The Reckoning by Karl Jones

morning.
    Less than ten minutes after leaving the
stables Donna was at the front door of Inspector Livingstone’ s house. She had
neither seen nor heard from her superior since she called him to report the
situation at the Davis farm and request backup. That was unusual. It was a rare
occasion when he failed to turn up at the station during regular office hours,
and she couldn’t imagine he would be avoiding the place without a very good
reason at such a time.
    On the occasions that he didn’t come in, he
always called the officer on duty to make sure everything was alright. He
hadn’t even done that.
    When there was no response to her knock after
more than a minute, she became worried. She couldn’t imagine what might be
wrong but after everything that had happened in the village that morning, her
mind leaped to the worst possible conclusions.
    She knocked again, more urgently, and was
relieved when she heard the sound of approaching footsteps. The door opened
soon after and she found herself faced with her superior’s wife.
    “Good afternoon, Mrs Livingstone,” Donna
greeted her. “Is the inspector in?”
    “Yes,” Mary Livingstone said with a nod, “but
I’m afraid he isn’t up to seeing anyone at the moment. He collapsed this
morning,” she explained in response to the quizzical look directed at her. “Oh
it’s nothing too serious,” she said quickly. “The doctor thinks it’s just
shock, brought on by what happened at the Davis farm. He’s been ordered to bed
for some rest.”
    Donna wasn’t surprised to hear that the
inspector had collapsed from shock and been ordered to bed. He’d had a heart
attack the previous Christmas, and since then there had been speculation among
her fellow officers as to how long it would be before he retired. There had
even been some debate as to whether he would retire voluntarily, or would be
made to retire on health grounds.
    “Did you want to see him about anything
important?” Mary asked.
    Noting the way her superior’s wife stood, her
hand on the door, ready to close it as soon as she could do so politely, Donna
shook her head. “No, I guess not. I’ll take care of it myself,” she said reluctantly,
not at all certain how she was supposed to do that.
    “I’ll let Henry know you came by. I’m sure
he’ll call you to find out what has been going on just as soon as he feels
better.” She waited until the constable had turned away and then closed the
door.
    Donna made her way down the path and out of
the garden, making sure to close the gate behind her. With the inspector
unavailable, she was down to two people to get help from. Fortunately they were
neighbours, so she didn’t have to decide right then which of the two she was
going to speak to – speak to first was more likely she thought.
    As she drove through the village to her
grandmother’s and Jason Denton’s, Donna saw the two news vans that had set
themselves up in the car park of The Village Green. Neither van was parked all
that neatly, but that didn’t seem to be bothering the camera crews who were
bustling around them.
    What the reporters she saw talking into the
cameras were saying, she didn’t know. She couldn’t help but feel relieved
however. In her opinion, as long as the reporters stayed in the pub car park,
they were limited in the trouble they could cause. Not that she wouldn’t have
preferred it if they’d never found their way to the village.
    A last look in the rear view mirror, as she
was rounding the bend in the road, showed that one of the two reporters had
found someone, she couldn’t tell who in the brief glimpse she got, to
interview. She doubted it was anyone who could give detailed answers to
whatever questions were being asked, but in her opinion, rumours and gossip
were likely to cause more trouble than anything else.
    It took just a couple of minutes more for her
to reach the trio of houses that sat together on the road leading out to the
Davis farm. As she