Death in Dark Waters by Patricia Hall Page A

“Who gave them all that? Someone’s got a hotline to the local rag.” The front-page carried a photograph of him under the headline “DJ in drugs bust” and a short item on his recent compulsory trip to the police station.
    â€œI told you. There’s people want the Carib closed down, not least the local mosque,” Mower said.
    â€œSo your mate Omar likely leaked it? He’ll be well in at the mosque, I guess.”
    â€œI wouldn’t jump to conclusions,” Mower said quickly. “Bob Baker their crime reporter’s always snooping around the nick. He could have picked it up from anyone. There’s a few clubbers around who could have recognised you on your way in.”
    â€œToo many, by the look of it,” Sanderson said bitterly. “What is it with this town?”
    â€œI’ll see if I can find out what’s going on,” Mower said. “In the meantime, you can do me a favour.”
    â€œOh, sure, like I’m right into helping the police with their inquiries just now.”
    â€œCome on, this has got nothing to do with the police. I’m putting in some hours at a computer club for disaffected kids, a lot of them black. If you came up to visit you’d give my street cred a boost and they’d be right chuffed, as they say up here. What do you say?”
    Dizzy B groaned but finished his drink.
    â€œCommunity bloody service, is it now? What did I ever do to you, man?”
    â€œBetter than digging old ladies’ gardens,” Mower said without much sympathy.

Chapter Seven
    Laura stood on the muddy grass at the centre of the Heights and gazed up at the three dilapidated blocks of flats in something close to despair. The driving rain which had beaten down on Bradfield all morning had only just eased off and the concrete sides of the building were streaked with dark, damp patches. She could see a woman in a red fleece pushing a baby in a buggy along one of the walkways three floors up in Priestley, immediately above the rain-tattered bunches of flowers which lay on the concrete where the boy called Derek Whitby had fallen from the roof to his death. In the other direction she spotted a couple of youths, hoods drawn around their faces so tightly that only their eyes were visible, sauntering out of the doors of Holtbyleaving them swinging open behind them instead of securely locked as the council intended. She watched them watching her as they made their way under the relative shelter of the balconies towards the bus-stop on the main road which skirted the estate. She knew they were young enough to be in school and was equally sure that was not where they were going.
    It was the third day in a row that Laura had driven up the steep hill to the Heights during her lunch-hour and today, as she had waited at the traffic lights to turn onto the estate, she had admitted to herself that she was seriously worried about her grandmother. Joyce was looking as old and frail as Laura had ever seen her. Even the sparkle was beginning to disappear from her eyes. Laura knew she was depressed about the vandalism at the Project but guessed that she was finding her inability to pull strings at the Town Hall to push-start the rescue attempt she had set her heart on was even more to blame for her depression.
    She followed what had once been a footpath, but which
now resembled a quagmire, towards the Project. It had been the wettest winter on record and she knew that the ceaseless rain was getting to people in unpredictable ways. As January slid gloomily into February the tempers of even the most equable souls were beginning to fray, and equable was not an epithet she would ever apply to herself or to Michael Thackeray. She knew that the tension in their relationship was growing rather than receding as they had both hoped it would, and the knowledge was as dark and heavy as the rainclouds which rolled incessantly down from the high moors to the west.
    Donna met her