ON DEVIL'S BRAE (A Psychological Suspense Thriller) (Dark Minds Mystery Suspense) by Faith Mortimer Read Free Book Online

wishing well on the front lawn, was a collection of gnomes. She felt another laugh bubble up inside her because, once again, Cynthia was right. Who in their right mind kept a garden full of plastic and pottery fairy-tale figures?
    Pondering on whether the Blackmores might be reasonable neighbours, she looked further ahead along the road to where the handsome composer, Angus, lived. During their brief conversation up on the hill, apart from his overall attractiveness, he seemed level-headed, polite, and agreeable. Cassandra casually wondered what he might have thought about the sister of a woman who had been connected to the case of a murdered child. Did he know about the shocking episode back in England? Susan never said whether she had told anyone there. Perhaps no one in the hamlet knew, after all.
    Cassandra shivered and it wasn’t just from the cold. She could still see those headlines in the papers, still hear the barely concealed vicious voices as the reporters asked their questions. She knew they were all admonishing, criticising, judging her bemused and shocked sister.
    How many more children’s deaths will it take … Why did you ignore the signs ... What are your feelings … What were you doing there, posing as a sculptor?
    She recalled Susan saying how she wanted to shut herself away, hide, and sob in the dark. She approached social services with some hesitation before the death but had almost been shown the door. We’re the professionals, thank you very much. Didn’t the press realise what pressures were on everyone dealing with health and social issues? There were hundreds of cases, and that was before the added stress of staff shortages, long hours, and unpaid overtime came into the equation. And Susan had only been to see the family because of her art. She wasn’t a social worker, whose business it was on a daily basis. Did they realise how awful some of these places were? Families lived on squalid estates consisting of unkempt houses or high-rise flats without functioning lifts. There were communal lights, which never worked due to the gangs of vandals terrorising the area. In addition, there were the drugs, alcohol, intimidation, and sexual abuse. The list went on and on. Susan had been morbidly upset, and when Cassandra insisted she move in with her temporarily, Susan tried to involve her.
    Susan told Cassandra she had been admitted to the house by an obviously reluctant set of parents, who were only interested in the sniff of a payment for using Natalie as a model. Parents whom she damn well knew were liars.
    Afterwards, Susan made the cardinal mistake of speaking to one of the reporters who was hanging around Cassandra’s flat. The young woman seemed so nice and sympathetic at the time, making earnest eye contact and nodding in agreement to everything Susan said. The reporter even suggested she was a victim of circumstance. When Cassandra saw the headlines the next day, she was horrified to read how the reporter distorted her sister’s words.
    She read through the additional snippets of conversation the young woman had gathered from the Hodges’ neighbours and how they all said they could see it coming…a crime waiting to happen.
    So why hadn’t they gone to the police to report it? Why had they turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to slobby Wayne Hodges, and his slutty wife, Stacy?
    After the reporter filed her story and dished up her scoop, Susan started receiving letters from strangers. Cassandra assumed they were strangers because Susan said most were anonymous. She shuddered at the viciously penned words her weeping sister handed over for her to read. Cassandra could still remember a few choice phrases which stood out, like ‘useless, rich-bitch artist’ to the more startling and offensive terms, ‘murdering cow or child killer’.
    There was nothing Cassandra could do to help Susan beyond offering her support and a kind of sisterly love. It was pointless even thinking of going to the papers