River Deep by Priscilla Masters Read Free Book Online Page A

door and Bobby whisked out of sight while she fumbled her feet into a pair of wellingtons.
    At the back of house was an area of protected forest, largely spruces and pines, criss-crossed with a myriad of soft, sandy paths, populated by rabbits and a delight to Bobby who found much to sniff at and chase. It was one of the reasons why she had bought this house, a fake Georgian mock-up which had begun life as a farmworkers’ cottage, been extended, whitewashed and pretentiously called The White House. In fact the name would have been fine had it not shared it with the official residence of the President of the United States. But when she and Martin had first viewed the house she had fallen in love with the woods behind and relished the space in which to exercise one of the world’s friskiest dogs. Bobby was his successor but just as frisky. Mongrels, in her experience,usually were. Also the seclusion of the property had seduced her. Neither she nor Martin could ever imagine chatting over the garden fence to their neighbours. She shoved her hands deep down in the oilskin pockets and pondered. The trouble was that elected seclusion when you were half of a couple could feel dangerously like isolation when you were alone.
    She stepped quickly through the woods, her eyes focused on some far off point ahead. It was a great time to think. The dew dripped off the branches and there was a fresh, crisp feel to the day.
    Her mind flicked back to the anonymous corpse. There were several interesting points to mull over. Whoever the man was, he had been found in the house James Humphreys was currently renting. And James Humphreys had disappeared. She picked up a twig, absently chucked it into the undergrowth, sending Bobby scuttling after it and bringing back a quite different twig a few seconds later, while she wondered whether the real James Humphreys had turned up yet – dead or alive. By now Alex might have tracked him down. At work even. The Jaguar garage was outside the town so not threatened by the floods. There was no reason to stop business continuing as usual. Humphreys’ colleagues might even have been able to shed some light on the dead man’s identity. She picked up another stick and threw it in response to Bobby’s eager, lolling tongue. Maybe Humphreys had not been the sheep but the wolf in this case. Not victim but villain. She was suddenly very curious to know how far DI Randall had progressed in his investigations.
    She sensed the regret in the dog when she turned around at the top of the hill, but she had a full day ahead of her with many cases to sift through. Her area of jurisdiction extended far beyond merely Shrewsbury to includeChurch Stretton and Oswestry, Market Drayton and Whitchurch and all the little villages within these points. And winter was a time of a surging death rate which supplied her with plenty of work. She paused for a moment, savouring the whipping breeze, hoping it did not carry more rain to add to the town’s sufferings and looked back at the house. It hit her then quite suddenly what an isolated place it was, half a mile from the nearest road, reached only by a potholed track, surrounded by unpopulated farmland and backed by trees. Her nearest neighbour was nearly a mile away.
    From the top of the hill she watched the red Post Office van wind up the track and minutes later when she was almost back she saw it thread its way just as gingerly back down towards the main road. As she rounded the back of the house she recognised a second car approaching. This time an elderly Ford. It was Vera’s day to give the house a clean up.
    She greeted her cleaning woman guiltily, ignored her despairing look at the pile of washing dumped by the machine, had a brief chat about what wanted doing in the house and ran upstairs to shower. Half an hour later she was driving her Mercedes towards her office, in Bayston Hill, an area to the south of Shrewsbury, down the A49, the road that finally led to South Wales.