Inheritance Tracks, page 23
‘So Mr McGregor knew him?’
‘Sounded like it, didn’t it, sir? We thought – Fleetwood and me – that the sergeant might have known him as a regular offender because he said he came from a fatherless family and was well known as a young tearaway. Besides he left his shoes behind when he ran away.’
‘Anything known?’
‘We couldn’t find any record at all, even though the sergeant said it had all been written up, big time.’
‘Really?’ Sloan frowned.
‘But we couldn’t find out anything about him, sir, could we?’ He sniffed. ‘Even after the sergeant told us that the mother had always found her Peter a proper handful, which fits young tearaways.’
‘Strange, that,’ mused Sloan, an unworthy thought beginning to cross his mind. He, too, knew the sergeant in question.
‘So, like a couple of ninnies we went out to the address we’d been given, didn’t we?’
‘And?’
‘And nothing, sir. There was no Mr McGregor there and no sign of this Peter O’Hare either. All we found was just a garden full of vegetables.’
‘Including lettuce?’ said Sloan, his suspicions now thoroughly aroused. There had been a time when his infant son had liked being read to at night and, in the way of small children, liking to be read the same book over and over again. And then, equally in the way of small children, suddenly deciding he’d heard it enough times, pushing it away and never listening to it ever again. There had been one such tale much favoured by his son and it came into his mind now.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Crosby. ‘But it seemed at first from what this Mr McGregor had said to the sergeant that nothing else except vegetables had been taken.’ He sighed. ‘At least that’s what the sergeant told us.’
‘Ah,’ said Sloan.
‘Perhaps we should have guessed something was up then, sir. Or even when he talked about this Peter having three well-behaved sisters.’
‘Possibly,’ agreed Sloan, ‘although I don’t think you could have known what it was all about at the time.’
‘We didn’t. Not then.’
‘When?’
‘When we got back to the canteen with our report. That was when the sergeant told us he’d made a mistake with the name and it wasn’t Peter O’Hare after all but Peter …’
‘Peter Rabbit?’ suggested Sloan gently.
Detective Constable Crosby nodded. ‘And then he told us that Peter’s sisters were called Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail.’
‘Then everybody laughed, I suppose.’
‘I’ll say they did. The whole canteen roared. Ever been had, they said. You guessed, too, didn’t you, sir?’ said Crosby sorrowfully.
‘My whiskers did twitch at one point,’ admitted Sloan.
‘I suppose we should have known we were being taken for a ride.’
‘You will find, Crosby, that that goes with the territory. People,’ he said bracingly, ‘are always trying to lead the police up the garden path.’
‘I know, sir, but …’
‘When you win, you party,’ said Sloan. ‘When you lose, you learn. Don’t get caught again, Crosby.’
‘No, sir.’
‘And remember,’ said Sloan, unconsciously emulating Oscar Wilde, ‘the good things that happen become happy memories …’
‘And the bad ones, sir?’
‘You’re a police officer, Crosby, so you put them down to experience.’
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CATHERINE AIRD is the author of more than twenty crime novels and story collections, most of which feature Detective Inspector Sloan. She holds an honorary MA from the University of Kent and was awarded an MBE. Apart from writing the successful Chronicles of Calleshire, she has also written and edited a series of village histories and is active in village life. She lives in Kent.
By Catherine Aird
Hole in One
Losing Ground
Past Tense
Dead Heading
Last Writes
Learning Curve
Inheritance Tracks
COPYRIGHT
Allison & Busby Limited
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London W1F 8AN
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First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2019.
This ebook edition published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2019.
Copyright © 2019 by CATHERINE AIRD
The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–0–7490–2431–4
Catherine Aird, Inheritance Tracks
