I’m sure.” She winked at Sophie. “No brothers, but there might be the odd attractive woman, you never know.”

“In a Whitebridge choir?” scoffed Sophie.

“Oy, there’s plenty of attractive women in town.”

“Yeah, and they’re all taken,” said Sophie.

Jules rolled her eyes. “Listen, are you coming tomorrow or not?”

Sophie sighed and glanced over to where Stu and Del were guffawing at something on one of their phones. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I’ll be there.”

Chapter Five

The windows of the little village hall were all aglow in the dark evening. Tilly wrapped her denim jacket a bit more tightly around herself. She knew where she was going, Mila had provided directions after laughing when Tilly suggested she might like to come.

“I’ve got enough music in my life without having to practice singing,” she’d said, over the sound of Ag’s piano playing from the next room. “You have fun though, and tell Billy I say hi.”

It was the very beginning of autumn and the air had a distinct chill to it tonight. And Tilly had spent the day giving herself a stern talking to. Community policing was important. It might not be glamorous, but it was a large part of the job outside of the city, and she was going to be just as good at it as she was at everything else.

She excelled at taking exams, at knowing rules and regulations, at the nuts and bolts of being a police officer. And she was starting to have a sneaky feeling that her father had had her sent here to learn the more human side of policing.

Which was exactly what she was going to do. And that did not mean being a walk-over like Max was. She had no intention of doing anything other than sticking to the letter of the law.She was here to show Max how things should be done. Which definitely did not involve putting people’s driving licenses in brown envelopes and confiscating them until they’d had time to think about how naughty they’d been.

She tromped toward the open doors of the village hall.

Plus, she wasn’t going to be caught off guard. Every town had its secrets, and she was going to uncover Whitebridge’s. Every place had its seamy side, and she was going to find Whitebridge’s. She might be learning community policing, but she was going to find some juicy crime, whether that was an embezzling shop clerk or a teacher with a sordid past.

“Hello there.”

She turned around to see a tall woman with red-blond hair and glasses smiling widely at her. “Um, hello?”

“You must be the new police officer. Pleased to meet you.” The voice was distinctly American. That was more like it. An escaped gangster, perhaps. “My name’s Ava. I’m a teacher over at the school. Welcome to town. You heading to the choir?”

Tilly nodded. “A teacher? An American?”

“They do let us leave the country occasionally,” Ava said, looping her arm through Tilly’s. “Besides, I’m married to an Englishwoman, so that helps. How are you liking things here so far?”

“It’s fine,” Tilly said as they walked toward the village hall. She wasn’t used to this, wasn’t used to people just talking to her, touching her, being nice to her. It made her slightly suspicious.

“Oh, you’ll love it here, everyone does,” Ava said as they walked in.

Which sounded almost threatening. The sort of thing people said in horror movies about small towns that sucked you in and turned you into a zombie or something.

“Are you alright?” Ava asked, looking at Tilly with concern.

“Yes, yes, fine.” Stop thinking about zombies, she told herself.