Free In Bitter Chill by Sarah Ward Page B

agent’s particulars that it overlooked the canal she’d passed it over. But a month later she was on her way to investigate a burglary in the area and had realised that the ‘To Let’ sign was the same apartment she’d rejected. It hadn’t been an auspicious start. The burglary had taken place in the same block, although the owner cheerfully admitted to having left a window open on the ground floor. After taking the man’s statement she’d wandered up the stairs of the old wharf building and been surprised by the charm of the views. Here the canal was open, with a small life force moving the water along. The only possible blot on an otherwise perfect arrangement was that she had heard that Sadler’s cottage lay about five hundred metres along the same stretch of canal. Fortunately, they had different access roads and Connie was yet to stumble across him outside work.
    In Sadler, Connie sensed a tacit approval of her attempts to climb the ranks of the force. He had, after all, supported her application to move from uniform into CID, although the interview had been gruelling enough. Perhaps that was the where her instinctive reserve towards her boss came from. When she had sat in front of the interview panel, Sadler had asked her the one question that she had been dreading. ‘Why do you want to become a detective?’ Of course she’d had a few stock answers ready but one look at his cool blue eyes had frozen the platitudes on her lips. So she’d taken a deep breath and gone for it.
    ‘Derbyshire CID, from what I can see, is full of southern university graduates looking for nice place to bring up their children. I’d like someone whose family has worked in this place for generations to make their mark.’
    She later realised her mistake. Sadler, too, was a local, although the hard edge of the north Derbyshire vowels could only just be heard. But he’d given her the job despite, or perhaps because of, her answer. Her problem was that she had never been able to work out which one it was. He was also physically attractive. Not like Palmer’s compact physicality. Sadler was tall and remote. But she’d seen other women at the station looking at him. She had too much sense to explore what his attractiveness might mean to her, relationships between colleagues were generally discouraged, but, within her, she was drawn to his distant energy.
    She’d been warned by Llewellyn not to look at any press coverage of the old case. And if that’s what they had been instructed to do then Sadler would be watching his team to ensure that they bided by the rules. Which was all very well if you’d worked on the investigation first time round but how exactly was she to find out any information? Sadler had scheduled a meeting for that morning but she could hardly turn up and expect to sit and not speak. She bet that at this very moment Palmer was also awake and brushing up on the case, despite his impending nuptials, and she had no intention of being left behind.
    She sent him a text. Are you awake?
    The phone beeped a reply. Sod off Connie. It’s 5 a.m.
    Still in bed, she opened up her laptop and started to search under the names of Yvonne and Sophie Jenkins. It was pointless. She had 257,389 results, most of which when she clicked on them were the same reports rehashed in different ways. She opened a few of the links, skim read the contents and then shut them down again. She tried next the name of Rachel Jones and Bampton. Same result, although the first hit was the website for a Rachel Jones, a family historian based in Bampton. It probably wasn’t the same person. Jones was a common surname, although it couldn’t be helpful having a name like that with this case going on.
    Connie opened up the site and clicked the ‘About’ tab. There was a photo at the top of the page showing an attractive plump woman in her early forties with a short brown bob that she had tucked behind her ears. She was smiling at the camera and holding