Read Online Murder by the Sea by Lesley Cookman - Free Book Online

who was arrested?’ he asked without preamble.
    ‘I think I saw something about it on the news.’
    ‘She was an illegal immigrant, smuggled in four years ago, and she borrowed someone else’s passport to apply for the job. After she was arrested she applied for asylum.’
    ‘Good lord! Did she get it?’
    ‘Not yet,’ said McLean. ‘She’s serving six months at the moment, and the judge said the application would have to wait until she was discharged.’
    ‘Is she serving six months, or only half of it?’ asked Fran.
    ‘Probably half, I expect, or even less if she was in custody before the trial.’
    ‘So she could be out already?’
    ‘She could, but I don’t know how we could find her.’
    ‘Was this a British passport? No, it couldn’t have been, could it?’
    ‘No. She’s from Transnistria, I think, and borrowed an Italian passport.’
    ‘Transnistria? Where’s that? I’ve never heard of it.’
    ‘I haven’t had time to look it up,’ said McLean, ‘but it’s there in the report.’
    ‘Could it be in Romania? It sounds like Transylvania.’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Did she give the passport back to the Italian woman?’ asked Fran.
    ‘I suppose so.’
    ‘So what happened to her, the Italian?’
    She heard a sigh. ‘I’ll look it up. Do you think this is relevant?’
    ‘Not sure,’ said Fran, ‘but it feels right.’
    ‘This actual case?’
    ‘Not necessarily. Find out a bit more, and we’ll see what happens.’
    After McLean had rung off, Fran went up to her spare room where she had installed her new computer. Balzac followed hopefully, sniffing the keyboard and trying desperately to climb on Fran’s lap under the desk.
    The search engine provided her with the details of the case of the Transnistrian woman, but no mention of the Italian from whom she’d borrowed the passport. She also searched for Transnistria and discovered it to be a breakaway independent state between Moldova and the Ukraine, unrecognised by any other country. There was a lot of information which indicated that Transnistria was a hotbed of crime and a centre for people trafficking for both sex and labour, but right now, Fran didn’t feel up to investigating. Libby, she was sure, would.
    She had told McLean the case felt right, but so did the farm workers. This, she felt, was the problem with believing in her own “moments”. Nobody had ever told her how to deal with them, and although she was more adept at using what Libby called her “powers” after the last three murders in which she had been involved, she was privately convinced that her brain manufactured incidents to trap her. She’d have to wait until she was given more evidence, and if nothing startling happened admit defeat and quietly withdraw.
    Libby, however, was having none of it.
    ‘Listen,’ she said, when she called Fran that afternoon after waiting for news all day, ‘it needs proper detective work. We can do that.’
    ‘No, we can’t, Libby, we’ve nothing to go on this time. We’ve always had an “in”, if you like. This time we haven’t.’
    Libby was quiet for a minute. Then, ‘Do we know how long the body had been there?’
    ‘Not long, I wouldn’t have thought. Either Bert or George go round that island every day, more or less. It must have been the night before it was found.’
    ‘Bearing out the theory that it was meant to be found.’
    ‘Yes, we’ve established that.’
    ‘Well, couldn’t we find out who took a boat out the night before?’
    Fran laughed. ‘It could have come from anywhere, Lib! France even.’
    ‘No, because of the clothes. They were from here, weren’t they?’
    ‘Yes, and I suppose the police have already ruled out a boat from France.’
    ‘Perhaps they haven’t,’ said Libby, ‘and we don’t know.’
    ‘Then why would Ian have asked me to help? I can’t help in France.’
    Libby thought again. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Why don’t we go and pay a visit to one of those farms where