Restless Dead (Harry Grimm Book 5) David Gatward (reading strategies book txt) 📖

blows off the roads and the fells. You’ll be amazed at the crap we find out and about. Then he’s away over to the sheep, if we’ve got them down off the fell. He knows every single one of them. And that’s when he found them gone.’

‘What did he do?’ Harry asked.

‘Nowt other than have some kind of funny turn,’ Jim said. ‘Mum went looking for him, having expected him back, and she found him flat out on the barn floor, like he’d been thumped.’

‘The shock must have been pretty bad,’ Matt suggested. ‘What did the paramedics say?’

‘Not much.’ Jim shrugged. ‘I don’t think it was a stroke or anything, but it’s still a worry, isn’t it? I mean, you think your parents’ll live forever, don’t you? Then something like this happens, and suddenly there they are, all old and vulnerable and you’re in the position of carer.’

Harry noticed a crack in Jim’s voice and made a note to himself to keep an eye on him for a while. If he needed time from work to keep an eye on his dad, then as far as Harry was concerned, the team would work around it. He couldn’t see any of them complaining, more than likely, the complete opposite.

‘Yeah, it was the shock, I think,’ Jim said, agreeing with Matt. ‘That flock, it’s his life and soul, like. They’re everything to him.’ He paused, took a sip of his tea. ‘And now some thieving bastards have come in and—’

Jim’s voice crumbled then, the crack Harry had just heard splitting deep in an instant, as the emotion of that morning, of what had happened, finally caught up with him.

Harry reached over and put a hand on Jim’s shoulder, giving it just enough of a squeeze to let him know it was okay to be angry and upset and to not know exactly how to deal with it. Tears were fine, too, and Harry wasn’t going to have anyone on his team think otherwise. He’d been in situations back in the Paras, where the pressure, the terror, had bubbled up not just out of those fighting with him, but himself. Bottling things up did no one any good.

‘Right then, we need to take a look,’ Harry said, pushing himself to his feet. Jim made to rise as well, but Harry kept him in his seat with his hand still on the PCSO’s shoulder, adding just enough pressure to make his point clear. ‘You give yourself a few minutes, Jim,’ he said. ‘It’s the barn I saw just down at the far end of the yard, right?’

‘Yeah, that’s the one,’ Jim said.

Harry glanced over to Matt, who said nothing, and just returned a knowing nod. ‘Jadyn?’

The police constable shot to his feet.

‘Boss?’

‘We’ll go and have a little look-see around the place,’ Harry said. ‘Just need to grab some evidence bags and PPE from the car on the way.’

‘I’ll go grab all that now,’ Jadyn said. ‘Keys, Sarge?’

Matt lobbed his keys at Jadyn who snatched them out of the air. ‘But don’t you go rummaging around in there,’ he said. ‘My wallet’s in the glove compartment, so you just leave that well alone.’

‘You really don’t trust me, do you?’ Jadyn said.

‘Not one bit of it,’ Matt said, a smile just turning the corner of his mouth. ‘Would you?’

‘No, probably not.’ Jadyn smiled, then left the kitchen and Harry made to follow.

‘When will you hear from the hospital?’ Harry asked, pausing at the kitchen door.

‘Can’t say that I know for sure,’ Jim replied. ‘Mum’s not exactly great with texting. She either forgets how to unlock her phone, so you don’t hear from her for hours on end, sometimes days, or messages are pinging up at you every five minutes with updates about what she’s doing, what she’s cooking for tea, how dad is, if there’s weather coming in over the top. And she really doesn’t understand emojis. Honestly, the number of times I’ve been sent an angry face after telling her I’m on my way home!’

‘Well, as soon as you do, you let us know,’ Harry said, then added, ‘and if you need to go over, then you just let me know.’

‘Oh, that won’t be necessary,’ Jim said. ‘Dad’s fine with Mum, I’m sure.’

Harry walked over to stare down at Jim. ‘It’s not just about whether he’s fine,’ he said. ‘Family comes first. And your mum will need you as much as anything. And you’ll need them. Understood?’

‘Yes, Boss,’ Jim said.

‘Good,’ Harry replied, then turned and left the kitchen, to follow Jadyn back out into the day.

Chapter Four

Ruth stared across the kitchen table at her old dad, desperately trying to think of something to say, her own grief threatening to crush her into a breathless mess. The visit from that police officer, Detective Inspector Haig, a female no less, earlier that morning had helped a little, and both herself and her dad had been impressed by what she’d said, the help and support offered.

‘We’re not just here to arrest people, you know,’ she had said, her softly lilting Scottish accent a brief moment of light and joy in an otherwise dark day. ‘We’re here to help. And, if you don’t mind me saying so, we’re actually rather good at it, too.’

Glancing down at the card Detective Inspector Haig had left with them, Ruth then leaned forward to say something to her dad, but the words crumbled to dust and ash in her mouth. She reached a hand over towards her dad’s own, which were clenched in front of him, resting it just on top of his thumbs. His skin was cold and taut, and she could feel the awful tension in him, a spring coiled so tight that, if and when it finally broke, she feared it would snap his sanity in two.

‘Dad?’

The old man didn’t even register her voice, his head down, eyes staring into nothing. At his side was a stick, one he’d cut himself from the woodland outside, to help him get