Death at Rainbow Cottage, Jo Allen [top 100 books of all time checklist .TXT] 📗

were done, the group breaking up to go their separate ways. In the ladies’ loo, Ashleigh was smartening up her make-up when her work phone, which she’d forgotten to switch off, pinged with an alert of a missed call.

Number unknown. Administering a slash of scarlet lipstick, Ashleigh folded her lips together then dabbed at them with a tissue as she debated the eternal detective’s dilemma. To return the call, or not?

‘Never off bloody duty,’ she said to her reflection, knowing Jude would have answered it, regardless of where he was. He needed to learn to keep his work phone switched off, something she normally did. Closing the cover of the phone, she was about to stash it away in her bag when the voicemail reminder pinged in. So it was important enough to warrant a message. Curiosity won out. She flicked the message on to speaker and listened to it while she dabbed a touch of powder on her face.

‘Hi, Sergeant O’Halloran. This is Marsha Letham from the Eden Telegraph. We’re looking to run a piece alongside our reporting of the A66 murder in the local area. I wanted to talk to someone about diversity and inclusion of the LBGTQI community in the local police operations. I’m told there’s a new policy approach being developed. I understand you worked with Detective Superintendent Faye Scanlon at the Cheshire force and wondered if I could chat to you about that. Give me a call if you have a moment.’ A pause, and then the cheery voice came back at her again. ‘Oh, and no names, obviously. I protect my sources.’

Ashleigh flicked the phone off and frowned at it. Even on a Friday night, even in the ladies’ toilets of a local pub, the fallout of her relationship with Faye Scanlon cast a long shadow. Questions about inclusion and diversity? No names? That would only be the beginning of it. The woman must think she buttoned up the back.

I may make mistakes, Ashleigh said to herself as she thought of Faye, the biggest and most damaging of them, but I’m not so stupid as to get involved in something like that.

Chapter 9

Once Jude had crept quietly out of the house Ashleigh shared with her old school friend and headed off to work, she couldn’t fall back to sleep. Six o’clock was an unconscionable hour to be up and out on a Saturday, but she’d already learned he was a man who couldn’t settle easily to anything if there was a major problem to deal with at work. She was as bad. Other people’s problems niggled at her, but she preferred them to having to worry about her own.

Except one. As she lay in bed waiting for the warmth that Jude had left behind him to cool and for the dawn light to creep over from the front of the housetop and lift the shadows that lay deep in her bedroom, the message she’d found on her phone the night before nagged at her. Journalists who wanted information on a case went to the press office. If they were looking elsewhere it was either because they didn’t think they’d get the answer they wanted or they’d tried and been refused. Whichever it was, she’d steer well clear.

She should have told Jude about Faye the night before, but if she had it would have led her into history she didn’t want to revisit. Life was complicated enough without him asking the unanswerable question: why?

I should stop worrying about the past, she lectured herself even as she realised she wasn’t going to get back to sleep and might as well give up and make the best of the day. It was past seven by then, and she swung her legs over the edge of the bed with a sigh. The plumbing was antiquated and shouted its complaints for all to hear, and Lisa wouldn’t thank her for disturbing her so early, so she delayed a shower, slipped on her dressing gown and padded down to the kitchen.

Five minutes later she was sitting on the sofa with the side table in front of her. A mug of strong coffee steamed at one side and her pack of tarot cards, wrapped in purple silk, sat in the middle, inviting her to talk. Moments of silence such as this were rare and the week had given her something to think about. The Queen of Wands, scowling out from the tarot card in Jude’s hand. Faye, hostile and antagonistic. Secrets. Jude.

‘What I want to know,’ she said to the empty air, ‘is what the hell I should do about Faye?’ Because since that first, frosty, meeting her ex-lover hadn’t spoken a single word to her in her frequent — possibly over-frequent — passes through the office.

Faye had always been hands-on. Ashleigh pursed her lips, hand hovering over the cards, as she remembered Faye’s close interest in all her staff — irritating to some, flattering to others — and where it had led the two of them. Unwrapping the deck, she dealt out five cards in a horseshoe, face down. ‘Should I tell Jude?’ But the question was ridiculously obvious. Of course she should tell him. The only decisions were when, and how much?

‘I don’t expect answers. I never do. But perhaps we can move towards some kind of constructive solution, huh?’

The house rang like a bell with early-morning silence. She must sound ridiculous. She rarely read the tarot for others but when she did so, for Jude or for Lisa, she allowed their scepticism to influence her and she never spoke to the cards. Perhaps that was why those other readings were never quite so successful as those she did when she was alone — because she didn’t tune in to the questions she was asking or the answers she received.

She paused before she turned over the first card, the one that would outline