Free Grave Stones by Priscilla Masters

didn’t quite ring true.
    Again Korpanski could find no suitable response. He almost shrivelled in the face of so much venom. He knew he should be asking a significant question but it had slipped out of his mind. He was stuck, which gave Judy the opportunity to take the lead, eyeing him as he drove. ‘You always were a hunk,’ she said. ‘Look after yourself, don’t you, Mickey?’
    She put her hand over his on the steering wheel.
    ‘I’m married, Judy,’ he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the road ahead. The hand slid away slowly, back to her lap. ‘Yeah, well,’ she said, ‘so was my husband when he took up with…’ She held her fingers up. ‘Now, was it four or five different women? Not always in succession. He liked more than one at a time. It fed his ego when I wasn’t enough.’
    Korpanski was glad when they arrived at the morgue.
     
    In his time, Korpanski had watched plenty next-of-kin identifications. He had never seen one without some form of emotion – sorrow, grief, anger – some sign thatthere had once been a connection between the dead and the living, the person who was deemed to be close enough to the deceased to tick the box of next of kin. Judy Grimshaw (he must find out her married name – or rather the name she went under these days) stared down at her father. ‘That’s him,’ she said, then pulled the cloth back over his face and walked out. Korpanski watched her. Not a muscle had twitched for the old man. Even he felt more sympathy for the old farmer now.
    He was glad to drop her back at the police station to pick up her car and find himself alone, back in his office.
    He rang the team of scenes of crime officers.
    ‘Found anything?’
    ‘Nothing further of significance except that the mattresses in all the bedrooms have been ripped apart. Probably with a knife. Your assailant must have been in quite a mess. Foam and horsehair and stuffing all over the place. One of my lads had an asthma attack and has had to go home.’
    ‘Any money there?’
    ‘Little cash box in the sitting room, forty pounds in it. Nothing else.’
    Korpanski put the phone down and wondered then if Judy Grimshaw’s story was true. Surely, surely people didn’t really hide money in mattresses these days? Korpanski allowed his mind to wander. In these days of Internet banking, holes in the wall and credit cards? Surely not.
    Or had someone merely thought there would be moneythere? Plenty of people know there doesn’t have to be real cash – just the storybook kind that villains believe in. And act on. The Chinese whispers that feed legends. And at some point, in one person’s ear, legend becomes fact.
    In this case it might be difficult sorting out fact from fable.
    Korpanski came to a decision. He’d put it off long enough. He checked his watch. A little after six. He picked up the phone and dialled. ‘Hi, Jo,’ he began, when he was through to the landline answer phone.
6.40 p.m.
    It was around half an hour later that Matthew and Joanna finally dropped their luggage onto the floor of Waterfall Cottage, Joanna feeling the familiar sinking feeling we all have on our return from a dream holiday.
    Back to the nightmare. She had sometimes wondered whether it is better not to have escaped in the first place because, however humdrum it is, we all have to return to our daily lives.
    Bills.
    The washing.
    A leak?
    The answer phone flickering. And that was before they a) checked their mail, picked up their emails and switched on their mobile phones and b) told anyone that they were engaged.
    There were eight messages. Joanna pressed the play button.
    Eloise. ‘Hi, Dad. Just wanted to tell you I have an interview next week at Staffordshire University Med School.’ She was already picking up the abbreviations that mark the chosen few from the rest of the populace. ‘Just wondered if I could stay with you the night before. Dad,’ her childish voice rose an octave, ‘I’m so excited. Well – excited and