Small Town Christmas (Some Very English Murders Book 6) Read online

  Jared appeared at Penny’s side. “Your posters are excellent,” he said quietly. “Ignore them both. They are both a pair of bullies. You can tell they are twins.”

  “Thanks, Jared.” They stood together and watched as Cath tried to steer Clive towards the door. Halfway there, he turned and stabbed his finger towards them all.

  “I came here to engage in a reasonable conversation,” he said, in blatant contradiction to his actual actions. He had done no such thing. “I am disappointed to have been treated like this! You’re a clique, and it’s toxic. No good will come of this!”

  “For goodness’ sake, Clive!” Linda cried in exasperation.

  “I’m telling it like it is. Telling it like it is! Someone needs to. It strikes me that there ought to be a bit more transparency with this sort of thing. Corrupt, that’s what it is. You give the jobs to people you know, regardless of their competency. That’s what’s wrong with the government today!” He waved the poster in evidence.

  “We share the jobs amongst volunteers!” Penny shouted, but Jared laid a hand on her arm and urged her to stay still.

  “Ignore him,” he said. “Let Cath deal with it.”

  “He winds me up,” Penny muttered.

  Cath finally managed to get Clive to leave the hall. Penny was still fuming, and as she looked around, she could see that everyone else was angry and unsettled too.

  She wanted to go and ask Linda what the problem was with her brother, but one look at Linda’s face told Penny that it would be a foolish question and likely to lead to more fighting.

  Mary was not so perceptive, and said something to Linda that made Linda frown, hiss and throw her hands in the air. She gathered up her things, and announced, “That is it! I’ve had enough! That Clive … I am done. Once and for all, you mark my words.”

  No one tried to stop her when she stamped out of the hall. Hopefully, that meant she was resigning from the committee. Penny felt a little bad for thinking that.

  Penny turned to Jared and she was surprised to see that his face was grey and angry, too. He had sounded so calm when talking to her. “Are you okay?” she asked. She always tended to feel protective of him.

  “Yes, yes,” he said. “He winds everyone up, not just you. Men like that…” He tailed off, and bit his lip. He glared at the exit. “I’m going to go. I can’t be doing with this. It’s not my scene. I’m supposed to avoid stress. My blood pressure, you know.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” It made sense; he seemed fragile.

  “It’s okay. But I need to clear my head. Otherwise …”

  “Take care,” she said.

  “You too. Especially you,” he said, with a thin smile.

  As Jared left, the others began to pack up their things. There was a feeling of stilted frustration in the air. Penny checked her phone and walked to the exit, finding herself in step with Mary.

  “I am so mad,” she told Mary. “I want to run after that man and give him a real piece of my mind.”

  “Don’t we all,” Mary said. “But it is best to leave it.”

  “I know, I know.” Penny waved goodbye to everyone but found it hard to smile. She walked briskly across town, but her simmering annoyance was keeping her warm. She found herself brooding about Clive and the way he’d ruined the festive feelings for everyone. They’d all been so keen to talk about the Christmas markets, and to plan the events for the kids, and organise the choir and the grotto and everything. Then one man’s petty grievances destroyed it all for everyone.

  She walked quickly and decided she’d take Kali for a walk when she got home. She went the back ways, wanting to avoid seeing anyone. The only figure she did see was Haydn, and that was from a distance, as he left a terraced house and headed up the street away from her. The house was in some disrepair, and certainly didn’t look lived in, with its blank, dark curtain-less windows and damaged front door. There was a skip outside, half-full of rubbish and broken tiles.

  She was glad she didn’t have to face him. She’d had enough of confrontation. What had happened to their lovely community at this most special time of the year?

  * * * *

  Penny walked Kali along the lonely road to the south of town. If anyone else had said to her that they were going to walk that way, she would have advised them not to be so stupid. What, a woman, out on her own at night? Are you mad?

  Such rules didn’t apply to herself, of course. Anyway, she had a Rottweiler, and lately she’d been teaching her to bark on command. That was the first step, apparently, in then teaching the dog to stop barking on command. It seemed a noisy and backwards way of doing things, but it came highly recommended as a technique.

  After the chilly walk, which had not involved having to bark at anyone, she got home. She left her muddy boots by the front door, uncleaned, and they flopped down together in front of the gas fire in the living room. Penny wrapped herself in a comforting fleecy blanket, and Kali tried to creep under it too. She thought about putting the television on, but it was ten o’clock at night now and she had no wish to watch the news, which would only depress herself further and cause her to go to bed angry at the state of the world as well as the state of the local community.

  She told herself that it was simply the stress of Christmas that made people act in such irrational and argumentative ways.

  She supposed she ought to plan her own Christmas celebrations. She’d phoned her parents earlier but they blithely told her that they were on a “Tinsel and Turkey Tour” which meant they’d be away for Christmas, eating their way around the hotels of Scotland. “We can drink whisky all day!” her father had told her merrily. “We’re on a coach!”

  She had half-hoped for some invitation to go to her sister’s house, but she knew that with two children, it might be a little chaotic. There was still time for an invite. She didn’t like to think she’d been forgotten about.

