Shrink Solves Murder

PROLOGUE

‘Don’t go so near to the edge!’ yelled Patricia Phillips at a group of Korean tourists taking what appeared to be wedding photographs on the edge of the Seven Sisters cliffs. ‘These cliffs crumble,’ she shouted. ‘It’s not worth dying for. Get back!’

She planted her hands on her hips and waited.

The tourists looked back at her blankly, then carried on posing not discernibly any further away from the white chalky edge.

With a loud exhale, Patricia turned on the heel of her ancient walking boot and marched along the path across the Downs towards her cottage.

‘Every bloody day,’ she mumbled to herself, pulling her dryrobe tighter around her.

‘Every bloody day, and no one listens.’ She looked up.

‘Put that dog on a lead,’ she barked at a woman who had let her black Labrador loose in the sheep field.

She got another blank stare in response.

The dog lolloped in the direction of the flock and the sheep began to canter towards the cliff.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ Pat said under her breath, then commanded, ‘Sit!’ with all the authority she could find.

Luckily, the dog took more notice of her than anyone else had that morning.

‘He’s never chased sheep before,’ began the Labrador’s owner, a short woman with cropped ginger hair. ‘Normally he’s very well beha—’

‘Lead!’ It was all Patricia could manage to yell back, with a dismissive wave of her hand.

She couldn’t even blame how furious she felt on the menopause any more, she thought, just as a sharp twang pierced her hip joint.

She winced. The pain alone could have been justification enough for her mood, even if it hadn’t been exacerbated by idiots.

The wind picked up as she crossed the brow of the hill and strode on towards her cottage.

It was always blustery up here; the grasses were flattened, the elderly hawthorns and gorse permanently bent, buffeted and bruised by the prevailing wind.

She tugged harder on her dryrobe, regretting having stayed in the water that bit longer than usual.

The English Channel had chilled her to the marrow.

She was of the opinion that no one could possibly get into the sea and come out in a bad mood, unless, of course, they needed a hip replacement and were too bloody-minded to admit it.

She eschewed the small wooden gate for walkers to the side of the cattle grid and picked her way across the metal bars.

As she turned the corner towards her eighteenth-century brick and flint cottage, she stopped in her tracks.

Not again! Every bloody day. There was yet another car parked on the grass verge.

Right in front of her doorstep. She was just about to shout ‘Get off my land!’ like a crimson-faced farmer when a woman and a hefty-looking policeman got out of the Ford Focus.

She inhaled deeply and downgraded her retort to an icily polite ‘Can I help you?’

‘Dr Phillips?’ said the woman, flashing a badge. ‘May we come in?’