Too Good to Be True Read Free Page B

that she had called for his help. It must be a nightmare to face this malice wherever she went.
    The talking continued. ‘Do we know for certain that Tom and Anna were lovers? Gail, you knew Anna better than anyone. Lucy stayed at your house the night it all happened.’
    So this was Gail Kerr, the woman from the farm who’d had Anna’s daughter for the sleepover. She was stocky, a bit older than the others, and she didn’t seem to have a baby with
her. She was wearing an anorak over a scruffy sweater. The others seemed to have made more of an effort with their appearances. Some were rather glamorous, shiny and made-up. They could have been
in a fancy restaurant instead of a scruffy cafe.
    ‘Well, my brother Sandy saw them walking together through the woods,’ said Gail, resting her elbows on the table. ‘He said they were so wrapped up in each other that a bomb
could have dropped and they wouldn’t have noticed.’
    The waitress brought Jimmy’s coffee. It was hardly warm and didn’t taste of anything.
    ‘But you don’t really think he killed her?’ the first woman said. ‘Not Tom! He’s a doctor. A kind man. He looked after my mother when she had cancer and he
couldn’t have been more caring.’
    ‘It’s just too much of a coincidence.’ It was Gail again. ‘Something weird was going on there. If the Kings didn’t kill her, they drove her to suicide.’
    Jimmy Perez couldn’t stand any more of their unkindness. He drank his coffee in one go, paid the bill and went outside.
    Next to the cafe an estate agents’ office was advertising houses to let. On impulse Perez went inside. A middle-aged woman in a suit looked up from her computer
screen.
    He showed his ID. ‘Do you manage a property owned by Doctor King?’
    ‘The house in Woodburn Close? Yes, that’s one of ours.’
    ‘I’m making inquiries about the most recent tenant,’ he said. ‘Anna Blackwell.’
    The estate agent turned round in her chair to give him her full attention. ‘She was the woman who died.’
    ‘That’s right,’ Perez said. ‘I assume she had to provide a deposit before she moved in? Someone had to vouch for her?’
    ‘No . . .’ The woman paused. ‘It was a more informal arrangement.’
    ‘In what way informal?’
    ‘I understood that she was a friend of Doctor King’s. He said there was no need for her to pay in advance. He could vouch for her.’
    Perez considered this. How had Tom King met the young teacher before she moved to Stonebridge? A thought leapt into his head. Was it possible, even, that he was the father of her child?
    ‘Do you have a previous address for Miss Blackwell?’
    The woman turned back to the keyboard. ‘Yes, we do have that, I think, because we had to send out a contract before she moved in.’ She hit a button and a printer began to whir. She
handed a sheet of paper to Perez.
    The address was in Berwick, just south of the border, in England.
    ‘I believe that was her parents’ address,’ the estate agent said. ‘Miss Blackwell had been at university in Edinburgh and had just finished her degree. She suggested the
Berwick address would be the best one to use.’
    Perez wondered why Anna’s parents hadn’t come forward to take care of their granddaughter, Lucy, after her mother’s death. He’d assumed that there was no close family. It
seemed very sad that the grandparents had allowed the little girl to be sent off to be cared for by strangers. Perhaps Anna’s parents were old-fashioned and didn’t approve of a child
born out of marriage.
    Outside in the street, the village was very quiet – there were no children’s voices. Soon it would be lunchtime and they would be out to play again, Perez thought. Stonebridge seemed
sad without them.

6
The Farm
    Jimmy Perez was thinking that he’d go back to the Stonebridge Hotel for lunch when he saw a woman leaving the cafe where he’d had coffee earlier.
    The woman was alone. The other yummy mummies must still be inside