Page 17 of Worse Than Murder (DCI Matilda Darke Thriller #13)

I ’ve never known rain like this. Eerily, the wind has dropped, but the rain is falling in sheets.

It’s like standing under a shower. As soon as it started, I had to go out and experience it.

After a month of stifling heat, it’s refreshing to feel the spray against my skin.

I’m standing at the top of the steps to the restaurant, looking out over the car park and the lake beyond.

All I can hear is the sound of rain hammering on the parched land.

And that smell! There’s a word for that smell released when rain hits parched earth– petrichor.

Don’t ask me how I know that. One of the many useless facts running around my mind.

‘Matilda, you’re getting soaked.’

I turn around and see Sally in the doorway. I look down and see I’ve stepped out further than I thought, and I am, indeed, getting wet. I didn’t even realise. I should go back in, but there’s something about the forcefulness of nature which is bewitching.

‘I’ve got a really bad feeling about this storm,’ Sally says as I go inside, and she closes and locks the door behind me.

* * *

Iain Pemberton slams the back door and enters the kitchen from the utility room. He’s breathless, soaked, and windswept. Lynne resists the urge to laugh at the twig sticking out of his hair as she hands him a towel and takes his jacket and boots from him.

‘You can always tell the people who’ve never been through a storm before. I’ve never seen someone so panicked. And they’re higher up than we are.’

‘Who’s this? Not Shirley and Jim, surely?’ He nods. ‘That’s not like them.’

‘I think it’s Shirley, really. She’s worried about their new extension withstanding the winds. She never trusted that builder.’

‘I didn’t take to him much, either. There’s no way those tiles were new. There’s some soup left over, if you want it.’

‘I’d love some. The wind’s picked up again. It’s really knocked the edge off the temperatures. It feels perishing out there.’

Lynne ladles soup from a pot on the stove into a bowl and takes it over to the table with a chunk of homemade bread. Iain sits down and tucks in. Lynne sits opposite him. She has a worried expression on her face.

‘Iain,’ she begins. ‘I had a call from May earlier.’

‘May?’ he asks, blowing on his soup.

‘Yes. Lives opposite the church. Dark-blonde hair. Her husband’s a lollypop man.’

He nods. ‘I know who you mean.’

‘She was up at the restaurant cleaning this morning. She said that detective Alison was on about, DCI Darke, was asking about the twins and about Jack going missing.’

Iain swallows. ‘Alison must have spoken to her, then.’

‘I’ve looked her up, this Matilda Darke woman.

She’s a bloody good detective. Remember that serial killer who was killing all those sex workers in Sheffield a few years ago?

She was the one who caught him. And that children’s home sex scandal that we watched that programme about?

That was her, too. If Alison’s got her looking into this…

Jesus Christ, Iain, what if she finds out about Jack?

’ she says, worrying at her fingernails as she spoke.

Iain sighs and places his spoon in the bowl, his appetite suddenly diminishing. ‘We need to think about this. What?—’

There’s a flash of lightning followed, almost immediately, by a loud crack of thunder. Both of them turn to look out of the kitchen window. It’s grown much darker in the last few minutes.

‘I was thinking, maybe tomorrow, I might pop round to Nature’s Diner and perhaps have a word with this Matilda Darke. If I tell her the truth– well, tell her what we told Alison– maybe she’ll realise this is a family thing and back off. What do you think? Do you think that’s a bad idea?’

Iain’s face drops. ‘Do you really want to involve someone else?’

‘Well, no, but it’s not looking as if we’ve got much choice. If this detective does start digging and she finds out… I don’t want Alison finding out that way. And if she does… Iain, we’ve left it far too long for Alison to think we were protecting her when she was growing up.’

Reluctantly, Iain nods. ‘I suppose, if you tell this detective all about Jack, it might stop her from interfering. If she’s a mother herself, she might see it from your point of view, that you were just trying to protect your daughter.’

‘I don’t know if she is a mother. I couldn’t find anything about her online. But she’s good friends with Sally Meagan. She’ll know all about protecting kids after what happened with her Carl.’

‘Fair enough. We’ll go first thing after breakfast.’

She thinks for a moment. ‘Erm… I was thinking that it might be best if I go on my own, have a woman-to-woman chat.’ She falls silent and begins to chew the inside of her mouth.

He looks up at her. ‘You might be right. Are you sure you don’t want me with you?’

She reaches across and places her hand on his. ‘I’d love you with me, but it might be better this way.’

‘I’ll probably be busy, anyway, depending on how much damage this storm ends up doing.’

