Read Online The Corpse's Tale (Trevor Joseph Detective series) by Katherine John - Free Book Online

t e n t l y. He stroked it and it purred, reminding him of home and childhood. ‘I met your wife.’
    ‘Ex-wife.’ Stephen filled Trevor’s glass, then his own. ‘This,’ he waved his hand in the direction of the yard, ‘was to be a fresh start for us. You married?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Then you know how hard it is to make time for your family when the force expects you to cover 24/7. And we’re stretched thinner in the sticks than you are in the towns. I hardly ever saw Angela and the kids. My father had the stroke and she gave me an ultimatum, the force or her and the kids. I took her and the kids and this place. My father needed twenty-four-hour care, and had to go into a nursing home. We moved in here. Then Angela and I discovered that after ten years of living separate lives we had nothing in common. Shortly afterwards she moved to her mother’s. Then she took up with the geography teacher from the comprehensive. They’re getting married on the first of August.’
    ‘That must be tough.’ Trevor was suddenly very grateful for his own domestic happiness. It had come as an unlooked-for and astonishing surprise after years spent wondering if he’d ever find a woman who would put up with him – and his job. 
    ‘At least she lives close enough for me to see the kids every day. They still come round after school although they’ll be off to college soon.’
    Trevor sipped the beer. It was warm and tasted foul but he didn’t complain. He took his notebook from his pocket. ‘Anna Harris’s mother made a statement saying Anna had boyfriends. Did you interview any of them?’
    ‘Three or four from the sixth form college.’
    Trevor sensed that Stephen George was being guarded. ‘She’d had sex the night she died.’
    ‘I read the pathologist’s report. She was a healthy attractive eighteen-year-old girl. What did you expect? A nun?’
    ‘Did you pick up on anyone she shouldn’t have been having an affair with?’
    ‘Like?’ Stephen challenged.
    ‘An older man, possibly married.’
    Stephen’s face darkened. ‘Who have you been talking to?’   
    ‘As many people in the village as I can.’
    ‘And they’re out to blacken Anna Harris’s name when she can’t defend herself. That’s bloody rich. She was a sweet, kind girl.’
    The ferocity of Stephen George’s outburst shocked Tr e v o r. ‘You loved her?’ he asked bluntly.
    ‘I loved her, Tyrone James loved her, Bob Evans loved her. Christ, even the vicar loved her. There wasn’t a man in the village who didn’t love her. But that doesn’t mean we slept with her. You’ve seen her photographs. She was beautiful. But what the photographs can’t show is her personality. One look from her could make you feel good about yourself. A smile and you’d be lost forever. She was Marilyn Monroe and Pollyanna rolled into one.’
    ‘Were you her lover?’ Trevor asked bluntly.
    ‘I wish,’ Stephen said warmly. ‘And you’ll probably get the same reply to that question from every man within a fifty-mile radius of Llan.’ He set his glass on the flagstone floor.
    ‘You have my word, this is off the record.’
    ‘Off the record?’ Stephen George repeated. ‘On the record we got the man who murdered her, Dai Helpful. I only wish that the powers that be had the sense to keep him locked up.’
    ‘She’d had sex that night. Someone has to know the identity of her lover.’
    ‘Dai Helpful raped her.’
    ‘The semen samples and pubic hair found on her body were never sent for analysis.’
    ‘We had a strong case. We didn’t need further evidence.’
    Trevor almost said, “You do things very differently here”, but thought better of it. Stephen George was spoiling for a fight, without being pushed.
    ‘What did the women in the village think of Anna?’
    ‘They all adored her.’
    ‘Anna hadn’t confided the identity of her lover to any of them?’
    ‘If she had a lover other than any of the young boys she went out with, she didn’t tell