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

Claud slid a cup of coffee on the table at Jude’s elbow, regardless of the fact that he’d turned the offer down. ‘I’ll step outside.’

‘No. Don’t go!’

Jude sighed, but nodded his acceptance and Claud sat down next to his wife, taking her hand. Her fingers were bony. Jude hadn’t noticed before how thin she was, because her shirt was too big and her jogging pants baggy, but as she sat so still the fabric settled over her body and drew attention to the sharpness of her shoulders and her collarbones. Too thin, he said to himself, unable to stop himself contrasting her unfavourably with Ashleigh O’Halloran’s strikingly different form.

‘You were out for a run?’ he prompted. Now he had Ashleigh in his mind he might at least try and work out how she wound witnesses so completely around her little finger, but all he could see when he reviewed her interview techniques was that she somehow managed to look them in the eye in a way that promised them her every action was in their best interests.

Natalie got a grip. ‘Yes. I’m a marathon runner. No, that’s not strictly true. I run a lot because I like running. I’ve run marathons.’ She gave Jude a watery smile that lit her face. ‘Claud has a lot of work to do at home at weekends, so I went for a long run. I left around noon, I think. I have a circuit. Culgaith, Skirwith, Langwathby and back along the river.’

Natalie looked so frail that Cumbria’s infamous Helm Wind might have blown her away so Jude, a runner by inclination but restricted by time and the demands of his job, was impressed. ‘That’s a fair way.’

‘It’s more than a half marathon. I could do it in under two hours, if I wanted to. I never do, though, because I have a routine. I stop at the beginning to do some stretches, as soon as I’m out of sight of the cottage, and I stop again near the end to do the same, just before it’s back in sight.’

‘Nat has a touch of OCD,’ interrupted Claud. ‘Hence the importance of routine.’

‘Yes. Everyone laughs, but I can’t—’

‘No-one’s laughing at you, sweetheart.’

‘I know you aren’t Claud, but the chief inspector will think it’s odd. And odd is suspicious. Isn't it?’ She looked at him, in a gesture of appeal. ‘It’s why I had to put my clothes in the washing machine, even though your policewoman said I shouldn’t. Claud said we should do as she said. It's not his fault. But I couldn’t bear the thought of that poor man’s blood in the house.’

Claud sat back and gave Jude an extravagant shrug, then turned to Natalie, soothing her as if she was a child. ‘Tell the chief inspector about your run.’

Obediently, she turned back to Jude, like a child repeating a lesson. ‘I ran as normal. I stopped where the path goes under the A66, for ten minutes.’

‘Also as normal?’

‘Yes, ten minutes to the second. I did some stretches and some breathing exercises, and then I set off for the last part. I ran along the river to the end of the lane… I’m not sure exactly when. There was a car parked. A white one.’ She stopped, gathered her thoughts, carried on. ‘The door was open but I couldn’t see anyone in the car. I thought that was odd.’ She took her hand from Claud’s and spread her fingers out on her lap. ‘So I stopped. The bank is crumbling just beyond there and not safe, or I would have gone that way. But I had to go down the lane to get home. I was a little nervous.’

‘What made you so nervous, Mrs Blackwell?’

She threw her husband an anguished glance, and he came to her rescue. ‘Nat suffers from anxiety, Chief Inspector. Don’t judge her by everyone else’s standards.’

Jude lifted an eyebrow. ‘I was just asking.’

‘Anything unusual bothers me,’ she went on, in a bright, forced tone. ‘I need routine. If there was any threat to me—’

‘There was no threat, Nat.' Claude squeezed her hand.

'I see that now. But there was in my mind. When I’d got to Langwathby I realised I didn’t have my phone and that put me on edge. I was sure something terrible was going to happen so when I saw the car everything felt wrong. I thought about running past it and breaking for home, and I was going to do that. But then I saw the man.’ She licked her lips.

Claud placed an arm around her shoulder. ‘It’s okay, Nat. We’re here. But you have to tell the police what you saw.’

‘I don’t remember exactly. I had a panic attack. I don’t know how long I was there. Everything went black and time stopped. I must have shut my eyes. I knew I had to concentrate on my breathing. I closed my eyes and I breathed, but I don’t know for how long.’ Her breathing lengthened in the present, as she spoke of it in the past.

‘When you opened your eyes, what did you see?’

‘I was kneeling down next to him. I touched him and the blood was pumping, so I knew he was alive, and I just held on to him. I couldn’t bear the thought that he’d die, but he did. I had blood all over me. I stood up and looked about but I didn’t see anyone. I screamed.’ She turned to her husband in mute appeal.

‘Can you be sure there was no-one else there?’

‘Oh God. Do you think they were hiding?’ If possible, she grew even paler. ‘No. I don’t remember looking for anything, really. I just looked round and I looked at the body.’

If Tammy was correct, the attacker had probably arrived and left by car. The lane was a dead end, connected