Free The Cadaver Game by Kate Ellis Page A

out of the way and rose to his feet.
    As soon as they left the police station the bells of St Margaret’s church began to ring. Gerry was missing choir again, he
     thought. He liked belting out the hymns on a Sunday morning; said it set him up for the week. But murder disrupted everything.
    Rachel seemed unusually quiet as they drove to Morbay. Wesley tried to make conversation, asking after her boyfriend, Nigel,
     a local farmer, but the answers she gave were monosyllabic and Wesley sensed the subject was off limits. There had been a
     time when she would have confided in him and, unexpectedly, he found himself regretting that those days appeared to be over.
     For the rest of the journey he talked about the case, trying theory upon theory on for size – but none of them seemed entirely
     satisfactory.
    Once at the hospital they followed the signs to the Intensive Care Unit. Wesley hated the place; hated seeing the anxious
     relatives keeping wordless vigils by their loved ones’ bedsides.
    A young dark-haired nurse directed them to a waiting room and a few minutes later the door opened. The woman who appeared
     on the threshold was middle-aged but time had been kind to her. She was tall with blonde hair cut in a neat bob and she was
     slim, the sort of strong slenderness which results from sports and training. She wore a little make-up, not too much, and
     Wesley noticed that her eyeliner was unsmudged. There had been no tears.
    Wesley stood up and stepped forward to greet her. ‘Mrs Marsh?’
    ‘Yes. I’m Anne Marsh,’ she said as she shook Wesley’s hand firmly.
    ‘I’m DI Wesley Peterson and this is my colleague, DS Rachel Tracey. Please come in and sit down. Would you like a drink from
     the machine or—’
    The woman shook her head vigorously. ‘No thanks. I’m awash with tea. Nothing else to do at a time like this, is there?’ She
     had a slight northern accent; Manchester probably.
    ‘How is your husband?’ he asked once they’d made themselves comfortable.
    ‘Still unconscious. They say he’s stable but I don’t really know what that means. Can you tell me what happened to him ’cause
     I’ve no idea what he was doing down here or—’
    ‘You didn’t know he was in Devon?’
    She shook her head. ‘I thought he was going abroad for the week – Germany. He told me he was leaving the car at Manchester
     Airport. He rang me on Saturday night saying he was in Munich. He said he was going to a bier keller later on with some people
     from the firm he was visiting.’
    ‘When exactly did he leave home?’
    ‘The Friday before last, first thing in the morning. He said he was catching an early flight – six forty-five, I think. He
     was due back late yesterday evening but he never arrived and then I had a visit from the police.’
    ‘That must have come as a shock,’ said Wesley. In his mind’s eye he could see the constables at the door with mournful faces;
     the expression of horrified disbelief on the woman’s face as they broke the news.
    ‘I was devastated. Particularly when they told me he was down in Devon. I don’t understand what he was doing here.’ She sounded
     genuinely puzzled. ‘He’s never mentioned Devon and I don’t think he knows anybody down here.’
    ‘Has anyone checked whether he actually travelled to Germany during the week?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘We’ll need the name of the firm he was supposed to be visiting and the hotel if you’ve got it.’
    ‘Of course. It was Magborg – an engineering firm in Munich. He told me he was staying at the Emperor Hotel in the centre.’
    Wesley nodded to Rachel and she wrote it down in her notebook.
    ‘Tell us about your husband, Mrs Marsh.’
    ‘Anne, please.’
    ‘OK, Anne. What does he do for a living?’ He almost used the past tense but he stopped himself just in time. The man was still
     alive … just.
    ‘He’s marketing manager of a car parts firm. They do a lot of business abroad so he’s away quite a