Just Desserts (9 page)

‘I'm sure of it. I just couldn't believe in Long Tarn as the crash site. It's too peaceful, too open, too convenient. Not to mention the fact that they dredged it at the time and found nothing – much to the locals' amusement.'

‘Plus, none my family ever told me about it or stopped me swimming there.'

‘Deep Tarn, however, is another matter entirely. It's out of the way, on private property, so once Jack Scrivener had been paid off and persuaded to change his story it would have been relatively simple to clear up any fragments of fuselage. But there didn't seem to be a reason for the evasion. The mission wasn't sensitive, the plane wasn't secret. So it had to be
where
it had happened that was significant.'

‘Near your tunnel.'

‘Precisely. I reckon Deep Tarn could be very close indeed to the underground passage. They couldn't risk too much attention around there.'

‘And now?' Penny was troubled. Menacing figures taking steps to safeguard national secrets was way out of her comfort zone. ‘They know where you live, they know where you work.'

Leo covered her hand with his. ‘They will also know by now that I have an ingrained, very well-documented habit of recording every single thing I find out and lodging it in several different places.'

‘All the same, your boat is quite exposed on the river. Do you want to stay in the spare room here tonight? Just long enough so they know you've had time to record all these things and made copies of them.'

She had made the offer without thinking. His fingers had been rubbing hers comfortingly, now she felt them go still. ‘I would,' he said. ‘But I won't. I'll beg a sofa from my editor instead. Harry will be fine with it and if they are watching, they'll be pretty sure I will have told him the lot. It'll be OK, Penny. You'll see. It's enough for me to know I've solved the puzzle, that I can still do it, that I haven't lost that edge. I don't need to publish the story.'

‘But how are
they
going to know that?' asked Penny, still troubled. ‘How are they going to know you're safe? I get the impression you didn't used to have a very mellow reputation.'

His hand was still over hers, his fingers still warm against her skin. Now they closed in a strong, fearless grip. ‘And you'd be right. But they know I recognised them for who they are. They are
used
to people backing down, Penny. They expect it. It's the effect they have. There really isn't any need to worry.'

From the next issue of the
Salthaven Messenger:

‘In a post-script to the above article, it has been confirmed that fragments of a post-war test plane similar to that believed to have been flown by Andrew Collins have been found during excavation work for the new extension at Lowdale Screw Fittings.

‘The cliff area has been unsafe for many years. It will never be known what went wrong with Collins's final flight on that fateful night, but it is clear that he died while flying one of the breed of aircraft that led to the supersonic travel we know today. He was a true hero of Salthaven.'

The Jigsaw Puzzle –
Book One in the Penny Plain Mysteries

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Jan Jones
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Copyright © Jan Jones 2014

The right of Jan Jones to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN 9781783751051

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers: Accent Press Ltd, Ty Cynon House, Navigation Park, Abercynon, CF45 4SN

The stories contained within this book are works of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the authors' imaginations and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental