Small Town Christmas (Some Very English Murders Book 6) (14 page)

There was no point in continuing the fight. The attacker
stumbled and that fraction of a second was enough to propel Penny down the
banking, onto the path, and then she was running like a demon back towards the
well-lit street.

Her camera bag bounced painfully on her hip as it swung
around. She kept a tight hold of her tripod, ready to bash the attacker on the
head again, though she prayed forcefully that it would not come to that. She
ran faster and harder than she thought she could, and her breath was raw in her
throat, the cold air feeling like it was tearing strips out of her and
squeezing her lungs tight.

She hit the road but she didn’t look back and she didn’t
slow down. She ran towards houses, towards other people, towards safety.

She plunged through the gate of the first house she came to
where the lights were on, and hammered on the door relentlessly until finally
it swung open and she fell forwards onto a jute rug and could hardly breathe
for crying.

* * * *

The startled elderly couple, Jan and Eric, ushered her into
a comfortable and overheated living room. Jan brought her a blanket and a
succession of hot drinks while Eric phoned the police. Penny was on her second
cup of cocoa that had been laced with brandy when a uniformed officer turned
up, and behind him was the welcome face of Cath.

Jan and Eric willingly gave up their main room and went off
to their kitchen while the police talked to Penny. She had been running through
the events in her mind while waiting for the officers, and was able to give
them a thorough breakdown. The uniformed officer went off in the car to explore
the area, while Cath remained with Penny. Cath was dressed in typical
slob-around-the-house gear, and she sat close to Penny, a concerned look on her
face.

“I can’t believe it,” Penny said. “It was a targeted
attack, wasn’t it, surely?”

“We have had no other reports of anyone else being attacked
– well, except Clive,” Cath said.

“Oh, thanks. He was killed, if you remember. Do you think
it might be the same person?”

“It’s something we have to consider.”

“Maybe the car that ran at me was the same person. Maybe
that wasn’t a random event.” Penny put her head in her hands and sighed deeply.
“This is awful. I want to run away.”

“In light of everything … yes. That’s a sensible reaction. You
could go away, and stay somewhere else for Christmas.”

As soon as it had been mooted as a real possibility, Penny
rejected it. “No. No, why should I be chased out of the town that I live in?”

“Why? Um, to stay safe, I suppose.”

“Well, yes, apart from that. But look, Cath – the most
important question is
why me?
And I don’t mean that in a whiney way.”

“No, you’re totally right,” Cath agreed. “Find the motive
and you often find the suspect. Why on earth would anyone target you?”

“If this is linked to the murder of Clive Holdsworth, then
this surely widens the pool of suspects for that case, too? I mean, there’s me
– obviously I’m not attacking myself. Then there’s Jared, Haydn and Linda. All
three of them have a slight issue with me, in one way or another, but I am
pretty sure none of them would want to kill me. What purpose would it serve? So
maybe the police need to look for more suspects.”

“It’s two fold. Yes, we probably need to look wider. And
like you just said, we need to establish the reason for the attacks in the
first place.” Cath gazed around the room for a moment, obviously deep in
thought.

Penny could hear low voices coming from elsewhere in the
house. No doubt this would be local gossip tomorrow.

Cath picked at the antimacassar on the arm of the chair
where she was sitting. “Tell me why you think those three all have a slight
issue with you,” she said.

“You know some of it already,” Penny said. “Jared decided
he had a crush on me and told me that Drew wasn’t good enough for me. Although
when I last saw Jared, at the planning meeting, he was perfectly okay with me.
Haydn is just an idiot. He is fine one minute and then arguing with me, or
anyone, the next minute. The last time I saw him we were arguing about cycling,
of all things, when I was carol singing last week. And Linda…” Penny tailed
off.

“You look miserable,” Cath said. “That tells me you are
holding something back that you know you need to share. This is a matter of
justice, Penny. Speak up.”

“She told me this in strictest confidence and I am really
not happy about what I am going to tell you,” Penny said. “It might not even be
relevant.”

“We can judge that, and I promise you, that we only use
information that is useful to us. You know that.”