‘Thirty years it’s been,’ Lynne says, a catch in her throat. ‘Thirty years, I thought it was all in the past. Nothing can ever stay buried, can it?’

‘I’m always here for you, Lynne, you know that. We’re a team.’

‘Thank you. It’s all about protecting Alison, though.’

‘And we will. Whatever it takes.’

She gives him a worried smile. ‘Tea?’

‘I could murder a cup.’

They take their mugs of tea into the living room. The lights flicker as a gust of wind whips around the house. Candles in holders and torches are already on the coffee table, waiting to be used should the power go out. A fire is lit, giving the room a warm glow.

‘I can’t believe I’ve had to light a fire in June,’ Lynne says as she goes over to the window.

‘The temperature’s suddenly plummeted,’ Iain says. ‘It feels colder than it actually is.’ He sits on the sofa and picks up his tablet. He logs onto the security system at the stables to make sure everything is as it should be.

Lynne peels back the curtains and looks out, watching the beginnings of the storm through the slats of the vertical blinds.

Heavy black clouds have rolled in from the Irish sea and turned what should have been a pleasant, early summer evening into the darkness of midwinter.

Lynne watches as the road is turned into a river, running downwards towards the school.

She closes her eyes tightly shut and is transported back to that day in 1992 when Jack and Alison were out visiting his mother.

She tries to think of the last conversation she had with Jack, and she can’t.

Alison has often asked her what the last thing they’d said to each other was; had Jack known how much he was loved by his family?

Lynne can’t give her the answer she wants to hear.

‘Shit!’ Iain exclaims. ‘That bloody felt roofing has come off the end stable block. What did I tell you? I said this would happen. Remind me never to ask Warren to do anything ever again.’

‘Has it all come off?’ Lynne asks, moving away from the window.

‘It’s flapping about like mad. It won’t hold for much longer,’ he says, standing up and heading into the kitchen.

‘Where are you going?’

‘To do a bodge repair until the storm passes.’

‘You’re going out in this?’ she asks, wide-eyed with fear.

‘If the rainwater gets in, it will soak the hay, and any flying debris could spook the horses. It might even injure them. I can’t risk it.’

‘You can’t go out in this, Iain. It’s barely getting started and it’s going to get much worse.’

‘What else can I do?’ he asks, raising his arms. ‘Where are my waders?’

Lynne follows him into the utility room where he’s putting on his waterproof coat and hat.

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘No, you won’t.’

‘I can help.’

‘I’m not having you going out in this.’

‘We’re partners, Iain. It’s my problem as much as it is yours.’

‘No. You need to stay here. Some of the owners will be ringing up asking how their horses are. They’ll not be happy if the phone goes unanswered. They’ll think something’s happened.’

‘No. They’ll assume we’re out looking after their horses. Let me come with you.’

Iain slips his feet into wellington boots and goes to his wife. He holds her firmly by the shoulders and kisses her on the forehead.

‘I’ll be fine. I’ll be half an hour at the most.’

He opens the back door, and the storm hits him full in the face, causing him to recoil. He’s only been back in the house for twenty minutes or so and already the wind has increased in strength. He pushes forward and pulls the door closed with a slam behind him.

Lynne stands, arms folded against her chest. The last major storm resulted in her losing her first husband. She couldn’t stand it if she lost her second, too.

* * *

‘You’d think it was midnight,’ Alison Pemberton says as she looks out of the front passenger window of the police car.

Claire Daniels is driving, painfully slowly, blue lights flashing, as they make their way towards High Chapel Primary School.

It’s to be a place of safety should the village have to be evacuated.

Unfortunately, a tree has fallen, blocking the road leading to the main entrance.

A farmer with a tractor is on his way to move the tree, but the headteacher called the police to let them know of the incident.

‘I hate driving in this,’ Claire says. ‘I can’t see anything in front of me.’

The windscreen wipers are useless in such treacherous conditions.

‘It’s times like this I wish I had a safe job like a librarian or something,’ Claire continues. ‘I’d be indoors right now, sitting in front of the fire, duvet wrapped around me, reading a Jane Austen.’

‘You’ve never read a Jane Austen a day in your life,’ Alison laughs.

‘I read Wuthering Heights at school.’

‘That’s Emily Bronte,’ Alison corrects her.

‘Same thing.’

‘Philistine.’

‘You’ve hardly got a PhD in English Classics. I’ve seen you reading Bridgerton .’

They turn a corner and Claire slams on the brakes as they almost collide with the felled tree.