Free The Operator (Bruce and Bennett Crime Thriller 2) by Valerie Laws Page A

perched in
a small bushy tree all night had its attractions, though no doubt it would be
one of the young officers who copped that particular bit of surveillance.
    ‘It might be difficult to prove they had anything
to do with the murder,’ she pointed out, jogging on the spot to keep warm and
save herself from stiffening up. She crossed her arms and rubbed her shoulders,
shifting from foot to foot. ‘After all, anyone could have picked up that rock
and used it.’
    ‘Hardly!’ he barked. ‘Most of the people who walk
along here aren’t the type at all. Not like those thugs...’
    ‘Well, thanks for showing me where the murder
weapon came from, Mr er.’
    ‘Archer. Harold Archer. Esquire.’
    Erica solemnly switched off her phone, thanked him
and jogged off.
    It was true, anyone could have used that stone. The
use of something that just happened to be lying around suggested an impulsive
crime rather than premeditation. But then anyone who regularly walked that path,
the hoodies, dogwalkers, golfers retrieving their balls, gardeners dumping
cuttings, kids taking short cuts, might know those rocks were there, ready to
hand, a safe weapon that could not be traced back to them. Even if they’d
picked up the rock before putting on surgical gloves - which they surely must
have unless they were stupid beyond belief - they’d have cleaned it up somehow.
If fingerprints would show on rough damp sandstone in the first place.
    Erica always liked getting back to her flat, in an
old black and white mews which had been part of a coaching inn, historic and a
bit tatty, her first proper home after the years of flat-sharing at university.
She had a hot shower and made herself a quick dinner, sweet potato cooked whole
in the microwave with no fat, and an omelette with minimum oil, plenty of
chilli and mushrooms. She opened a bottle of St Emilion. It takes nerve to open
a bottle of wine on your own without feeling like a lush. But the flowery,
vanilla-scented wine was delicious. She allowed herself another glass.
     
     
     

CHAPTER ELEVEN
     
     
    The research she’d done for
the interview came in useful for Kingston’s obituary. Impressive career
tragically cut short at only 43; his work as an orthopaedic consultant at the
Wydsand General Hospital, his private practice including spells of working in
Arab countries treating rich patients who’d crashed their Mercs and Porsches...
put more tactfully of course. She included his undoubted successes in surgery,
his churchgoing, and being a leading light, in fact a past Captain, of Wydsand
Golf Club. She didn’t mention that his widow, 30 year-old Tessa, was living
separately at his death, or any other controversial subjects. Not the time or
place.
    She wondered why his wife had left him. A guy with
plenty of money, lots of status, lauded to the skies by all and sundry....maybe
he shagged nurses, regarded them as his due? She wondered how he had felt about
being left. Can’t have made him look good to his work and golf cronies. He’d
struck her as unattractively arrogant though presumably Mrs Kingston must have
known him better than Erica did on the basis of their one phone conversation
setting up the interview. Perhaps he was charming in private.
    His manner on the phone had put up her hackles, as
did his reaction when she explained who she was. She’d told him she edited and
wrote the You and Your Health page.
    ‘What qualifies you for that?’ Amused.
    ‘I have a homeopathic practice in the town - I
work on the paper freelance.’
    ‘Oh I see. One of those ‘alternative’ practitioners.
Alternative to real medicine, that is. All these fancy -ologies make our job
harder. We have to pick up the pieces when your ‘magic’ fails, as it must.’
    ‘Really?’ she replied, as calmly as she could,
while digging her biro into the notepad viciously. ‘A lot of my clients have
already been to doctors and been told there’s nothing wrong with them. Or given
drugs that made them