Condemned, R.C. Bridgestock [most romantic novels TXT] 📗

Lily said, with some finality, and Charley could tell by her expression that her word on the Bible was her bond.

There was a knock at the door, and Mike opened it slowly. ‘Is everything okay in here; can I get anyone anything?’ he asked.

Lily stood. ‘I have to go, can I go…?’ she said.

‘Can we give you a lift home?’ Charley’s eyes flashed from Lily to Mike, and he nodded reassuringly.

‘No, but thank you,’ she said, softly. ‘I’ve something extremely important that I need to do first.’

Charley sat alone in her office for a while, her thoughts on the skeletal remains of the body in the cellar, wondering how she would prove an identity with no living relative to provide DNA. Her mobile phone rang, and it sounded extra loud, as if alerting her to an emergency.

‘DI Charley Mann,’ she said, brusquely.

‘Help me, Charley! Please, help me!’

‘Winnie? Is that you?’

‘I’m at Josephine’s house, the door was open, and she’s lying on the hallway floor, there’s blood, and broken glass.’

Charley headed for the door. ‘I’m on my way. Have you rung for the ambulance?’

Winnie was sobbing.

‘I’ll ring them. Winnie, go outside.’

‘What?’ she cried.

‘Go outside, and stay outside, do you hear me?’

Charley rushed towards Wilkie’s desk. ‘Where’s the fire?’ he asked.

‘Let Mike know we might have a job on,’ she said, edging her way to the door as she spoke. ‘I’ll get back to you asap. Annie!’ she called, ‘Where’s Ricky-Lee?’

Annie looked up from her computer and shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Find him now! If he’s at the bookies, he’s a dead man walking. I want you both at Josephine’s cottage now!’

Charley ran down the steps of the police station two at a time. ‘I need a uniform car blue-lighting its way to Bramble Cottage, Cow Lane, Marsden,’ she said to the Control Room operator on her phone as she explained en route what Winnie had told her.

Charley drove at speed. She was concerned not only for Josephine, but for Winnie, too. Unusually for her, she sounded her car horn aggressively, and flashed the car’s lights at anyone or anything that was in her way. She could hear sirens in the distance behind her, and somehow the sound comforted her, and she hoped that the women at Bramble Cottage could hear them approaching, too.

Charley created a swirl of dust as she screeched to a halt outside the old cottage. Running down the path she could see Winnie, shaking uncontrollably, tears running down her cheeks; she looked frantic, helpless, old and frail.

Charley grabbed hold of her and held her tight. ‘It’s okay,’ Charley said, like a mother comforting a child. ‘I’m here now, and can you hear the sirens? Help is on the way. Are you okay?’ she said, watching as the paramedics’ car rocked from side to side as it made its way down the unmade stony road towards them.

‘I’m okay. Please Charley, go see to Josephine. She’s not good.’ Charley approached the door to the cottage quickly but cautiously. Inside she could see Josie on her back, her right leg twisted beneath her. As Winnie had reported, there was indeed broken glass and blood splashes on the wall, and on the floor nearby. On her haunches, the SIO checked Josephine for a pulse. It was faint, but there was no doubting she was still alive. She motioned for the paramedics to join her and put in another call, ‘Can you get hold of Neal Rylatt, CSI supervisor?’ she said to the Control Operator. ‘I need him at the Cow Lane scene.’

While the paramedics worked on helping Josie, an ambulance arrived. Charley sat with Winnie in her car. She bent over and took the old woman’s hand in hers. ‘She’s alive,’ she said. ‘We’ll follow them to the hospital.’

Seeing Annie’s car arrive at the cottage, with Ricky-Lee in the passenger seat, Charley gave Winnie a bottle of water. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Sip this. I won’t be a minute.’

Ricky-Lee looked shifty. ‘I won’t ask you where you’ve been, but be assured I will find out,’ his boss whispered in his ear, as he got out of the car.

Charley turned to Annie as they walked towards the cottage, ‘I guess Control will have filled you in. CSI is on the way. We don’t know what happened, so I am treating it as a crime scene. Make sure they swab the blood, and get glass samples, will you?’

‘Do you think someone tried to stop her talking to us?’ Annie said, straining to see the scene from the doorway.

‘I don’t know, but until we do, we will treat it as suspicious.’ Charley’s eyes were drawn to a posy of flowers on the floor, by the coat stand.

Annie followed the SIO’s eyes. ‘Is that one of Lily’s?’ she said.

‘Have it photographed and seized,’ said Charley. ‘I’m taking Winnie to the hospital to have her checked out. Are you okay with everything here? I’ll contact Mike to join you.’

‘I’ll take her, if that helps?’ said Annie.

Charley looked over her shoulder at the old lady waiting in her car, and her heartstrings pulled her chest tight. ‘No, no, this is something I need to do,’ she said.

Ricky-Lee was speaking to a paramedic, as they put Josephine’s neck in a brace, and fitted an oxygen mask over her face before she was lifted into the back of the ambulance.

‘Tell me,’ said Charley, ‘Where did you find him?’ as she nodded over to Ricky-Lee.

Annie smiled. ‘Not where you think. If he had been there, I’d have decked him for you. Nevertheless, love’s young dream was where he shouldn’t have been while he was on duty… letting his trousers rule his head!’

Chapter 43

Charley flashed her warrant card at the receptionist in A&E and explained the situation. Winnie’s breathing was erratic, her lips pale, her skin clammy to the touch.

‘I’m fine,’ Winnie protested.

‘Humour me; I want someone to check you over. She’s had one of these turns before…’ Charley told the receptionist.

A nurse ushered them into a cubicle and pulled