Tending towards sarcasm and crankiness, the recent loss of his mother had mellowed the inspector, and Keya often found him staring absently into space. She hated to wish for it, but he needed a major case to sink his teeth into.
“Afternoon, Sergeant. How were the Rollright loonies?”
“Sir! They’re actually a very pleasant bunch, in the main. Somewhat eccentric, but that’s not exactly unusual in the Cotswolds.”
“Well it seems that the rise in temperature is getting to the residents. We have a road rage incident between a tractor and a Range Rover over in Guiting Power, and a shopkeeper has accused a tourist of shoplifting in Lower Slaughter and locked the offender in a toilet. I know we’re short staffed, and you have plenty of work to do, Sergeant, but would you mind accompanying Constable Jenkins to check out these incidents? I don’t think either of you should face the locals on your own when they’re in this sort of mood.”
Keya glanced across at the two empty desks in the team room. She and Ryan occupied desks facing each other, next to Inspector Evans’ small office. Sujin, the station’s crime scene technician, had insisted he didn’t need a desk, as he spent all his time in his compact workroom next to the custody suite.
The other desk had been occupied by Inspector Sue, a family liaison officer, but she had retired and, although she now worked in a consultancy role, she had a desk elsewhere in the station.
“Chief Inspector Greg assures me he has applied to headquarters for at least one new member of our team. Hopefully, a constable who can take over from Constable Jenkins when he passes his sergeant’s exams.”
“No pressure there,” muttered Stan, whose broom cupboard of an office was actually further along the corridor. He was in charge of files, but his extensive knowledge of people, places, and historic crimes was very useful to the team. As was his willingness to make hot drinks.
“Cuppa anyone?” asked Stan on cue.
CHAPTER FIVE
Keya and Ryan drove across the Cotswolds, chatting amicably and enjoying the views and the white, purple, and yellow wildflowers covering the verges. Ryan, who was driving, did complain though, “It’s not easy to see traffic up ahead when the council leaves the verges untended.”
“I suppose, like everything else, they don’t have the money to spend on rural areas.” Keya thought of her own position as the Cotswold’s Rural Engagement Officer. It was technically a part-time role, yet she had over four hundred and fifty square miles of countryside to patrol and manage.
Thinking back to their discussion at the police station, Keya asked, “Are you worried about your sergeant’s exams?”
“Yes. Everyone thinks I’ll find them easy, but I won’t. Computers, tech, and dismantling and rebuilding electrical items and the like, that I understand, but not exam papers. It was the same at school. English was my worst subject.”
“Oh, you don’t have to write long essays. It’s all multiple-choice questions.”
“Really? I didn’t know that.”
“Haven’t you looked through your handbook?”
Ryan stared at the road in front of them. “No, I haven’t got round to it,” he said defensively.
Keya realised he really was worried about the autumn exam.
“I tell you what, why don’t I sit down with you sometime and we can go through it? It’s not nearly as scary as you think, and as your role is so wide, you’ll instinctively know the answers to many of the questions. But you will need to read up on procedures and policies.”
She decided to lighten the tone of the conversation, so she asked, “Have you and Millie recovered from last month’s triathlon at the Cotswold Wildlife Park?”
“Oh yes. We were both fit, so we soon recovered.”
“And do you have any more competitions lined up this month?”
“No. Our next one is in July in Cheltenham. So now the weather is better, we’ve decided to run the Cotswold Way.”
“All of it?” Keya asked in surprise. She knew the trail consisted of over a hundred miles of tracks and footpaths following the edge of the Cotswold escarpment. It started in Bath, to the south, and finished in Chipping Campden, to the north. Even for Ryan and Millie, who were both extremely fit, it was a challenge.
“Not all at once,” Ryan laughed. “Mum’s going to drop us off in Bath on Sunday, before she goes to work at the cafe, and I’ll leave my car in Wotton-under-Edge, so I can drive us home when we finish. That section is thirty-one miles. And we’ll have all day so we can stop for breaks and even walk sections if we feel like it.”
Even walk sections, thought Keya, shaking her head.
“Rather you than me. Dotty and I are going to Chipping Campden on Friday evening for their alternative Olympick Games. I thought you might be taking part in their running race?”
“I did think about it, but we decided to do the Cotswold Way instead. Are you or Dotty going to enter the shin-kicking?”
This version of sporting games dated back to the 1600s and some thought that William Shakespeare had once attended them when he’d been living not too far away in Stratford-upon-Avon. It involved an array of different competitions which anyone could enter.
Keya was disappointed when they reached the location of the reported road rage, as there were no vehicles in sight. They continued up the narrow, single-track road until they reached a farm. Spotting the farmer moving bales of hay with a forklift tractor from a trailer to a nearby barn, they decided to speak to him.
They drove into the farmyard, alongside a long single-storey stone building with a steep black slate roof and grey wooden support posts. There was an assortment of old garden furniture in the bays, along with rusting farm implements and stacks of colourful plastic animal feed bags.
“Aye, that was me,” admitted the farmer when they questioned him about the reported incident. “The other bloke must have called you about it. He came tearing round a corner and nearly drove into me. Then he flashed his lights, expecting me to get out of his way. How could I? I was towing a trailer load of hay bales. So I just sat there and waited. He shouted some expletives at me, but nothing I haven’t heard before.”
The farmer removed his worn flat tweed cap and scratched his wispy brown hair. “Eventually he reversed back along the road, turned round in a field entrance and shot off back the way he’d come.”
As they only had the farmer’s account, and he seemed an honest type, they left him to finish unloading his hay bales and dismissed the incident.
Gilly Wimsey called as they were driving from Guiting Power to Lower Slaughter.
“I might lose you Gilly, as the phone signal is intermittent where we are,” Keya told her friend and business colleague.
“I’ll be quick. We didn’t have a chance earlier to discuss the outdoor cinema event next month. The film company wants to know which film to allocate to us.”
“What are the choices?” Keya asked.
Gilly and her family had attended a pop-up cinema screening the previous year, and Gilly had discovered that she could hire the company to provide a similar event at the cafe and antique centre.
They were going to hold it on the grassy area between the cafe’s outside seating area and the deli, and the bank sloping down to the River Coln. Although the cafe would be open, they’d both agreed that visitors could bring their own picnics if they preferred, but alcoholic drinks had to be purchased from the cafe. Maitri also hoped to serve ice creams, as long as her display unit and stock had arrived in time.
Gilly said, “I’ve already rejected Pretty Woman, as I don’t think its betrayal of women is appropriate, and I don’t want Thomas getting ideas from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I’m struggling to keep him at school as it is. But there is a sing-along version of The Greatest Showman. If we encourage people to dress up and …” Gilly trailed off.
“That’s a fabulous idea. I can’t sing, but it’ll still be fun. But aren’t you concerned about circus costumes degrading women?”
“No, they’re practical, and not everyone has to wear leotards and tights. I certainly won’t!” Gilly said.
“Sing-along to The Greatest Showman it is then,” Keya declared.
Her trip to Lower Slaughter with Ryan was just as unproductive as the one to Guiting Power. The shopkeeper was brusque and dismissed the shoplifting issue, saying that it had been resolved. She was extremely evasive when questioned about locking the suspect in a toilet. But as the suspect had left, with the rest of the tourists, there was nothing Keya or Ryan could do.
“Back to the station?” Ryan asked, sounding disappointed.
“I guess so,” Keya replied.
But just as they were leaving Lower Slaughter, Keya’s phone buzzed.
