A Cornish Revenge (The Loveday Ross Cornish Mysteries Book 1) by Rena George Read Free Book Online Page B

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    ‘I’ve been through these at least three times,’ she sighed ‘and there’s nothing.’ She held up her hands in defeat.
    ‘There’s never nothing ,’ Sam said. ‘It’s there…we just haven’t found it yet. What about the journalist woman’s pictures?’ He resisted referring to her as Loveday, even if it was how he thought of her.
    ‘Completely useless,’ Amanda said, not quite able to suppress the satisfaction. ‘No sign of any murderer hiding in the bushes.’
    She looked up and met her senior officer’s cold dark stare, but was saved from any further embarrassment by the appearance of another member of the team, waving the post mortem report on the murder victim.
    ‘At last,’ Sam turned, hand outstretched. ‘Thanks Alan.’
    He scanned the pages and then looked up, frowning, and flipped them across the desk to Amanda. ‘Doesn’t help much - death by drowning.’
      ‘Well that wasn’t rocket science,’ she murmured as her eyes ran over the report. ‘At least we have an accurate time of death.  We can check what the sea conditions were like then. Maybe he got there by boat.’
    That was Loveday’s theory, and Sam had already decided she was probably right. He pointed a pen at the report. ‘Our man died some time on Saturday, between early evening and midnight. Let’s double check if anyone saw him that night.’
    He saw Amanda glance at the clock and gave her a wry smile. ‘Tomorrow will be fine. You can get off home now.’
    After she’d gone, he got up and stood by the window. It overlooked the busy main route in and out of the city and, despite the traffic lights at the roundabout below, it was constantly clogged with daytime traffic. But it was almost seven now, and the city was quiet. He toyed with the idea of calling in at the pub. He knew Merrick Tremayne would probably be there. A pint of his favourite brew was his way of winding down after a working day. Sam liked Merrick and was prepared to set aside his instinctive distrust of journalists to be friends with the man. God knows he had precious few of those.
He sighed and went back to straighten his desk before leaving the office. He’d hardly thought of Tessa at all this week, maybe he was coming to terms with her death. But then, he’d had a murder on his mind. Now that he was alone, though, the nightmare returned. The driver had been drunk – a bloody drunk! The pencil in his hands snapped and he threw it down with a curse. His morose mood continued as he drove home to Stithians, to the house he had shared with Tessa for two years before she was so cruelly snatched from him.
They’d been the perfect match. The long and often irregular hours he had to spend at work had destroyed his first marriage, but if they upset Tessa, she never showed it.
  It had been a different thing altogether with Victoria. She hated the Force, and refused to accept the fact that it was such a huge part of Sam’s life. Never a woman to ‘put up with things,’ you either did it her way or you didn’t do it at all. The divorce had been inevitable – and if Sam was being honest with himself, it had been a relief as well. He felt a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. But he did miss the kids. Jack was 11 now, and Maddie, eight. They were growing up so quickly and it wasn’t always easy to get through to Plymouth to see them. He wished they were here with him now.
He turned right at the Devoran roundabout and along the country road that would take him home. When Tessa was alive this would have been a joyful journey as he looked forward to their evening together. The only thing that awaited him now was a cold, empty house full of memories.
         He drove past the modern bungalows, with their sweeping, sloping lawns, and pulled up in front of his double fronted stone cottage. It was one of two in a terrace in the heart of the village. He sat looking at it, imagining going in, throwing off his jacket, grabbing a beer from the