Free Unlucky For Some by Jill McGown Page A

seemed to think he would be working his normal shift. The decision to leave at the interval had been made after he had started work. After Wilma had won the money? Surely not.
    But it was all a bit strange.

C HAPTER T HREE
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    Tony checked his blood sugar levels, and used his chart to work out how many carbohydrates were in the breakfast that Grace was even now preparing for him. He supposed this flexible regime would give him a bit more freedom about what he ate and when he ate, but it took a bit of getting used to. He had been on a course, but now he was flying without a net, and that was a bit scary. He gave himself what he hoped was an appropriate injection of insulin, and went downstairs.
    Breakfast was always in Grace’s kitchen-diner; he ate his evening meal in the pub itself, but with only one guest to cater for, Grace found it simpler just to have him join her in the mornings. Or so she said. Tony thought she liked the idea of him having his feet under her table. And, of course, it was always à deux; Stephen, like most teenagers, never got up until after breakfast.
    “Is that you, Tony?” Grace called, as soon as she heard his step on the stair.
    “It is,” he said, as he joined her in the kitchen. “How are you this morning?”
    “Fine, thanks. Are you all right? You were a bit shaken up.”
    “Oh, I’m all right. Though I honestly thought I was unshockable until last night.”
    “It was a horrible thing to find.”
    Yes, he supposed it was. But it had been his own reaction to it, rather than the discovery itself, that had shocked him, though he was reasonably comfortable with it now. When he was thirteen years old he had had to adjust to the fact that he had diabetes; at first, it had frightened him, worried him. Then he had become resigned to the fact that there was a part of him that was different from most people, that it might lead to other serious problems, and that he had to live with it. This was much the same. Perhaps his years of studying crime had made him indifferent to its horror, but so what?
    “Your breakfast will be about ten minutes. You just relax and read the paper or something.” She looked as though she was going to say something else, but if she had been, she changed her mind, and turned her attention back to the cooker.
    He noticed the Valentine card on the sideboard, and took a peek inside when Grace wasn’t looking. It was a gently comic one—not vulgar, but not overly romantic, and in traditional fashion, it was unsigned.
    He read the paper, but Grace didn’t get anything as downmarket as the journal for which he wrote his column, so he would have to wait to see what they’d done with the story. He’d pick one up on his way to the police station.
    She joined him at the table with the bowl of muesli that was all she had for breakfast.
    “Do you think Stephen will want a lift to the police station with me?” he asked. “It’s dodgy weather for an even more dodgy motorbike to cope with, and I think he should talk to them. He must have been one of the last people to see her alive.”
    Stephen had had a lot of expense lately with the bike, and it was just possible that the temptation of Mrs. Fenton’s winnings might have been too much. Tony had no idea if the person he saw running away from the scene could have been Stephen—he really only saw a shadow. And Stephen had seemed genuinely upset when he was told about what had happened. But as far as Tony could see, Wilma had been hit just once, so whoever did kill her might not have realized that he had. And if that was Stephen, that would explain how his distress could be so convincing, if he was discovering that he had murdered someone.
    “They won’t think he had anything to do with it, will they?” asked Grace, as if she had been reading his thoughts.
    “Well—they have to suspect everyone at the outset. I’ll be on their list, and so, I expect, will Stephen, once they know he was with her shortly before she