Island Murders

James London

Description

When property surveyor and treasure hunter Sam Peters visits the Isle of Wight, the locals are surprised when he literally strikes gold... only to be murdered soon afterwards. The case is given to keen-minded Hampshire-based Detective Inspector Bruno Peach, who - as always - seeks the assistance of his trusty sidekick, headmistress Janet Gibson to bring the killer to justice. Together they seem to be unravelling the mystery piece by piece, but little do they know that their investigations will soon see an older unsolved local killing resurrected from the grave.This fantastic page-turner of a murder mystery is the latest release from much-loved and critically acclaimed author James London, who brings his usual fresh and unique style to this popular genre. The book will appeal to a wide range of readers, including fans of traditional British detective fare and those who have either holidayed in or live on the beautiful island.

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 12 juillet 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785388347
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Island Murders
A DI Bruno Peach Mystery
James London




First published in 2018 by
Acorn Books
www.acornbooks.co.uk
Digital edition converted and distributed by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
© Copyright 2018 James London
The right of James London to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.




For Annabel Wright
whose love of crime stories and the Isle of Wight
helped Bruno Peach a little on his journey.



Chapter 1
Sunday 20 th July
Detective Inspector Bruno Peach had taken off across the ancient humpback bridge in Beacon Alley a thousand times whilst on his way to meet Anita Burton in her flat above the post office in Niton, an unremarkable village on the southern tip of the Island. The Norman church nearby, with its table top tombs, had been used by smugglers to hide fugitives and contraband. As Bruno turned into the Alley, just for a few seconds memories of those tender, passionate nights returned.
Beacon Alley was a cross-country shortcut that led to the main Newport-to-Niton road. At its widest it was four metres; at its narrowest just two, with passing places every two to three hundred metres or so. In daylight it frightened Bruno. When the passing bay was on your side, you pulled in and - following a hand salute from the passing speedster - drove on. In darkness however, you could drive fast, because the headlights of approaching cars would light up the road for some distance.
Bruno had first used the shortcut one hot summer night twenty-five years previously, when Anita, the village postmistress, had phoned Godshill Police Station at 1:00 am, reporting hooded burglars trying to break into her post office through an iron-barred ground-floor window in her back yard. The robbers had failed to wrench out the window bars when a chain fixed to the rear of a fifteen-year-old stolen truck had snapped, creating a great deal of noise. They had given up, leaving behind finger prints... and a useless set of bar cutters.
The prints were never matched to known Island criminals, and there were no leads or suspects, so Bruno’s report of the attempted robbery remained in the unsolved crime files in Godshill Police Station. At the time of the incident, he had been on night duty at the station, a small cottage office in the High Street manned by a single officer. When called out, he would have to divert the phone line to the Island’s main police station at Newport.
Anita Burton, then thirty-seven and a divorcee, lived alone above her post office. She’d been relieved as she greeted the arrival of the police car at 1:50 am, wearing night clothing - a pink bed jacket that covered her back and shoulders and a similarly-coloured low-cut ankle-length silk nightgown. On that warm summer night, her firm body beneath the negligee had been enticing, as had Bruno Peach’s youthful twenty-seven-year-old body, wearing a police uniform and a crisp white shirt, a hidden reminder of Anita’s life as a sailor’s wife. She was pretty and still youthful, with a penetrating eye. Professionally, she was helpful and kind to the elderly and was much admired as the postmistress of the village of Niton. She enjoyed being admired, and being the centre of attention. Stories linking her romantically with various men from the village had circulated; some were married or divorced, the rest with neither the money nor status to match hers. Whether true or false, nobody knew if anything had ever come of them.
After examining the crime scene, bagging up the useless bar cutters and reporting to his sergeant at Newport Police HQ, Bruno had been writing up Anita’s statement of the attempt to rob the post office when he’d accepted her offer of a cold beer. His pleasant manner when asking the necessary questions to draw up the statement had prompted Anita to ask him personal questions in return. She’d discovered he was single, lived alone in a flat in Newport, and did not have a girlfriend. He cycled to keep fit and looked after his recently widowed mother, who lived in Shanklin.
