Free The Devil's Edge by Stephen Booth

place in Tuscany. Took on a housekeeper and moved his mother in to live a life of luxury. You see him swanning about in a brand-new Jag, or sometimes a vintage MG in the summer.’
    ‘Oh, I think I might have met him.’
    ‘Lucky you.’
    Cooper thought of the man who had stopped his car in the village earlier to offer a piece of his mind.
    ‘It’s about time I had a word with him, I think. On his own territory.’
    Gamble was wearing brown corduroy trousers that were getting rather baggy at the knees. When he stepped outside to follow Cooper to the gate, he pulled on a dark grey fleece over his faded checked shirt.
    At the gate, he gazed up and down the street, his protruding ears almost flapping, the beads on his cowboy hat rattling quietly. He was like a Native American scout, scenting buffalo.
    Cooper moved closer to Gamble. He noticed that the sleeves of his fleece were covered with small burrs and thorns that had snagged in the wool. He thought of suggesting that a woollen fleece wasn’t the best garment to wear when squeezing through hedges or climbing fences. But he decided against it.
    Cooper drove the Toyota up the hill and turned up the small lane that ran past the back of Fourways. He was immediately faced with ‘Private Road’ signs and warnings that there was no public right of way. He slowed the car almost to a crawl as he reached a blind bend between high hedges. You wouldn’t want to meet something coming the other way.
    At the end, a driveway went off to the left towards Lane End. On his right, he was facing a set of gates.
    These gates weren’t just black wrought iron like the others he’d seen. They were decorated with gold highlights, and had gilt finials and scrollwork. It was as if they had pretensions to be the entrance to Buckingham Palace. They exuded an air of having gone one better than their neighbours. There would have been no doubt in Cooper’s mind who lived behind them, even if the name of the house hadn’t been prominently displayed. Riddings Lodge.
    Cooper pressed a button on the entry phone and waited for an answer.
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Police, sir. Detective Sergeant Cooper, Edendale CID.’
    ‘Do you have identification?’
    ‘Yes, of course. But—’
    ‘There’s a camera.’
    ‘Okay, I see it.’
    Cooper held his warrant card up towards the lens of a camera mounted so that it was pointing directly at the area in front of the gates. After a moment, he heard the click and hum of the gates beginning to open.
    ‘All right.’
    The voice didn’t sound very welcoming. But not many people managed to give a good impression through the speaker on an entry phone.
    Cooper drove on to a vast paved area around a central water feature, with a fountain and stone cherubs. It was like driving into a Roman piazza. Well, a Roman piazza with imitation Victorian gas lamps. When he saw the house, at first it looked modern. Everything shiny and new, like an illustration from a high-end property brochure. He was thinking of an upmarket country hotel. Then he noticed that it featured several decorative arched leaded windows, as if the owner had changed his mind and decided to live in a bishop’s palace instead.
    Although he couldn’t see the extent of the grounds, he sensed that they must be enormous. All he could make out from the piazza was a large monkey puzzle tree, its shape suggesting a mature specimen, with deep green leaves forming dense clusters at the top. A male tree, judging by the cones.
    He was greeted at the door of the house by a woman in an apron, who introduced herself as the housekeeper. She led him into a hallway, watched him carefully as he wiped his feet, then escorted him across an expanse of carpet so soft and springy that he felt as though he was walking on a trampoline. A good jump and bounce, and his head would almost touch that crystal chandelier.
    He entered a room filled with a confusingly diverse range of furniture and ornaments. Porcelain vases, a brass bar ometer,