“I do. Okay, so, Linda is ill. I am not sure what’s wrong,
but she’s having regular treatment up at Lincoln and it’s making her really
tired. She actually went by bus yesterday. She said she was having trouble
getting in and out of her car.”

“Hmm. That makes her less likely to have been the one that
drove at you, then. That’s positive. Or…”

“What?”

“She could have been the one who drove at you, but it could
have been accidental,” Cath explained. “We deal with cases where people are
taken ill at the wheel. It can be anything from a heart attack to a dizzy spell
to a diabetic emergency. If it were her, she might be ashamed about it, and
therefore she’d give up driving for a while.”

Penny nodded. “That’s plausible, but it would make the
incident tonight a separate one.”

“Would it?” Cath said. “She’s told you something that she
doesn’t want anyone else to know …”

“Oh. My. Goodness,” Penny said. “Surely not!”

“Linda is a hard sort of woman,” Cath said. “If she’d kill
her own brother, she’d have no hesitation in bumping you off. I have to pass
this intel on.”

“The thing is, though, that it’s all so reliant on chance.”

“Is it?” Cath said. “I don’t think so. The car drove at you
when you were walking home from the carol singing, and I think everyone knows
you have been singing, and where the practise takes place.”

“That’s true. But just now … oh. Oh, wait.” Penny thought
it through. “I had mentioned to Jared, and to Linda, that I was going out
tonight. Only Haydn didn’t know.”

“You
assume
Haydn didn’t know. It wasn’t a secret.
Drew knew, I assume?”

“He would have nothing to do with this!”

“Calm down,” Cath said, smiling. “But he could have
mentioned it to any number of people.”

Penny twisted her hands together. She felt miserable. “I
know,” she said sadly. “This just sucks. I want to go home and I want a hot
toddy and I want to go to bed.”

“You sound like a small child,” Cath said but her face was
kind. “Come on. When my colleague gets back with the car, we’ll drive you
home.”

It was hard to know what to do. Penny oscillated wildly
between wanting to flee to stay in a hotel in Warrington or Plymouth or the
suburbs of Glasgow, and wanting to stay and brazen it out.

Brazening it out, in her less realistic fantasies, involved
her obtaining a gun from somewhere and somehow ending up in a dramatic
shoot-out with the attacker, although obviously she only wanted to incapacitate
them rather than kill them.
I’d go for the legs
, she thought.
It
can’t be that hard. As long as they stay still for long enough. And I’m quite
close to them.

She knew that Drew had a shotgun but that was going to be
hard to conceal even in the largest of tote bags.

She didn’t sleep well, but she did come up with another
fifteen ridiculous and unworkable plans to find out who was coming after her.

She had hoped that she qualified to be in some kind of
police protection programme, but there was not enough concrete evidence,
apparently. “Anyway, budgets,” Cath had said apologetically as she dropped
Penny off. “Maybe you could ask Drew to come and stay with you?”

“What kind of brazen hussy do you think I am?” Penny said
sniffily.

Cath had simply shrugged. “One that wants to stay safe.”

Now it was Thursday, and Penny could not settle. She felt
like she was more of a target by sitting at home, in spite of the presence of
her dog. She still hadn’t burdened her sister Ariadne with the details of
either of the attacks, and the longer she left it, the harder it would be to
tell her anything.

She didn’t want to ruin Ariadne’s Christmas with more worry
and concern, anyway.

Christmas Day was less than a week away. She had a final
batch of orders to ship out, so she stacked up a few large bags and decided she
would brave the outside world, and go to the post office. She felt a little
nervous but there was going to be safety in numbers.

The town centre was absolutely heaving with people.
I’m
better in a crowd
, she told herself, in complete opposition to how she had
felt when she had gone out to do the night photography, and had somehow thought
she was safer alone.
This is great.

It was not great. It was noisy and unpleasant, with people
rudely pushing and shoving. Their faces were stressed with the hassle of having
to create the perfect Christmas, and no one seemed to be sharing any festive
joy. Everyone had seen the adverts on telly and the latest raft of
inspirational cookery programmes. Everyone knew what was expected of them.

