BooksBarbecue
Back A Change of Circumstance Save as PDF
Chapters (67)
  1. Cover
  2. One
  3. Two
  4. Three
  5. Four
  6. Five
  7. Six
  8. Seven
  9. Eight
  10. Nine
  11. Ten
  12. Eleven
  13. Twelve
  14. Thirteen
  15. Fourteen
  16. Fifteen
  17. Sixteen
  18. Seventeen
  19. Eighteen
  20. Nineteen
  21. Twenty
  22. Twenty-One
  23. Twenty-Two
  24. Twenty-Three
  25. Twenty-Four
  26. Twenty-Five
  27. Twenty-Six
  28. Twenty-Seven
  29. Twenty-Eight
  30. Twenty-Nine
  31. Thirty
  32. Thirty-One
  33. Thirty-Two
  34. Thirty-Three
  35. Thirty-Four
  36. Thirty-Five
  37. Thirty-Six
  38. Thirty-Seven
  39. Thirty-Eight
  40. Thirty-Nine
  41. Forty
  42. Forty-One
  43. Forty-Two
  44. Forty-Three
  45. Forty-Four
  46. Forty-Five
  47. Forty-Six
  48. Forty-Seven
  49. Forty-Eight
  50. Forty-Nine
  51. Fifty
  52. Fifty-One
  53. Fifty-Two
  54. Fifty-Three
  55. Fifty-Four
  56. Fifty-Five
  57. Fifty-Six
  58. Fifty-Seven
  59. Fifty-Eight
  60. Fifty-Nine
  61. Sixty
  62. Sixty-One
  63. Sixty-Two
  64. Sixty-Three
  65. Sixty-Four
  66. Sixty-Five
  67. Sixty-Six

He was giving her time, giving her moments to take a breath and calm herself to prepare for what he was going to say. She had her back to him, looking out at the garden, but miles away, and he felt bitterly sorry for her, knowing what had happened to her over the past couple of years. She now had no one to shield her from whatever blows might fall in future. He wondered if she had friends and any sort of social life, groups she belonged to, people to visit away from Starly. She needed those things now and she would need them more as she grew older. How strange it was that he could be perfectly happy on his own, so that old age, retirement and loneliness never came to his mind together and yet this woman had loneliness in her DNA, as impossible to overcome as her grief. He was lucky, or so it seemed as he watched her pour the tea.

‘Please tell me whatever it is, Mr Serrailler. Nothing can be worse than her dying and how it was, nothing I can possibly imagine, so you don’t have to be cautious about what you have to say or how you say it.’

‘Thank you. This is a list of mobile numbers and occasionally we are able to recover data from a discarded phone. This was probably aimed at the canal, but instead of hitting the water it got caught up in undergrowth. It was found by a boy who had lost his own phone in the area. He took it home, and because he’s that sort of kid, started trying to revive it in case he could make use of the parts. In doing so he managed to trigger a signal. By a stroke of great good fortune, our technical team picked it up – they had been trying to trace this same mobile. The signal led them right to where the phone was, in the boy’s house. They haven’t recovered any voice messages yet and most of the data has been wiped, but there were some texts – and these stored numbers were saved. They’re working through them but the phones we found in Olivia’s bag resonated with me, so I checked.’

He drank his tea, letting her take everything in step by step.

‘The phone belonged to a man who was part of a drug gang. His job was to recruit youngsters to carry drugs and deliver them to users. This is happening just about everywhere, and increasingly in country areas, small market towns, but we hadn’t seen this sort of organisation in our force until just over a year ago and it had been growing while we were barely aware of it.’