Free A Market for Murder by Rebecca Tope Page B

doing the funeral,’ Karen said, watching the other woman for a response.
    It was less than gratifying. ‘Oh. Right. I imagine you would be. They’ll have a church service first, will they?’ One of Drew’s long-term plans, initially resisted but eventually agreed to because of Maggs’s persistent nagging, was to erect a small chapel of his own, in a corner of the field, for funeral services.Until then, they either used the village church, or held the whole funeral at the graveside.
    ‘I have no idea,’ Karen admitted. ‘It won’t be for a while yet.’
    ‘Poor Peter,’ Della murmured, with a sigh that looked contrived to Karen. ‘Well, off you go. We’ll be fine here. Stephanie can show me where things are.’ She paused. ‘It’ll mean you owe me an hour or so sometime, won’t it?’
    Karen knew the question was fair, that this sort of arrangement only worked if everything was kept strictly level, turn for turn about, but she still resented the remark. It wasn’t her fault there’d been a murder before her very eyes.
    ‘Fine,’ she replied, wondering just why she felt so frosty.
     
    There was no sign of the two policemen from the previous evening at the Town Hall when she went in. There were people sitting at four or five tables, with computer monitors in front of them and telephones at their elbows. Cables ran carelessly in all directions, and there was a big white flip chart on an easel in the middle of the room. It was strange and intimidating. Nobody came forward to meet her as she stood gazing around. Eventually she noticed a desk close by, with a hand-written card saying ‘Public’ on it. There was nobody sitting behind it.
    ‘Hello?’ she said, addressing a woman wearing headphones at the next desk along.
    The woman lifted one earpiece away from her head, and looked up enquiringly.
    ‘I’m supposed to be helping you,’ Karen said awkwardly.
    ‘Sir!’ called the woman, across the room to a man in plain clothes. When he finally reacted, the woman dipped her chin at Karen and replaced her headphones.
    The man was holding a sheaf of papers, and seemed to be thinking deeply about them. He came slowly towards Karen.
    ‘Morning, madam,’ he said. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Hemsley. How can I help?’
    ‘I was asked to come in this morning. I’m Karen Slocombe. It isn’t very convenient, actually …’
    ‘Oh, well, thank you very much, then,’ he said blankly. ‘Slocombe?’
    ‘Yes, I saw the bolt hit Peter. I saw what it did to his throat. They thought I might be useful, or so they said.’ Her voice was rising, and she was strongly tempted just to turn and walk out again.
    ‘Oh, yes – Mrs Slocombe ,’ he repeated, as if she’d deliberately mispronounced her own name to mislead him. ‘That’ll be Doug’s department. Doug!’ he shouted.
    A man in uniform detached himself fromanother desk and came to join them. ‘This is Mrs Slocombe, the lady who saw the shooting. Can you take her to the scene and see if she can remember anything more? Take Helen with you. Thank you, madam, for coming like this. We really do appreciate it.’
    The whole thing was a fiasco, Karen had already realised. She stood in the empty square where she thought her stall must have been, facing the marked spot where Peter had fallen. ‘So the bolt can only have come from there ,’ Doug said hopefully, waving an arm towards the bank and the public loos.
    ‘Not necessarily,’ argued Helen, a tall fair-haired girl with a bored expression.
    ‘Actually,’ said Karen, slipping into primary-teacher mode, ‘unless you can reconstruct it with total accuracy, and measure the precise angle of the bolt in his neck …’ she savoured Doug’s quickly suppressed wince, ‘… then it’s going to be pretty difficult to pinpoint where he was. But now I’m here again, I think it’s most likely to have been in there.’ She pointed at the low brick-built edifice that was Bradbourne’s oldest public convenience.