Penny fought her way into the post office and found herself
at the end of a very long queue. Both of the counter positions were open.
Sheila and her husband were working hard, but it still took Penny twenty
minutes to reach the counter.

“Ah! Now then, Penny May,” Sheila said. “Pop them on the
scale, one by one. All inland?”

“This batch are. I’ve got another bag here, with a heap of
packages that are going overseas.”

“I hope they are for Europe, otherwise they are not going
to make it for Christmas.”

“Mostly Europe,” Penny said. “But it’s now or never, eh.”

“Hmm.” Sheila worked mechanically, printing out each label
and slapping it on with one hand even as she reached for the next parcel with
her other hand. And as she did all that, she was still talking. “Now, did you
hear the news of what just happened?”

“Last night?” Penny said, thinking the gossip might be
about herself.

“This morning!” Sheila said, and leaned forward, and told
Penny something that made her feel sick with worry all over again.

* * * *

“I think you’ve got it all wrong!” Penny exclaimed to Cath.
Penny had rushed home, and found Cath just getting out of her car by her house.

“Hello, how are you, and all that,” Cath said. “What have I
got wrong now, then?”

“I’ve just been in the post office and Sheila told me what
you did this morning.”

“This morning? I had a huge row with my eldest son about
the time he spends on his computer.”

“No, I mean
you
as in the police.”

“Can I come in?”

“Yeah, okay, but you have to tell me what’s going on. Is it
even true?”

“That’s the first thing you should be asking.” Cath
followed Penny into the house and stopped to greet Kali for a quick ear-rub.
“Tell me what you have heard.”

Penny dumped her coat on the sofa and flopped into the
armchair. She waved her hand vaguely, and Cath shoved Penny’s coat to one side
with a dark look before taking her seat on the sofa.

“I heard that Linda had been arrested this morning,” Penny
said. She fixed Cath with a stern glare. “Linda! They are saying it’s for the
murder of her brother. Is that true?”

“That she was arrested or that it’s for the murder?” Cath
said.

“You are infuriating. Stop it.”

Cath grinned. “Yeah, well, whatever. Okay, it is true that
Linda has been arrested this morning. I passed on the information you gave me
last night, and I am not sure what else has been going on in that
investigation, but it obviously joined some dots for the team. They would not
have arrested her without good reason.”

“But what reason?” Penny said.

“I don’t know.”

“Was she arrested for the murder, or just for attacking me?
Because I don’t think that she did. Well, I don’t think that she attacked me. I
do imagine she could have killed Clive.”

“If she could kill Clive, she could certainly attack you,”
Cath said. “And vice versa.”

“Everyone at the last planning committee meeting knew where
I was going, and when,” Penny said. “I feel ill. My information to you has now
led to this! I think I’ve caused a miscarriage of justice.”

“No, and if the culprit is Linda, then you’ve directly
helped us out. You’ve caught the murderer! That’s what you do, isn’t it?”

“No,” Penny said with a dejected air. “I am convinced that
we are missing something, and it’s about last night.”

Cath clicked her tongue. “Leave it to the investigation.
Hey, last night, you were taking photos, weren’t you? Did you get any good
ones?” It was obvious Cath was trying to change the subject to calm Penny down.

“I did, actually. Do you want to see? I couldn’t sleep last
night so I spent some time editing them and I’ve got the best ones uploaded
already.”

“To the community webpage? Yeah, go on, let’s see them. Oh
– while you’re up, you may as well put the kettle on,” Cath added as Penny went
through to the kitchen.

Penny returned with a tray of hot drinks, snacks and her
laptop. “Okay, here we go,” she said as the device warmed up. It was probably a
good idea to focus on something other than her own troubles for a short while. “Ah,
now look. I like this one.”

Cath looked at the shot of the stars. “That is cool,” she
said. “How did you get them to stand out so brightly?”

“Actually, it’s a bit of a fudge,” she said. “It’s three
different shots all layered together, but it’s a nice effect.”