  Penny wanted to be part of something, even if it was chaotic, on that one particular day.

  Never mind. She put it out of her mind. As a childless woman of a certain age, you had to stop thinking of what was never going to be, she reminded herself. She half-closed her eyes and began to drift into a warm, cosy slumber.

  Her phone ringing woke her with a start and she clawed anxiously for the handset. When she saw that it was from Ariadne, she was still half-asleep enough to assume she was about to be invited over for Christmas dinner.

  “Open your door!” Ariadne said.

  “What, wait, why?” Penny stumbled to her feet, and Kali leaped up to be alongside her in case this was a sudden new game.

  “I’m outside!” And to accompany the words, there came a furious hammering on Penny’s front door.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake.” Penny went and pulled the door open but it jammed halfway, catching on her boots and coat which she had flung to the floor.

  “You need to tidy up,” Ariadne said with all the lofty judgement an adult sister – even if a younger adult sister – could muster.

  “I’ve only just got in,” Penny said.

  “Oh! Really? Really?”

  “Yes. I was walking the dog. Anyway, why the panic?”

  “Destiny has just told me that there is something kicking off in the town centre.”

  “And how would Destiny know?” Penny said.

  “Online. Get your boots back on, let’s go and look.”

  As Penny got back into her outdoor clothing, Ariadne told her that Destiny was a member of some social media groups that gossiped about the local area. “Apparently,” Ariadne went on, “the police have cordoned off the whole market area!”

  Penny threw a small dog biscuit to Kali, and the two sisters hurried off into the night.

  They could see the blue flashing lights as soon as they were halfway down their own street. By the time they came to the crossroads, they could hear sirens and see the whole town centre lit by strobing emergency lights and car headlamps. Every local resident seemed to have come out to see
what was going on. Penny searched the crowd for familiar faces, and soon her gaze fell on Linda – not the familiar face that she wanted to see.

  Linda was looking horrified and didn’t look towards Penny. Behind Linda, there was Jared, who was on his tip-toes trying to see over people’s heads.

  She caught sight of Ginni, and Mary, and also Haydn. But Ariadne gripped Penny’s arm, and pointed upwards.

  Everyone was looking up, slowly, and falling silent.

  There in the Christmas lights that were strung from roof to roof, criss-crossing the street high above, was a dark figure.

  A dark figure of a man.

  A dark figure of a man, tangled up among the sparking and flickering bulbs, and hanging in a way that suggested he was very definitely dead.

  Chapter Four

  “I cannot believe that I am here again,” Penny said as she stepped into the custody suite of the police station. No decent human being should find such an environment to be familiar, unless they actually worked there.

  The desk sergeant didn’t smile at all. He glanced at the computer screen that was angled away from Penny so she couldn’t see what was displayed, and then he looked at the male police officer that was standing at Penny’s side.

  The police officer explained that she was a suspect in the suspicious death of Clive Holdsworth. Penny cringed. She felt sick. Okay, so she’d argued with the man – but come on! Who hadn’t? Was every person in Upper Glenfield to be a suspect?

  She had argued most recently, of course.

  The desk sergeant was saying something. There was such a roaring in her ears that she only caught the last sentence. “…do you understand why you are here?”

  She’d been through the process before. She knew she was merely “assisting with enquiries” at this stage and had only been detained, not arrested.

  It was a tiny and technical distinction. It didn’t make anything any easier. She had still be woken up by the police and driven off in a police car as the neighbours’ curtains had twitched.

  She nodded. “Yes, I understand.”

  Then she was led straight through to a small interview room to get it all over with.

  * * * *

  The officer who had come to her house first thing that morning was called Detective Constable Barry Atkins. They had not only collected her, but they had taken her still-muddy outdoor boots and her gloves for examination.

  They were now in the interview room. With DC Atkins was Detective Sergeant Clara Vidal. They were both in smart-casual plain clothes, and both spoke with quiet, firm reassurance.

  They were both, in their own ways, terrifying.

  Penny perched on her orange plastic chair and twisted her fingers together in her hands. All she had to do was to tell the truth, and everything would be fine, wouldn’t it? That’s what everyone said.

  “Good morning, Ms May, and thank you for coming,” DS Vidal said, as if she had had a choice. “Can you tell us exactly where you were last night, from the hours of about four in the afternoon, until midnight please? Don’t leave any detail out, however small and insignificant you might think it.”

  Penny’s mind went blank instantly. She gaped and made a squeaking sound.

  “Take your time,” DS Vidal added, and that really didn’t help at all.

  Penny struggled. “Four o’clock? I was at home, and I had my dinner – sorry, it’s tea up here, isn’t it? I’m from London. We say dinner. It’s funny, that.”

  DS Vidal nodded but her steely gaze told Penny that she was rambling about nonsense. She tried to refocus. “Right, so I ate, and then at six thirty I went out to the Christmas Planning Committee meeting.”

  She paused, but the officers did not speak.

