Desperate Measures: A Mystery by Jo Bannister Read Free Book Online Page A

let you know. Back door open. Thanks.” And he signed it Ash . That was all. No apology, no explanation, just a blithe assumption that she’d fit in with his plans.
    Furious as she was, Hazel almost texted back immediately: “Busy—get someone else.” But there was no one else, unless you counted Laura Fry and the perennially unreliable Saturday. If she refused, probably Patience would go hungry.
    Scowling, Hazel put her shoes on and went downstairs and out to her car. But she was damned if she was going to call Ash to confirm that she was prepared to tidy up his loose ends once again.
    Childishness is a contagious disease.
    *   *   *
    Hazel looked at the dog, and the dog looked at Hazel. Hazel blinked first. “Well, you’ve had your breakfast and you’ve been out. You’ve got water, and you’ve got your basket, and, God help me, I’ve even plumped up the cushions on the sofa, which, if you were my dog, I wouldn’t let you sit on. What else can you possibly want?”
    Patience didn’t answer. But she did continue looking at Hazel in the expectant way that a dog has when it knows that if it can be patient enough for long enough, its human will finally understand.
    Hazel’s forehead wrinkled in a doubtful frown. “You want to come with me?”
    A wave of the scimitar tail suggested she was getting warmer.
    “You want to come home with me?”
    Dogs don’t nod. A flicker in the steady golden gaze suggested a nod.
    “You can’t,” Hazel said firmly. “Whatever would my landlady say? Anyway, Gabriel will be back soon enough. He’ll throw a wobbly if he gets in and you’re not here.”
    The lurcher wasn’t giving up. There was nothing remotely aggressive about her stance or even her persistence, but she had the air of someone who would stand on the bridge as long as it took for the bodies of all her enemies to float underneath.
    “No,” said Hazel firmly. “I’ll come back, I’ll keep checking on you till he gets home, but you have to stay here. I can’t do what I have to do with a damn great dog in tow!”
    Ten minutes later they were driving back through Norbold, Patience on the backseat like the queen on a state visit, Hazel working out how she could do what she had to do with a damn great dog in tow.
    *   *   *
    She could have called Charles Armitage to ask if he’d sent someone to search her flat and, if so, what it was he’d hoped to find. But Hazel had learned her trade from some good teachers, men and women who’d policed Britain at a time when information technology was the landline telephone, the lapel radio, and a copy of the local A to Z; who hadn’t grown up thinking that the answers to most questions should be no more than a couple of clicks away; and who therefore knew the art of discovering information for themselves, often from people who didn’t want to part with it.
    And one of the best bits of advice she’d been given had been: Try not to ask a question until you have at least some idea what the answer should be. Then you’ll know if you’re being told porkies, and who’s worried enough to be telling them.
    Or she could have swallowed her misgivings and gone to DI Gorman. Until she’d got home and found her key catching in her door, she’d never had reason to doubt his integrity, even at a time when the rest of Meadowvale was treating her as a pariah. The fact remained, the only connection between Hazel and the owner of the laptop was Dave Gorman.
    Plus, of course, all the paperwork that attended even something as simple as restoring a bit of lost property to a careless visitor. Once Gorman had recorded who’d handed the machine in, almost anyone in the police station could have accessed the information. Still, she was reluctant to pour anything more into a bucket she thought might be leaking.
    There was one thing she’d noticed that might lead her somewhere: the remarkable tidiness of her flat after the search. That wasn’t a couple of local hoodlums hired for