In a Dry Season by Peter Robinson Page B

arms, standing gossiping in little knots along the pavement. The road was narrow and double yellow lines ran along each side. Towards the end, the buildings dwindled and finally gave way to half a mile of open countryside before the T-junction with The Edge.
    Annie parked on the grass verge opposite the junction. From there, she could see the ruins of Hobb’s End in the distance. Several tiny figures stood clustered around theoutbuilding where the skeleton had been discovered, and Annie realized it must be the SOCO team still searching the area. She wondered if Dr Williams, the skeleton-groper, was there, too.
    Annie crossed the road and opened the gate. Mrs Kettering was squatting in the garden spraying her dahlias. She looked up. Annie introduced herself.
    â€œI know who you are,” the old lady said, placing her hands on her thighs and pushing herself to her feet. “I remember you. You’re that nice policewoman who found my Joey.”
    Annie accepted the compliment with a brief nod. She hadn’t actually found Joey herself. The budgie had been innocently standing on the village green, accepting the crumbs an old man was scattering, blissfully unaware that it was being watched by a gang of sparrows up in one of the trees and by a ginger tom lurking behind a bush not more than ten yards away. One of the local kids had noticed, though, and remembering the poster offering a five-pound reward for a missing budgie, he had carefully scooped up Joey and carried him to the police station. Annie had simply delivered Joey back safely into Mrs Kettering’s hands. One of the many exciting jobs she had done since arriving in Harkside. It was, however, through this incident that Annie had received her first on-the-job injury. Joey pecked the base of her thumb and drew blood, but Inspector Harmond wouldn’t accept her injury compensation claim.
    Mrs Kettering was wearing a straw hat, a loose yellow smock and baggy white shorts down to her knees. Below them, her legs were pale as lard, mottled red and marbled with varicose veins. On her feet she wore a pair of blackplimsolls without laces. Though a little stooped, she looked sturdy enough for her age.
    â€œOh dear,” she said, wiping the streaks of sweat and soil from her brow with her forearm. “I hope you haven’t come to arrest me. Has someone reported me?”
    â€œReported you? What for?” Annie asked.
    Mrs Kettering glanced guiltily at the hose-pipe coiled near the front door. “I know there’s supposed to be a water shortage, but I can’t just let my garden die. A garden needs a lot of watering when the weather’s like this. I don’t own a car, so I don’t waste any on washing one, and I thought, well, if I used just a little . . . ?”
    Annie smiled. She hadn’t washed her car in weeks, either, but that had nothing to do with the water shortage. “Don’t worry, Mrs Kettering,” she said with a wink, “I won’t report you to Yorkshire Water.”
    Mrs Kettering sighed and put a gnarled, veiny hand to her heart. “Oh, thank you, dear,” she said. “Do you know, I don’t think I could stand going to jail at my age. I’ve heard that the food in there is absolutely terrible. And with my stomach . . . Anyway, please call me Ruby. What can I do for you?”
    â€œIt’s about Hobb’s End.”
    â€œHobb’s End?”
    â€œYes. I understand you used to live there.”
    Mrs Kettering nodded. “Seven years Reg and me lived there— 1933 to 1940 . It was our first home together, just after we got married.”
    â€œYou didn’t stay there till the end of the war?”
    â€œOh, no. My Reg went off to fight—he was in the navy—and I went to work at a munitions factory near She-ffield. I lived with my sister in Mexborough during the war.
    When Reg came back in 1945 , we stayed on there for a while, then he got a job on a farm just