The Corpse's Tale (Trevor Joseph Detective series) by Katherine John Page B

home. Dressed in his white overall, his chef’s cap pushed to the back of his head, he closed his front door at five minutes past five and walked to his shop two doors up from the pub. Ten minutes later his apprentice hurtled down the road and banged on the shop door.
    At six o’clock a van dropped off a bundle of newspapers outside the general store and Post Office. Three boys from the council houses arrived just as Gareth Morris, Postmaster, newsagent and store manager opened the door.
    At half past six, the boys were out on the road with their newspaper-filled sacks. The c h u rch clock struck seven, the postman appeared and David “Dai Helpful” Morgan left his cottage in Church Row. He blew a kiss to his mother and crossed to the churchyard, his puppy, Sammy running at his heels.
    Dai felt good. His mam had cooked him his favourite breakfast of bacon, eggs and leek and pork sausages. He’d chopped only half the load of logs Mr Jones had donated to the church and chopping was his favourite job. And his mam was roasting a chicken for dinner.
    “Dai Helpful”, as he was known to everyone in Llan, was thirty years old. He knew he was different from other men. His mother had explained that his brain had been starved of oxygen when he was born. That made him slower than most and not as clever. But his mam had taught him to be grateful for his good home and kind friends and neighbours.
    The vicar, Mr Tony, employed him three days a week. Dai enjoyed keeping the church clean and the graveyard tidy. In summer he was offered more odd gardening jobs than he could do. In winter he walked people’s dogs along with his own. And there was always someone who needed wood chopped, or trees trimmed. Mr and Mrs Harris, who lived next door to him and his mam, paid him to work in their antique shop on auction days to help with the lifting. Most weeks, he earned more than enough to pay his mam for his keep and buy his clothes and the odd pint of beer.
    He headed for the shed where he kept his tools, then remembered he hadn’t put his axe away the day before. He’d left it in the chopping block behind the shed. He hoped a child hadn’t found it and hurt themselves.
    Something glittered on the path and he picked it up. It was an earring, a gold one. There was dirt on it and he tried to rub it clean but the mark wouldn’t come off. Sammy bounded ahead. He dropped the earring into his pocket and ordered Sammy back sharply. He was cross with Sammy for running off the night before. His Mam had told him to have more patience because the dog was young. But his last dog, Toby, had never run off, not even when he’d been a puppy.
    Sammy slunk back with his tail between his legs. Dai crouched to pat him and saw a girl’s legs behind the shed. He leaned forward. She was lying on the grass next to a tomb. An axe – his axe, he recognised the marks on the handle – in her head. He was so frightened he couldn’t breathe.
    He knew he should try to help her. The axe must be hurting her, so he lifted it. It came out easily. Too easily. He fell back on the path and cried out. His hands and shirt were covered with blood. And the girl still hadn’t moved.
    He looked up and saw Mr Tony staring at him.
    ‘Someone put my axe in her head, Mr Tony. I took it out.’
    The vicar’s eyes rounded in horror.
    ‘It wasn’t me that put my axe in her head, Mr Tony. She’ll tell you.’ Dai looked back at the girl. Her head was covered in blood. She was naked. His mam had told him it wasn’t right to look at naked girls. He turned away. But he could still see her foot. A fly landed on her toe. She still didn’t move and she was stiff. As stiff as the animals the people in the village sometimes asked him to bury.
    ‘It wasn’t me that did it, Mr Tony,’ he whispered. ‘It wasn’t me.’
     

C H A P T E R T W O
     
    T EN YEARS IN PRISON had changed Dai Helpful. He had learned not to get noticed. He never spoke unless someone spoke to him first. He