Father – Pat Burden (1)

‘I’ve warned Mabel we’re coming. She’s cooking steak and kidney and cottage pie.’ ‘I can smell both,’ Bassett said, sniffing overtly. Not for landlady Mabel the modern craze for container food and microwaves, she cooked the old-fashioned way and her customers loved her for it. ‘I said we’d eat outside,’ Andy said. ‘Why not?

Sun’s shining.’ Mabel called out as they approached the side door. ‘The usual, gentlemen?’ The usual, please, they replied. Their pints of old ale were drawn by the time they got to the door. ‘Steak and kidney or cottage pie?’ Mabel said. ‘Cottage pie. Same for you, Andy? Make that two, Mabel. Say in ten minutes’ time.’ At the table: ‘Mouth’s watering,’ Bassett said. Andy grinned and spread out a road map.

‘Julian Pugh-Talbot. In his original statement he said he’d driven from Oxford, stopping off at the Black Swan for an hour, guvnor. It checked out OK until my fine-tooth combing picked up the direction he came from.’ He traced the route on the map. ‘From Oxford he’d have come Cheltenham, Gloucester, or—see—Tewkesbury. The A417 Or 438. He didn’t—he came in on the B4214, look. The opposite direction. The direction he would have taken if he’d come from Briony House.’ He folded the map.

‘I went to the Black Swan, then to see a few of their regulars, and came up trumps. Seems he passed the pub heading for home, returned fifteen minutes later, then he stayed till eight. Phoned his girl from the pub, overheard saying he’d be late, his mother had urgent business to discuss. ‘He came into the station this morning, looking for you, matter of fact, sent by his mother. I said I didn’t know why you wanted him, but I’d found a discrepancy needed straightening out.

He was puzzled, couldn’t understand why his doings on Friday night should have anything to do with the deaths on Saturday, but he’d answer the question. He said he drove past the pub in a dream, woke up and turned round. When I pointed out that wouldn’t have cost more than a few minutes, he said he stopped and fiddled with his car stereo.’

‘Why bother, if he was going to the pub?’

Photoset in Linotron Baskerville by Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Printed and bound in Great Britain by Harper Collins Book Manufacturing, Glasgow. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

OceanofPDF.com Blurb Rebel Priest and Teenager in Death Tryst, the headline read. The evidence seemed to bear out that a double suicide had actually occurred, but when an appeal for help brought ex-Detective Chief Superintendent Harry Bassett on to the scene his friends Inspector Bob Greenaway and Sergeant Andy Miller weren’t complaining. Once they put their three heads together, the evidence soon began to look flimsy. Who was the dead girl’s mystery boyfriend whom she claimed she could never marry, 1f he was not the priest? Who was the father of her unborn child.

Were they one and the same? Bassett uncovers the tale of a love that is anything but life-enhancing and pits his wits against a clever murderer, who isn’t quite clever enough. OceanofPDF.com By the same author BURY HIM KINDLY WREATH OF HONESTY SCREAMING BONES OceanofPDF.com Chapter 1 When Bassett overheard the words ‘Priest and a Slip of a Girl’ spoken in the hushed half-malicious, half-gleeful tones of a gossip, he felt sorry for the hapless cleric, whoever he was, poor man.

Probably the victim of his own innocence, spotted in what gossips of a certain kind might choose to call ‘suspicious circumstances’. It was one o’clock on a sunny if cool September day. Bassett sat alone at a table for two in the garden of the Pheasant, Oakleigh’s village pub. After the No Drink If You Drive campaign had threatened his livelihood the pub’s landlord, Archie Wood, had started to serve bar meals, and Bassett had taken to ambling along once or twice a week to ‘partake’.

He had finished eating, a Ploughman’s today, and had been thinking idly that the cheese, pickle and hot crusty rolls had been so delicious he wished he had them to savour all over again, when the voice from the next table impinged upon his thoughts. The ‘Slip of a Girl’ did it. ‘Priest and a Girl’ might have washed over him: just a re-hashing of another kiss and tell story.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 407d829b4a5163e7
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 800,023 bytes (0.763 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 0002323826
• Pages: 175
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 279.8 minutes
• Total Words: 55,960
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• Average Words per Page: 319.77
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