Free Cherringham--Death on a Summer Night by Neil Richards Page A

laughing. “But wait till you hear this. Tony finally got back to me — remember I was going to ask him if he had any inside info?”
    “Sure. Crime like this, Tony must have known somebody involved on the legal side.”
    “He was pals with Tim’s solicitor. Chap’s in his eighties now, but Tony took him out to tea in Oxford yesterday and in return got a look at his old case files … And he came home with a copy of the police search list for local cars that matched Tim Bell’s description.”
    “You sound like you’re going to tell me something interesting.”
    “I am. In the file — the list of all Vauxhall owners in the area. Couple of hundred. Now Tim always thought the car he saw was a Vauxhall saloon of some kind. So this list has all the vans and SUV’s crossed out. Leaves around fifty saloons. And guess who’s in there?”
    “Tell me.”
    “Chap called Henry Trask. The man Mary Taylor married two years after her daughter’s death.”
    “Really. And so?” said Jack, finishing the Twister in one mouthful and dropping the wooden stick into a trashcan. “Just coincidence, no?”
    “Trask lived in the house directly behind the Taylors, with his elderly mother. I looked online — the two houses backed onto each other.”
    “Neighbour comforts grief-stricken woman as her marriage falls apart — oldest story in the world …”
    “Okay,” said Sarah. “But listen to this. Police interviewed him about his car. He said he’d sold it at auction just a day after Dinah disappeared. But guess what? The auction house had no record. Police marked it for a follow-up — but then they found the blood on Tim’s car and never took it further.”
    This made Jack pause.
    This could be something.
    If Tim’s story was true — then Dinah jumped into a car that was passing in the night. And she must have known the driver.
    Could be … the neighbour? Mum’s friend? Someone she trusted …
    “Okay, you got me on auction house,” he said, now walking back to his Sprite through the funfair. “What happened to Mr Trask? He move away?”
    “No,” said Sarah. “He bought a cottage up on Kingfisher Lake. Runs a fishing business.”
    “Kingfisher Lake? Sounds like something out of a fairy story.”
    “It’s about ten miles north of here. I’ll text you the address. Used to be one of the old gravel pits. Pretty grim place in those days. But they chucked some government money at it and turned it into a series of what they call ‘leisure lakes.’”
    “Henry Trask, huh?” said Jack, climbing into his little sports car. “Maybe I should drop in on him. Nice day for a fishing trip.”
    “‘Trask Trout’ — you can’t miss it.”
    “Fairground, fishing trip. Today’s turning into a kid’s dream day off …”
    “Yeah well, while you’re out there, spare a thought for us poor workers chained to our computers in this heat.”
    “I will,” said Jack. “Tell you what. Bring the kids down to the Goose this evening, I’ll do a barbecue and you can all go for a swim.”
    “It’s a deal.”
    “See you later, Sarah.”
    He put the phone away and fired up the engine.
    An afternoon’s fishing — who would have thought it?
    And he headed out of the field next to the funfair and up onto the main road that led north of the village.

13. Kingfisher Lake
    Jack turned off the dual carriageway at the sign for Trask Trout and headed down a winding track towards a stretch of water in the valley that he guessed was Kingfisher Lake.
    The drive had taken around twenty minutes. Up into the hills that lay to the north and west of Cherringham, then over the other side to the flat farmland that Jack knew stretched all the way to the Welsh borders.
    He had never really driven up here. He knew there was so much more of the Cherringham area to explore — somehow he’d never had the time.
    So much for a leisurely retirement …
    He guided the little Healey Sprite down the twisting track.
    The lake looked to be about a mile