Hot Blood (Bloodwords Book 1) Read Free Page A

instead of accepting the facts
thought the inspector. ‘We need to check up on a few things to help us resolve
this. Did you come straight back here to the house that evening or did you divert
somewhere else on the way?’
    ‘Why is that important? I was jumped at the
back of my car in my own driveway so what the devil has my route from work to
home got to do with anything?’
    Give me strength thought Radcliffe. Who’s
asking the questions here? Given the facts they knew, the dreaded
brother-in-law wasn’t even in the frame for the attack so Johnson’s route home
would be entirely relevant. If he had stopped off somewhere then he might have
been followed, say by an opportune thief spying his chance only to be
frightened off when the phone rang and lights came on.
    Or what if Johnson was playing away? Now that
was a thought.   In front of his
wife, wouldn’t that explain why he didn’t want to disclose whether or not he
had come directly home from his shop? Yes, quite a possibility. If Johnson was
having something of a dalliance, what if the lady’s husband had been watching
and had followed him back home. Plenty of scope in that theory wasn’t there?
And opportunity too.
    ‘Well it could be important. Your shop closes
at five thirty and it’s only fifteen minutes drive back here to Crosshill Village, but you said that you didn’t arrive
until around eight thirty. That leaves almost three hours unaccounted for.
Wherever you were, anybody could have followed you back here and unless we can
check it all out we will be none the wiser. Help us out here Mr Johnson.’
    This really was getting nowhere except for
round and round in circles. Radcliffe looked Johnson in the eye with a
quizzical expression and left the silence to do its work. Radcliffe was a past
master of the silence psychology and knew that Johnson would be the first to
break. He’s also wager that no matter where he had been or what he had been
doing, and despite his wife’s sudden attentiveness, the beans would be spilled.
    It wasn’t Johnson but a strident wail that
suddenly broke the spell.   Over in
the kitchen a smoke alarm was vibrating itself to destruction, sounding like
the air exiting the   stretched neck
of a balloon.
    Oh crikey. The carrots!’ exclaimed Joan as she
flung herself up the steps into the split-level kitchen. ‘I left them on a low
light and they must have boiled dry. Just look at them, burned to a cinder.
Mike, can you shut that blasted siren up?’
    Crunching across the gravel, the sergeant
looked at his superior. ‘What do you make of that then? He’s adamant that his
brother-in-law worked him over isn’t he? Do you think that there’s any
credibility in it? To me he just seems so hell bent on it that he cannot see
any other alternative.’
    ‘He could be right at that Fraser. Don’t rule
anything out until it is proven and cast in stone. He might look to be on the
better side now but if I had been worked over to the extent that Johnson was
and I had recognised the voice of my attacker, I would be hell bent on bringing
him to justice as well, even if my attacker was a relative. Actually, probably moreso . All the same, that dratted smoke alarm stopped us
getting an answer to where he was between closing his shop and getting home.
There could be more than meets the eye there or it could just be a red herring,
so let’s keep all our options open and not preconceive anything. We need to
delve a little before we make assumptions. Maybe a look at his shop will
suggest a few options.’

 
    ……….

 
    Walking down the street, Radcliffe couldn’t
help but cast his mind back a decade or so. What had been a thriving area of
the town centre had, without doubt, gone downhill. The supermarket had only
lasted a couple of years before moving to a new site and the old store had
become an eyesore; an empty shell with filthy windows and graffiti spattered
walls. Further up the street, empty shops stood shoulder to