A Market for Murder Read Free Page B

It’s all wrong. So many hurt feelings.’
    ‘Hey, don’t get in a state about it. I’m not even sure they’ve, er, acted on it, yet, anyhow. It could just be a harmless flirtation.’ Geraldine kneaded her own neck absently. Karen watched in fascination, noting that there was scarcely any spare flesh under the woman’s chin. No ‘wattles’ as Americans called them.
    The conversation turned to the price of greens and organic beef. Karen knew herself to be a heretic when it came to matters organic.She refused to pay the high prices charged by the producers of meat or milk with the magic label, unable to convince herself that they were justified. The myths surrounding meat production irritated her more and more, as she talked to local farmers and understood more of their problems. But she had learnt to keep quiet on the subject in the presence of Geraldine and most of the others. She still didn’t have enough hard facts to sustain an argument, and was loathe to place herself in purdah on account of her opinions.
    Feelings ran high when it came to chemical fertilisers, antibiotics and pesticides, and her moral credit was healthy, thanks to Drew and his natural burials. If it was possible for a funeral to be organic, then Drew’s were. Karen’s garden produce was fresh and healthy, with judicious daubs of mud on the carrots and swedes to authenticate them. When questioned, she would openly admit to an occasional dressing of commercial fertiliser, but denied ever using toxic pesticides. Nobody had yet made the connection between the presence of dead human beings just the other side of the fence and the exuberant growth of her crops. Not that there was any direct connection, Karen would have insisted – it was just a rather disconcerting thought.
    There were those amongst the market stallholders who wouldn’t dream of poisoningtheir systems with coffee, or tea or alcohol. Karen, who had actually been known to buy the concentrated caffeine drinks designed to keep drivers awake on tedious motorways, openly rebelled at such extremes. And yet she liked these people. She respected their principles and the air of something like purity that hovered around them. Perhaps that was why she felt so uneasy about the affair between Peter and Sally being conducted right under her nose.
    Back at her post for the final hour or so of the morning, she threw herself animatedly into the task of selling everything on her stall. Spring greens, early lettuce, broad beans, and radishes were the only varieties she had on offer, May being a lean month, harvest-wise. The lettuces were already starting to look tired, despite only having been pulled that morning. The cool weather should have kept them fresh for a while longer, she thought crossly, the image of the bright green and apparently eternally crisp offerings in the supermarket entering her mind unbidden.
    She knew many of her customers by sight if not name. Scarcely any of them were under thirty-five and most were well over fifty. There were very few men of any age. This was largely due to it being a weekday morning, of course. It was only to be expected that ‘housewives’ wouldmake up the great majority of shoppers. But people worked in offices in many of the buildings close at hand.
    They could, if they chose, run out for ten minutes to buy some fresh local provisions, instead of calling in at the supermarket on the way home. There was cheese, meat, bread, vegetables, pickles, jams, honey and fruit juice all available. Apart from milk, this range seemed to Karen to cover everything they might need for their evening meal. And yet almost nobody would consider making the market their sole source of food for the day.
    She’d raged about it to Drew and Geraldine and even poor old Den, many a time, until they were all tired of hearing her. ‘You’re doing your best to change it,’ Drew assured her. ‘But if the market’s only there once a fortnight, how can you expect people to