River Deep by Priscilla Masters Read Free Book Online

teeth had been like Sam’s, crooked, irregular, very unique. She had sometimes mused that had Martin committed a crime and left a bitten apple core at the scene he could have been identified by his bite as precisely as through a DNA trace.
    Martha rolled over in bed and realised the phone was ringing. She sat up. Jerked out of her reverie. Maybe it was Alex. The shockwaves caused by yesterday’s statement from Mrs Humphreys had taken them all by surprise. And left them with a pile of unanswered questions. She was curious to know what had happened next. It could be one of the frustrations of her job that while she was informed at the discovery of a corpse she was not always kept up to date as the police investigations proceeded. This left her with burning unsatiated curiosity.
    An unidentified murder victim lay in the mortuary and the rule was: no identity, no inquest. For the identity of the victim was just as significant as the pathologist’s evidence. Unsatisfactory it might be but there had been occasions when this rule had dragged a case out for years. The police were not bound to keep her informed how their investigations were faring.
    But from about a year ago Alex Randall had fallen intothe habit of keeping her up to date with his progress and this in turn had made her intrigued by their investigations and bold enough even to make some suggestions of her own. She was fast learning how the police worked. How they thought. The first case in which she had played this more active role had been old bones discovered in the Abbey which had proved to date from the eighteenth century. It had been the first time she and Alex had developed anything more than a very brushing acquaintance and she grew to welcome his clipped, informative phone calls. Since then they had been involved in a few more cases. Like any old, small town Shrewsbury had its secrets. So she picked up the phone with a recognised frisson of excitement. Maybe he had tracked down the real Mr Humphreys. But she was in for a disappointment. An irritating click returned her greeting. It was a bad start to a strange day.
    “My last summer …” The two “sisters” were warbling together in the kitchen. She could hear Sam’s heavy footsteps clomping wearily down the stairs. She wrapped her maroon satin dressing gown around her, tucked her feet into a pair of M&S black mules and made her way downstairs.
    The two girls were swaying in time to the music, pieces of toast in their hands smothered in Vegemite. Agnetha swore by the stuff. And the scent permeated the entire kitchen – always. It turned Martha’s stomach. Sam was shovelling a bucketful of crispy nut cornflakes dampened with milk into his mouth, intermittently swigging orange juice from a pint glass at his side. He had a thing about vitamins and hydration. His sports bag lay bulging at his feet.
    She greeted them all with a blanket, “Morning,” and plugged the kettle in, wiping her hair out of her eyes in athick handful. She needed a coffee fix. Quickly.
    “Good morning, Mrs Gunn.” Agnetha’s smile was wide, welcoming, difficult to fault. Sukey ignored her mother by pretending to be too absorbed in the music to respond to anything that wasn’t Swedish. Sam carried on munching doggedly as though in danger of missing out on a calorie or two. Only Bobby’s ears pricked up. He sensed he was due a walk and she would oblige as soon as the twins had left for school. Agnetha and Sukey finished their toast and their song and stacked the plates in the dishwasher, all done gracefully in time to the music. Sam simply abandoned the battle scene, leaving his dishes still on the table.
    By eight-fifteen the house was eerily quiet, Abba blissfully silenced for the day. Martha threw on a pair of jeans and an anorak and unhooked Bobby’s lead from the back of the door. He shrieked out a couple of ear-piercing barks and leapt high enough to bump her hip. Pointless ordering him to calm down. She opened the back