Small Town Shock (Some Very English Murders Book 1) Read Free Page B

outside. Along the back of the cottages’ gardens was an alleyway, which
gave all the residents access to sheds and garages. She had a small brick-built
outbuilding which held her new – yet old – M21 motorbike. It was a classic, and
something she’d lusted after for years. When she’d moved out of London, she’d
impulsively bought it; it even had a sidecar, but her dreams of persuading Kali
into it had not yet come to fruition. What if Kali saw another dog as they rode
along? The image of a Rottweiler launching itself off the back of a motorbike
was an alarming one.
    At the end of the narrow road, she came to a cross roads.
Going right would take her along Church Street, south out of the town past the
church and the primary school, over a small bridge and to the Spinney and open
farmland. That was her usual dog-walking route.
    Left, the road wound through some more modern housing developments
with their twisty-turny cul-de-sacs and paper-thin walls. At the northern end
of the town was a roundabout with a twenty-four hour fast food place and a petrol
station.
    Straight on was the High Street which had the shops, the
town centre and further along there was the industrial estate. Penny passed the
Green Man pub and crossed the road onto the High Street. There was an open area
on the right for the weekly market but she had not visited it yet. On the left
was a parade of small shops – the post office, a small mini-market food store,
a greengrocer that seemed to have twenty different types of potato but no
oranges, a butcher with an intimidating display of knives in the window, a
florist and a hairdresser. The hairdressing salon had the inevitable bad pun
for a name: “Curl Up and Dye.”
    Under the circumstances, Penny didn’t find that very funny.
    She’d not experienced much death in her life, which was
unusual for someone of her age, she thought. She’d lived a self-contained
existence that focused only on work, and the people she met through work, and
consequently she’d never grown close enough to anyone to miss them when they
went. Her parents were still alive; though elderly, they got on with active
lives quite far away. She visited them at Christmas but their social lives left
her feeling quite tired as they explained to their daughter that she could only
come up and stay at certain times – when they weren’t on cruises, they were on
walking holidays, or city breaks, or coach tours, or hedge-laying weekends. She
suspected they were both bionic now. They’d had that many spare parts replaced
and upgraded – hips, hearing aids, eye laser treatment – they were officially
cyber-people. They’d last forever.
    There was her sister too, of course. And she was only about
an hour away. But Ariadne had made her lifestyle choices, and Penny didn’t
understand them. They had argued so many times, with so many hurtful words. She
preferred to push that from her mind. They’d both made the sort of mistakes in
their sibling relationship that seemed too difficult to put right, now.
    Or too much effort.
    Penny stopped at the end of the parade of shops. The road
continued past the busy industrial estate, and up to the High School. She
didn’t fancy running the gauntlet of walking past a gaggle of sullen teenagers
so she turned and made her way back to the mini-market.
    It was a mini supermarket with all the basics that you
needed from day to day. There was a noticeboard in the entrance with various
posters and papers pinned to it, which she skimmed past. She browsed along the
fruit and vegetables, heading for the bakery aisle at the back.
    She knew why they put the bread and milk furthest away.
Shops banked on the fact that people came in for the essentials, so they wanted
to ensure that the customer passed as many tempting things as possible on the
way through to what they actually wanted. By the time Penny reached the bakery
section, she had already picked up a chocolate bar and some interesting pesto
sauce in a