  “Okay, so the meeting was in the community hall on the other side of town and loads of people were there and – oh, yes, Clive was there. He’s not on the committee though. He came in uninvited and had a big argument with everyone, and then he stormed out. And I left, and I walked home and then took my dog, Kali out for a walk. I got back home at around ten o’clock and sat down, but then my sister came to the door and said something was happening in town and I went down but everyone else was there too.”

  She stopped and drew in a deep breath.

  The constable was scribbling some notes but DS Vidal kept her eyes trained on Penny. “Can you tell me more about the meeting that Mr Holdsworth attended?”

  “He didn’t attend. He gate-crashed.”

  “Please, in every detail … what he said, and who he said it to. Imagine yourself back there; take your time to picture it. Now, take me through what you saw and what you heard, from your point of view.”

  It felt more like a therapy session than a hard-hitting police interview, but Penny did her best, reciting the events as she remembered them.

  “Sorry,” she said at the end. “I am not sure it’s all in the right order, but it’s roughly what happened.”

  “Thank you. You’re doing very well. Now tell us about your relationship with Mr Holdsworth.”

  “We don’t have a relationship. I don’t know him. I first saw him a few weeks ago at the Christmas lights switch-on. He was arguing there with everyone.”

  “Names, please?”

  “Linda, who is his sister. And Haydn, but I don’t know his surname.”

  “Thank you. And tell us again about what Mr Holdsworth said to you at the meeting.”

  She knew it made it look as if she had a motive, but she was still confused as to why they thought it was enough of a motive. She repeated what she’d said earlier.

  Then DS Vidal changed direction and it completely threw Penny sideways. The police officer said, “Ms May, you are named as the health and safety representative for the Christmas Market. Tell us what those duties entail.”

  Penny opened and closed her mouth a few times, and felt hot and sticky as a fresh wave of panic-sweat swept over her. “Uh, um, I just do the risk assessments and keep them in a file,” she said.

  “Do you oversee the safe storage of equipment?”

  “I do. We have a secure office at the back of the market area in Glenfield. We’re temporarily keeping the bits and pieces in there.”

  “Including the ladder used to secure the lights?”

  “The lights were put up by the council,” she said.

  “But the committee added some extras, didn’t they? They have use of a set of ladders, I understand. Please correct us if we are wrong…”

  “No, you’re right,” she said, and felt as if she was now sitting above a trapdoor that was going to open up and deliver her to a pit of crocodiles far below.

  Because she remembered that she had not gone to check that the ladder had been locked away, after it had been borrowed by a committee member to add some dangling snowmen to the lamp posts.

  She had intended to check – she had been on her way – but she had been waylaid, and it had slipped her mind.

  “Ms May?” DS Vidal was watching her closely. “What do you need to tell us?”

  She had to come clean. “I was supposed to check that the ladder had been locked away after the Christmas lights switch-on. But I forgot. It might have been left out.”

  “But you don’t know for sure?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “And was the ladder faulty in any way?”

  “No. I did a visual check before it was used.”

  “A visual check?” the officer confirmed. “And what safety standards did this ladder have? And was the person using it trained in working at height?”

  “I … don’t know.” It was a ladder, she wanted to scream. Everyone’s used a ladder before! “I have a form that goes with it.” I might have even signed it, for what it’s worth.

  “We might be involving the Health and Safety Executive,” DS Vidal continued. She had the decency to look sad about the news she was imparting. “It could be that the death is a tragic accident as the result of faulty equipment.”

  “But why would he h
ave been up the ladder in the first place?” Penny said.

  DS Vidal and DC Atkins shared a glance.

  DC Atkins closed his notebook. “Thank you for your frankness, Ms May,” he said. “I must advise you to not speak about this to anyone as we are conducting a serious investigation. You are free to go, but do not leave the area without informing us. We will be in touch very soon.”

  DS Vidal stood up. “And if anything else occurs to you, please ring our direct line.” She passed Penny a small business card. “Constable Atkins will show you out.”

  “What about my boots and gloves?”

  The both stared at her.

  “Yes, sorry, I quite understand.” She followed Atkins out of the room.

  * * * *

  Penny stumbled out of the police station. She moved to the side of the steps, halfway down, and stood in the harsh bright glare of a cloudless winter’s day, feeling utterly adrift. People flowed past her on the pavement below the steps, carrying armfuls and bags of Christmas shopping.

  She fumbled for her phone and tried to call Drew, but it went straight to his voicemail and she knew that he was working. He’d be at The Acorns School all day, leading groups of troubled teens on outdoor courses and exercises.

  What else could she do? She thought about calling Ariadne but she didn’t want to trouble her sister. There was her friend Francine, too. She was about to call her when she looked up the street and noticed a friendly-looking pub, the upmarket sort that served decent coffee. A familiar figure was disappearing inside. It was Jared.

  She needed any friend she could get, and he was closer than Francine right now, so she followed him into the warm and welcoming interior.

  Jared stopped a few feet into the pub, and she caught up with him. She was about to say hello when she saw what had brought him up so short.

  At the bar stood Haydn, although he was holding a large mug of tea rather than a pint of beer. At the other end of the bar was a haggard-looking Linda.

  Everyone’s eyes met, ping-ponging from one to the other.