Bruno had been relaxed in her company and did not shrink at her advances, soon being drawn into her bed to begin an affair that had gone on to last for ten years. In that time they had occasionally spoken of marriage, but she liked her role at the centre of village life too much to become ‘just’ a policeman’s wife. Eventually, their relationship faded, and approaching fifty, she married the solicitor who acted for her in the sale of the post office, exchanging her village celebrity status for the respect accorded to a senior Island solicitor’s wife.
Anita’s new husband changed her life completely, enabling her to avoid the loneliness that had crept in and resulted in her decision to sell Niton Post Office. He had dismissed her concerns, relieved her of all responsibility, and she was thus happy and cared for.
***
Godshill was the most photogenic village on the Island and its fifteenth century church and world famous tea gardens attracted tourists from all over the globe. While Bruno had worked there, those journeys along Beacon Alley to Niton had been exciting. He’d always driven fast along the narrow winding road, impatient to enjoy the imminent intimacy.
On this early Sunday morning though, despite his mind evoking thoughts of Anita - who had been married to husband number two for ten years now - the rear chassis of Bruno’s car did not bounce off the road surface from driving too fast over the bridge as it often had done. This time he drove cautiously and parked three hundred metres in from the Godshill road, in a space belonging to a dark house set some way back from the alley and in full view of the bridge.
Despite a calm exterior, Bruno was gripped with fear at beginning an investigation into only the third murder in his thirty-odd years as a policeman.
At 6:00 am that morning, a forty-four year old man had been found by a dog walker battered to death on the riverbank beneath the bridge. The walker had stopped to relieve himself in the undergrowth near to the bridge when he’d heard his dog barking at something it had found underneath it. After getting just close enough to see what had interested his ever-faithful companion, the man had immediately reported to Godshill Police Station via his mobile what looked like a body under the bridge. He saw no one other than the dead man until the police arrived.
As the Island detective responsible for investigating serious crime, Bruno was driving that familiar route so to arrive as early as possible, in the hope of searching for clues before anyone else turned up and disturbed the scene.
The corpse of the murdered man lay along the river bank, under the two hundred-year-old stone bridge which spanned the East Yar river, hidden by low-hanging trees and fully-grown shrubs and bushes.
Waiting for him at the crime scene was his old friend Andy Welsh, the current resident Godshill police officer, who had thankfully arrived first to prevent any encroachment over the ground surrounding the body, allowing Bruno to be the first to examine it. Andy was twenty-eight years old, already with six years’ service. He was married and lived in the flat above the police station in Godshill. His wife, Carol - a lively and efficient woman four years younger - was the manager of The Smokey , the restaurant a stone’s throw from their home.
“It’s a grim sight, sir. Plus it’s wet and muddy, so be careful you don’t slip. I didn’t get closer than a few feet. I’d leave him to the medics if I were you.”
But for Bruno, it was at the close proximity to the body where important clues might be found. “I need a close look,” he explained, donning his crime scene suit and a pair of plastic gloves as he talked, kit he always carried in his car but hoped rarely to use.
“I’ll go first then,” said Andy. “It’s dark under the bridge and I’ve got a torch”
It was a clamber down the slippery riverbank and then a few metres crawl along to the body. The ground under the bridge was damp, flattened and narrow. It would have been difficult to pull a body along the bank under the bridge far enough to completely conceal it. To return from the bank, the murderer would have had to have exited backwards, climbing over the dead man or dropping into the river, which was a good few metres deep under the bridge. At a guess, the dead man looked around six feet tall and twelve stone in weight. It was cramped and tight beneath the low arch, necessitating the murderer’s close contact with the corpse. This might yield clues, thought Bruno.
The dead man wore shorts with pockets front and side, out of which Bruno eased a wallet, credit cards and a driving licence. These gave his name as Samuel Peters and his address as one of the upmarket apartments in Cumberland House, situated on Festing Grove in Southsea. The driving licence revealed that he was born on the twenty-eighth of April, 1971. The wallet still contained £80 in notes and a small zipped compartment with change, immediately suggesting that robbery was not a motive for this man’s murder.
Bruno had seen many corpses in his ye