“The right thing by Patrick?” said Jack. “Like you say — he was a grieving father.”
“I said some words. Over the grave.”
“What about his family?” said Sarah.
“What about mine?” said Latchmore.
Jack watched him get up and stand by his daughter.
“So then — what do we do now?” said Jack. He looked across at the shotgun, leaning against the wall, then saw Latchmore’s eyes follow his.
Though nobody had a gun in their hand — it was a kind of stand-off.
“There’s only one thing you can do, Richard,” said Sarah. “Come back with us to the police station in Cherringham.”
“She’s right, Dad,” said Karen. “What’s the worst that can happen? You go to jail? Not when they hear your story. We get the press in our faces for months? But I can deal with that. And then you’ll be home and we just carry on.”
“She’s right. You wouldn’t go to jail, Richard,” said Sarah.
“Oh no?” said the ex-soldier. “How do you know?”
“O’Connor’s sister is here in the village,” she said. “And I have a feeling she knew what her brother intended to do. And that she’ll do the right thing.”
“The right thing?” said Latchmore. “Does it even exist?”
“Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to do all along, Richard?” said Jack. “For your men, for those Americans up on that hill, for your son-in-law — and now for Karen and your granddaughter?”
Jack watched Latchmore.
Would these words have any effect? It was impossible to tell.
Jack got up and went over to the shotgun. Then he broke it, checked it wasn’t loaded and put it under his arm.
“Come on, Sarah,” he said, and he watched her get up from her chair.
He turned to Latchmore who stood at his daughter’s side. The baby cooed and reached across to her grandfather, her hand touching the stubble on the man’s face.
“We parked by the cottage,” said Jack. “We’ll wait for you.”
He opened the door of the shack and nodded to Sarah to go ahead of him.
They walked down the path through the woods in silence.
*
When they reached the cottage, the sun was just setting, but there was still a pool of warm sunlight on the little bench in the front garden.
Jack propped the shotgun up against the bench and sat. Sarah sat next to him.
“So all along, Patrick O’Connor was just pretending to be a tourist?” said Sarah.
“Uh-huh,” said Jack. “In some ways, he was planning the perfect murder. Slip away from the tour group — do what he came to do — and then re-join them two hours later for the rest of the tour. Who would have suspected?”
“He just didn’t count on getting mugged,” said Sarah.
“And maybe — when he saw the girl, and the baby — he lost heart a little? Pulled back …”
“I’d like to think that,” said Sarah.
“Who knows?”
Jack didn’t know. He just hoped it had maybe been like that …
“You think Latchmore will come?” said Sarah.
“Yeah,” said Jack. “I think so.”
“Because it’s the right thing?”
“Hmm. The right thing? Not sure. Isn’t that what everybody has been trying to do all along? Even Patrick, coming here. He thought the right thing was to close it all down, to punish the man who could have saved his son.”
“And out there in Helmand — how on earth could anyone know the right thing to do?” said Sarah.
Jack looked across the little garden at the wood and the winding lane. What a wonderful place for a child to grow up. A child who would need her grandfather.
“Most times we don’t get any choice,” said Jack, turning back to Sarah.
“If you’re a soldier that’s probably a good thing,” she said.
A movement caught Jack’s eye at the end of the lane.
He looked up, squinting into the setting sun.
Richard Latchmore was walking toward them, one hand resting on his granddaughter who nestled, asleep against his shoulder.
His other hand was wrapped around his daughter’s arm, and together, in silence they walked towards the little cottage.
“The right thing,” said Jack softly.
And he and Sarah stood up and prepared to head back to Cherringham.
END
Next episode
Every Halloween, the supposedly haunted Bell Hotel hosts its famous ‘Ghost-Hunters Dinner’, complete with scary stories, spooky apparitions and things that go bump in the night. But this year’s event ends in a terrifying accident, and suddenly everyone wonders …is there a real ghost loose in the hotel? Jack and Sarah are convinced that the culprit must be human: who would want bad things to happen at the classic hotel? But soon they’re forced to confront their own superstitions as they find themselves on the trail of an unsolved Victorian murder …
Cherringham — A Cosy Crime Series
Ghost of a Chance
by Matthew Costello and Neil Richards
Cherringham — A Cosy Crime Series
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Cherringham--The Vanishing Tourist Page 9