A Painted Doom by Kate Ellis Read Free Book Online Page B

know much about him. To me he was just some pop singer my mum liked in her youth.’
    ‘Gerry Heffernan reckoned he came from Liverpool,’ Wesley said, steering her towards the kitchen. They would make the supper
     together – it would be quicker.
    ‘Gerry would, wouldn’t he,’ she said, making for the refrigerator. As she pulled out a packet of sausages she remembered that
     she had something to tell Wesley. ‘I almost forgot – your mother rang. She’s coming down to Morbay on Saturday for a weekend
     conference. I think she said it was some kind of drug company do when they get a load of doctors down to a posh hotel and
     try and push the latest wonder drug. I said we’d meet her for lunch on Sunday. Is that okay?’
    ‘Yes, of course,’ he said quickly, hoping that Shellmer’s death wouldn’t put paid to the family reunion.
    The fact that he hadn’t seen his parents since Christmas was nagging on his conscience. They lived in London, where his father
     was a consultant surgeon in one of the great teaching hospitals and his mother a family doctor. But the recent lack of contact
     wasn’t through choice: they all lived busy lives and time passed so quickly. It was the way of the modern world.
    ‘I just hope this shooting doesn’t muck up our plans,’ he said, frowning. Things had been quiet recently: only a couple of
     break-ins and some thefts from boats moored on the Trad. A few days back, Gerry Heffernan had joked that the villains were
     taking their holidays before the tourist season started. Wesley had known it was too good to last.
    A mournful wail drifted through the living room, and Pam thrust the sausages into Wesley’s hand. ‘I left Michael in his playpen.
     You see to these.’
    He could hear her singing softly to the baby: ‘Frère Jacques’. The tune must have been to Michael’s taste because the wailing
     stopped immediately.
    He looked down at the cold, unappetising things in his hand and wrinkled his nose. ‘I spotted Neil today,’ he called through.
     ‘He was standing outside some old barn, but I didn’t have a chance to stop and see what he was up to.’
    There was no reply. Either Pam hadn’t heard or her silence indicated disapproval. Perhaps it was best that he hadn’t had time
     to stop. Neil had a habit of drawing him into the puzzles of his profession, and Wesley had problems enough of his own to
     be going on with.
    But as he sat on the sofa that night drinking red wine and watching Pam’s eyelids close as her favourite TV detective, Inspector
     Morgan, sprang via a series of impenetrable clues to some brilliant conclusion that left Wesley’s sleepy brain way behind,
     he found himself looking at the telephone andwilling Neil to call and tell him just what he had been doing at that old barn in Derenham.
    Neil Watson sat in the Red Bull at Derenham and thought about phoning his old friend. But then, he thought, if there had been
     some major incident at that place near Terry Hoxworthy’s farm, Wesley would probably be busy interviewing suspects with the
     aid of a few electrodes or whatever it was the police did down in those cells. Neil had held a dim view of policing ever since
     a small incident involving a cannabis plant when he was a student.
    He had been shaken when Wesley – the brightest student of his year on the archaeology course at Exeter University – had chosen
     to join the police force rather than pursue an academic archaeological career. A less likely member of the forces of oppression
     Neil couldn’t imagine. But Wesley had always claimed that he relished the challenge of detection rather than the chore of
     everyday law enforcement. And he had risen rapidly in the Met’s CID, his special talents propelling him into the Arts and
     Antique squad before he opted for a posting to the supposedly calmer waters of Tradmouth.
    Neil, meanwhile, had settled into his own niche in the County Archaeological Unit. And now that he had almost completed