Read Online Blood at the Root by Peter Robinson - Free Book Online Page A

Apart from one woman, who said, “The name sounds familiar.”
    “You’re thinking of Jason Donovan,” someone else said, and they laughed.
    “Can you at least tell me what department he worked in?” Banks asked.
    “That I can tell you,” Mary said. “He was in sales. Domestic. You’ll find them in the old office building, across the yard. And,” she said, smiling, “you should also find some of the people he worked with are still there. Try David Wayne first. He’s one of the regional sales managers now.”
    “Just a minute,” came a voice from the back of the office. “Jason Fox, you said? Now I remember. It was a couple of years back. I’d just started here. There was some trouble, some sort of scandal. Something hushed up.”

II
    The sound of the car pulling up woke Frank from his afternoon nap. Slowly, he groped his way back to consciousness – it seemed to take longer every time, as if consciousness itself were slowly moving farther and farther away from him – and walked over to the window. There they were: the three of them, struggling up the path against the wind. Well, he supposed they would have to come sometime; Josie had already telephoned and told him what had happened to Jason.
    He answered the knock, let them in and told them to make themselves comfortable while he went to put the kettle on. The good old English custom of a nice cup of tea, he thought, had helped people avoid many an embarrassing moment. Not that they should be embarrassed about what had happened, of course, but Yorkshire folk, especially, often fell short of words when it came to strong emotions.
    Josie gave him a silent hug when he came through from the kitchen, then she sat down. Grief suited her in a way, he thought; she had always looked a bit pinched to him. These days, she had also started to look more like mutton dressed as lamb, too, with that makeup, her roots showing, and those figure-hugging outfits she wore. At her age. Her mother would have been ashamed of her.
    Steven looked as lackluster as ever. Couldn’t Josie, he wished again, have chosen someone with a bit of spunk in him?
    Then there was Maureen. Good-natured, bustling, hard-working, no-nonsense Maureen. The best of the lot of them, in his book. A proper bonny lass, too; she’d break a few hearts in her time, with her laughing eyes and smiling lips and hair like spun gold all the way down to her waist. Well, not today. But that was how he remembered her. She had cut her hair short just after she started nurses’ training. A real shame, that, he thought.
    “When’s the funeral?” he asked.
    “Thursday,” Josie answered. “Oh, you should have seen what they’d done to him, Dad.” She sniffled. “Our poor Jason.”
    Frank nodded. “Nay, lass… Police getting anywhere?”
    “Even if they were,” Josie sniffed, “they wouldn’t tell us, would they?”
    The kettle boiled. Frank moved to rise, but Maureen sprang to her feet. “I’ll get it, Granddad. Stay where you are.”
    “Thanks, lass,” he said gratefully, and sank back into his armchair. “What
have
they told you?”
    “They’ve got some lads helping them with their inquiries,” Josie said. “Pakistanis.” She sniffed. “They think it might have started as an argument in a pub, and that these lads followed our Jason, or waited for him in the ginnel and beat him up. The police think they probably didn’t mean to kill him.”
    “What do
you
think?” Frank asked.
    Maureen came back with the teapot and raised her eyebrows at the question. “We haven’t really had much time to think about it at all yet, Granddad,” she said. “But I’m sure the police know their business.”
    “Aye.”
    “What is it?” Steven Fox said, speaking for the first time. “You don’t think they’ll do a good job?”
    “I wouldn’t know about that,” Frank said.
    “Well, what is it, then?” Josie Fox repeated her husband’s question. Maureen started pouring milk and tea into mugs,