The
village of Oakvale-On-Roe is in
the north of the relatively small English county of Downshire, situated between
the old market Town of
Nettlebridge,
and their more affluent neighbour Roespring, and about a mile from the affluent
Shepherds Row area of the village were
the Macbeth Stables
owned and run by siblings Clare and Joe Macbeth.
Clare was the eldest at 29 and Joe was two years
younger, they inherited it from their parents after their father was killed in
the car crash that left their mother brain damaged and paraplegic, which
occurred when they were both at university.
As soon as she graduated she took over and ran
the stables while Joe completed his own course and then he joined her and they
split the work, she dealt with the riders and the horses while Joe dealt with
the business side, but they worked together a lot as well such as hay and feed
deliveries.
She was a small, slight girl with fine shoulder
length hair tied in a ponytail, blue eyes, an attractive everyday face which
turned beautiful when she made an effort.
They ran the stables together very successfully
and Clare split her time between work, Church and visiting her mother at the
Waterside Hospice and Perpetual Care Home in Roespring and had no time left for
anything else in her life apart from riding, and although her mother had died
the year before she hadn’t been in the right frame of mind since for anything
other than work.
Her brother Joe was muscular and ruggedly
handsome, blue eyed and blonde like his sister, and whatever free time he had
he preferred to spend walking the forested hills rather than on horseback.
They lived together in the farmhouse, an
arrangement which suited them both and they both found the other easy company.
Clare was always first up and tended to the
horses and when she had worked up an appetite completing her chores she would
return to the house where Joe would have a cooked breakfast waiting for her.
However, one morning in September things didn’t
go quite according to plan, she got her work done as usual and was heading back
to the house in a timely fashion, when she saw Sarah Cooper from the village
walk into the yard.
“Hi Clare” she said brightly
“Morning Sarah” she retorted “Are you coming in
for coffee when you’re done?”
“Absolutely” she replied cheerily
Clare smiled as she watched her walk away to muck
out and groom her horse Snowflake, she had known her for many years, and they
had become good friends.
She was smiling because she had a spring in her
step since she got all loved up with a Detective Inspector following the murder
the month before, but her smile was soon replaced by a frown when feelings of
jealousy surfaced.
“Why can’t I have that?” she said to herself
before turning towards the house to console herself with a full English.
However, when she went inside, she was shocked to
find her breakfast was not on the table waiting for her and Joe wasn’t even in
the kitchen.
She took her boots and coat off by the door and
was just about to sit down at the table when he walked in and was on his phone
“Yes, we’re here all day” he said as he hung up
“Who was that?”
“The police” he replied
“What are the police calling you for?”
“I called them”
“Why?”
“We’ve had a break in”
“What? Where?” she exclaimed “Did they take
anything?”
“They broke into the office; they got my laptop
and the keys to the Quad”
“Is they Quad gone?”
“Yes,” he replied
“Thank god, now we can get a new one with the
insurance” she said, “We do have insurance?”
“Of course,”
“Oh shit! What about the stuff on the laptop? the
accounts, customer details, suppliers and stuff?”
“It’s all on the cloud” he replied
“Is that a good thing?”
“It’s a very good thing” he replied, “And the
laptop is encrypted so it’s useless to the thief”
“So why do we need the police?”
“We need a crime number for the insurance” he
replied
“Oh ok, can I have breakfast now then”
It was two hours later
when PC Ross Grant drove into the Macbeths yard, he was thirty years old and was a quite shy, quiet
unassuming man, very calm and a very capable officer who Detective Inspector
Cutler decided have “act up” when the need arose, acting up, being a
euphemistic term for a temporary promotion or secondment, to cover holiday’s,
sick leave or to make up the numbers on specific operations, and his super
power was that he was blessed with a very analytical mind, ideal for searching
for needles in haystacks.
Unfortunately, as much
as DI Cutler would have liked to make his promotion to Detective permanent but
was unable to at that time which was why he was back in uniform.
He was tall and slim,
standing just short of 6 foot 3 and was in his own opinion, ordinary looking
with thick corn coloured hair and was more than a little nervous.
He had been up at the
Stable’s back in August and interviewed Clare
Macbeth to get a statement to verify Sarah Cooper’s witness account and to
clarify the timings in that account and he was smitten.
As Oakvale was on his beat so to speak, he had
seen her in the village, at church, in the pub, at the shops or just walking,
and he had admired her from afar, but when he was actually talking to her, she
took on a whole new dimension.
Ross lived at Roeside Farm with his parents and
siblings on the opposite side of the village from the Macbeths and although
they both attended the same church, they had only had the one interaction prior
to him driving into the yard on that September morning.
He parked the car and walked over and knocked on
the door and when it was opened, he said
“Good morning, Miss Macbeth”
“Oh, I wasn’t expecting you” she retorted
“Well, your brother phoned us earlier”
“No, I mean I didn’t expect it to be you” she
explained and chuckled
She was almost a foot shorter than him, so he
towered over her and she looked up at him like an expectant child, and she had
him hook line and sinker, he had to fight the urge to lean down and kiss her.
But instead of taken him in his arms, he just
looked down at her because she made him feel like a little boy.
The trance was broken when a voice from behind
her called out
“Is that the police?”
“Yes Joe” she replied
“I’ll send him in”
“Go through” Clare said “I’ll see you later,
maybe”
Joe showed Ross where the thief got in, the
broken window, the desk where the computer was taken from and the route, they
took between the house and the barn.
“Ok if you can keep away from this area and leave
it exactly as it is I’ll get a SOCO out,”
“Really! I thought you’d just give us a crime
number and that would be it” Joe said
“We’ve had a spate of break ins across the north
of the county so any new evidence we can gather will help us find the culprits,
we might get some prints off the glass, there may even be blood or DNA” Ross
said
“Will it be out of bounds for long?”
“I don’t think so, I’ll call them now”
After arranging for a Scenes of Crime Officer to
attend later that day he took his leave and headed across the
yard and out into the lane and was just checking for signs of a vehicle when he
became aware of movement behind him and when he turned, he saw that it was
Clare on her colt.
She
was trotting along and he could see her braless breasts jiggling inside her
shirt, and below her riding hat the find strands of blond hair were dancing
around her shoulders.
Ross
stepped to one side to watch her pass, and she slowed to a walk as she passed
him and gave him a coy little smile.
“Goodbye Constable” she said as she trotted off
down the lane on her chestnut horse, her shirt tucked inside her
jodhpurs, her pert little bottom
bouncing on the saddle, rhythmically rising and falling in synchronicity with
the beast below her and he instantly felt guilty.
He shouldn’t be lusting after a victim of crime,
especially when he was still on duty.
He
thought to himself that he would definitely want to pursue her when he was out
of uniform and she was out of the saddle he thought as he watched her ride
away, and then she glanced over her shoulder and smiled to herself because he
was still watching her and then she galloped off.
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