Small Town Christmas (Some Very English Murders Book 6) by Issy Brooke

horrifying out
of it. Cath had played it safe with a simple jacket potato and side salad.
    “Off what? On what? What are you talking about? I’m lost
already,” Penny said.
    “The case,” Cath said. “They kept me away from it because
of being the liaison support for the planning committee. Then a few days ago,
Inspector Travis asked for my input. A day after that, when his boss realised
I’d still been seeing you socially, I got moved off it again. I told them from
the start there was a conflict of interest.”
    “Bother,” Penny said. “You should have tried to stay on it,
to find out what was going on. Do you know who the main suspect is?” She tried
to bite into her panini but the interior was still at a temperature most
commonly found in nuclear reactors. She cut it open to let it cool down.
    “I’m not sure who is at the top,” Cath said. “I was looking
into Haydn, though.”
    “Ah! I was talking to that rat yesterday.”
    “That rat ? What do you mean?”
    “Huh. He’s got this way of winding me up, much like Clive did,”
Penny said. “Actually, I’m trying to imagine those two working together. That
would have been a recipe for disaster. They are both argumentative in different
ways. Clive was more arrogant and in-your-face but Haydn is really quick to get
riled up, and he has some outdated dinosaur ideas, too.”
    “Tell me what happened,” Cath said with a weary tone in her
voice.
    “No need to be like that! I didn’t hit him or anything.”
    “Did you perhaps poison him with a cake? Stake out the top
of a ladder to surprise him by bursting out of an upstairs window? Follow him
across Lincoln? You’ve got previous form, you know.”
    It was true. Penny had, indeed, done all of those things.
But she shook her head, and gave Cath a brief rundown of the previous evening’s
conversation.
    Listening to herself giving a hasty, dry summary, Penny had
to concede that she sounded somewhat petty.
    “You really don’t know when to pick your battles,” Cath
said.
    “There is something dodgy about him, though, don’t you
think?”
    Cath leaned forward and dropped her voice. “You’re right
about that. Listen to this. We know what Clive and Haydn really disagreed
about.”
    “Ooh, go on.”
    They both looked around like bad actors in a spy movie,
then Cath said, “We found out that Haydn lied on his cv and application form
for his job at the utilities company.”
    “What sort of lie? I mean, I once said that I was
proficient with spreadsheets because I could make it add up a whole column of
numbers without using the help thing. We all polish the truth a little.”
    “This is a bit more serious than that. He claimed to have
qualifications that he didn’t have, and the recruitment process didn’t spot it.
Clive found out, because Clive is – was – a control freak. He liked to be in
charge of everything, and this meant he also double-checked Haydn’s
certifications when Haydn transferred into Clive’s department.”
    “I’m guessing that Clive confronted Haydn about this?”
    “It seems so,” Cath said. “But, interestingly, there is no
record of him approaching the official channels with his discovery. The Human
Resources department at the company knew nothing about it, and were pretty
embarrassed when we could show them that Haydn was there on a lie.”
    “Oh no! Does Haydn know this yet? Will he lose his job?”
Penny might not have liked the guy, but she didn’t wish to see anyone lose
their employment.
    “Haydn was called in for more questioning earlier in the
week,” Cath told her.
    That would explain why he said he was so stressed ,
Penny thought. “And his job?”
    “I don’t know what will happen there,” Cath said.
    Penny was finally able to eat her lunch. She worked her way
through half of the panini while she thought about the latest revelations.
    “Cath, was Clive blackmailing Haydn? Clive knew Haydn’s
secret. He didn’t pass it on to the proper