Read Online Western Approaches (Jimmy Suttle) by Graham Hurley - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Graham Hurley
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beau’s life had never stood up to serious scrutiny. Jimmy had discovered that his boss had shagged her just twice before locking his door and taking the phone off the hook.
The real problem, in Lizzie’s view, was simple. Gill Reynolds had never mastered the knack of letting a relationship develop at its own pace. She had a bad habit of crowding her man from the off and never understood why thigh-length boots and a dab or two of Chanel wouldn’t guarantee the love affair of her dreams. In this respect Lizzie suspected that nothing would have changed and wasn’t at all sure whether she could cope with a couple of days of heavy-duty angst. Gill never arrived at any meeting without an agenda. Taking an interest in anyone else’s life was beyond her.
But what could she say? And wasn’t company – of any description – a brighter prospect than yet another wet afternoon banged up in Chantry Cottage?
The endless rain had made the front door stick again. She turned the key and gave it a kick at the bottom before stamping the mud from her wellies and wrestling the buggy indoors. For some reason she’d left her mobile in the kitchen. Half-expecting a text from Jimmy, she took it out onto the back patio and fired it up. She wasn’t wrong about a text, but oddly enough it came from Gill. She’d had to change her plans. Instead of descending on Tuesday she’d arrive tomorrow in time for lunch. ‘Lucky us,’ she’d texted at the end, ‘Can’t wait.’
It was mid-afternoon before Suttle got to Tusker Farm. Constantine had yet to be upgraded to a full HOLMES 2 enquiry and in the absence of a statement reader, Houghton wanted Suttle to sort out the scraps of feedback from the marina, which were beginning to fatten into something more substantial. The house-to-house teams, while failing to unearth the bankable evidence that would turn Constantine into a fully fledged murder enquiry, were reporting widespread resentment of Kinsey and his behaviour.
According to one resident, a mainstay of the Exmouth Quays development, this was a guy who’d never had any time for his neighbours. He openly flouted some of the by-laws by having midsummer barbecues on his balcony and riding his mountain bike around the marina basin. He never turned up at the community fund-raising events – Canapes on the Quay, Carols on the Quay – that had become such a feature of waterside life. He never put his hand in his pocket when appeals were launched for a commemorative bench or a fighting fund to battle a nearby development, and when she’d confronted him, knocking on his door and trying to shame him into writing a cheque, he’d told her to go away and get a life.
None of this, of course, suggested grounds for dumping the guy off his own balcony and leaving his body to cool in the rain, but it confirmed a wider irritation. The landlord of the Beach pub, re-interviewed at his own request after the Sunday lunchtime drinkers had drifted away, confirmed that Kinsey had also upset a fair number of locals in the town, firstly by writing to the local paper and complaining about early-morning noise from fishermen putting to sea from the dock beneath his apartment, and later by mounting a vigorous defence of a bunch of developers planning yet another multi-storey block of flats within shouting distance of the marina. To upset these two very different groups of locals – working trawler men and middle-class worthies – took some talent, and in the view of the landlord Kinsey definitely had some kind of death wish. The interviewing D/C had underlined the phrase, bringing it to the attention of Houghton when he got back to Constantine ’s temporary home.
Suttle was thinking about it now, as he bumped the Impreza into the farmyard. Houghton wanted him to develop the intel picture on Kinsey – the kind of guy he’d been, the risks he’d run, the people he’d upset – and barely hours into the enquiry he was already tallying an ever-longer list
The real problem, in Lizzie’s view, was simple. Gill Reynolds had never mastered the knack of letting a relationship develop at its own pace. She had a bad habit of crowding her man from the off and never understood why thigh-length boots and a dab or two of Chanel wouldn’t guarantee the love affair of her dreams. In this respect Lizzie suspected that nothing would have changed and wasn’t at all sure whether she could cope with a couple of days of heavy-duty angst. Gill never arrived at any meeting without an agenda. Taking an interest in anyone else’s life was beyond her.
But what could she say? And wasn’t company – of any description – a brighter prospect than yet another wet afternoon banged up in Chantry Cottage?
The endless rain had made the front door stick again. She turned the key and gave it a kick at the bottom before stamping the mud from her wellies and wrestling the buggy indoors. For some reason she’d left her mobile in the kitchen. Half-expecting a text from Jimmy, she took it out onto the back patio and fired it up. She wasn’t wrong about a text, but oddly enough it came from Gill. She’d had to change her plans. Instead of descending on Tuesday she’d arrive tomorrow in time for lunch. ‘Lucky us,’ she’d texted at the end, ‘Can’t wait.’
It was mid-afternoon before Suttle got to Tusker Farm. Constantine had yet to be upgraded to a full HOLMES 2 enquiry and in the absence of a statement reader, Houghton wanted Suttle to sort out the scraps of feedback from the marina, which were beginning to fatten into something more substantial. The house-to-house teams, while failing to unearth the bankable evidence that would turn Constantine into a fully fledged murder enquiry, were reporting widespread resentment of Kinsey and his behaviour.
According to one resident, a mainstay of the Exmouth Quays development, this was a guy who’d never had any time for his neighbours. He openly flouted some of the by-laws by having midsummer barbecues on his balcony and riding his mountain bike around the marina basin. He never turned up at the community fund-raising events – Canapes on the Quay, Carols on the Quay – that had become such a feature of waterside life. He never put his hand in his pocket when appeals were launched for a commemorative bench or a fighting fund to battle a nearby development, and when she’d confronted him, knocking on his door and trying to shame him into writing a cheque, he’d told her to go away and get a life.
None of this, of course, suggested grounds for dumping the guy off his own balcony and leaving his body to cool in the rain, but it confirmed a wider irritation. The landlord of the Beach pub, re-interviewed at his own request after the Sunday lunchtime drinkers had drifted away, confirmed that Kinsey had also upset a fair number of locals in the town, firstly by writing to the local paper and complaining about early-morning noise from fishermen putting to sea from the dock beneath his apartment, and later by mounting a vigorous defence of a bunch of developers planning yet another multi-storey block of flats within shouting distance of the marina. To upset these two very different groups of locals – working trawler men and middle-class worthies – took some talent, and in the view of the landlord Kinsey definitely had some kind of death wish. The interviewing D/C had underlined the phrase, bringing it to the attention of Houghton when he got back to Constantine ’s temporary home.
Suttle was thinking about it now, as he bumped the Impreza into the farmyard. Houghton wanted him to develop the intel picture on Kinsey – the kind of guy he’d been, the risks he’d run, the people he’d upset – and barely hours into the enquiry he was already tallying an ever-longer list
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