The Little Village Christmas: The #1 Christmas bestseller returns with the most heartwarming romance of 2018. Sue Moorcroft
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right to step up her preparations for an exciting move down south when her phone began to burble.
‘Urrghhhh,’ groaned Jodie as if the noise had given her physical pain.
Alexia read the screen and answered, ‘Hi Gabe,’ scrolling to the foot of the email with the hand that wasn’t holding the phone. She wondered suddenly whether Ben was with Gabe. He could easily have had plans with his uncle. The thought made her feel better about waking up alone this morning.
Gabe’s precise voice came loud in her ear, sounding puzzled. ‘I didn’t think there was any work going on today.’
Alexia clicked ‘reply’ on the email ready for when the call was over. ‘Is Shane at The Angel? Jodie was just wondering where he was.’
Jodie lifted her head from her arms, face already shaping itself into its ‘Jodie loves Shane’ expression.
‘No, Shane’s not here. But neither’s the roof.’
Alexia laughed. ‘Have you looked on top of the building?’
But humour was sadly lacking from Gabe’s voice. ‘The front of the building’s perfectly normal. But at the back? Fresh air where there used to be slates. If Shane has stripped the roof then why hasn’t he put a tarpaulin over the timbers? It’s already spitting with rain. We’ll have the damned place down around our ears with damp.’
Slowly, Alexia’s hand fell away from her laptop. Unless Gabe had been eating strange mushrooms, there was something going on. ‘There’s no reason for the slates to be stripped. The roof’s sound.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
Alexia’s unease grew. ‘I’d better come down to the site. Be there in five minutes.’
‘What’s up?’ Jodie managed to prop her chin on her hands as Alexia ended the call.
‘Gabe says the slates have gone off the rear aspect of the building.’
Jodie eased her head back down onto the table saying, ‘Can’t have,’ before once again closing her eyes.
After dragging on a jacket, Alexia strode along the uneven pavement to The Angel, casting about for an explanation that would account for Gabe’s astounding revelation. Leaving Main Road, she broke into a jog along Cross Street, passing the row of cottages known as Rotten Row before turning in to Port Road where many of the village’s redbrick Victorians were grouped together as if the rest of the village wasn’t quite good enough for them.
Where Shane’s truck had been outside The Angel last night was now an empty space. Gabe paced up and down the drive, silver ponytail flirting with the breeze. With his usual smile absent there was more resemblance between him and Ben than Alexia had hitherto noticed.
Wordlessly, Gabe led her to the back of the building.
She didn’t have to go far down the overgrown garden to see the naked roof timbers and daylight where the slates should have butted up snugly to the bricks of the gable end. ‘What the hell?’
She gazed around the jungle of the garden. No sign of stacked slates. Nor were they tucked between the skips in front of the property.
Fishing out her keys she hurried towards the building. And jerked to a stop when she rounded the porch.
Gabe did exactly the same. ‘Where’s the door?’
A long snake of fear began to uncoil itself in Alexia’s tummy. She ran through the gap where the door ought to have been, into the Bar Parlour and then the Public. Having checked every room downstairs with a mounting feeling of doom, she raced across the foyer and through the doorway to the stairs.
It seemed more like a mountain than a staircase but she made it up to what had once been the living quarters of the pub, darting from bedrooms to bathroom to sitting room. When she could no longer dispute the evidence of her eyes she ground to a halt. Over the pounding of her heart she could hear the slates at the front of the building shifting uneasily as the wind prodded their unprotected undersides.
The noise receded and then flooded sharply back, mixing with the sound of men’s voices floating up from downstairs. She held her breath, hoping to hear Shane explaining why he was busy with unplanned work.
She did recognise the voice. But it wasn’t Shane’s.
On jelly legs she trudged back downstairs to find Ben standing in the foyer beside Gabe.
Absently she noted that he didn’t smile. He didn’t step forward to greet her or express concern about what was going on. There was no air of awareness of last night or this morning.
In fact, it seemed to Alexia that his eyes were unfocused as if he weren’t quite looking at her.
That was the least of her worries right now though. She turned to Gabe. ‘Everything Shane stowed upstairs is missing.’ She slumped down on the bottom step. ‘And everything of any value. Every original feature – doors, radiators, even the cast iron toilet cisterns. Someone’s stripped the place. I presume the only reason they left the roof slates on the front was to disguise what they’d done for as long as possible.’
‘Someone?’ asked Ben. ‘Like who?’
Alexia shook her head. ‘I’ll try and ring Shane.’ Her voice seemed to echo in her ears.
Gabe began to speak but was interrupted by the ringing of his phone, which he answered with a ‘tsk’ of irritation. With fumbling fingers Alexia pulled up Shane’s name in her contacts list and pressed ‘call’. It went straight to voicemail. Trembling, she tried his mate Tim’s number too. Same result.
‘But how the hell …?’ she heard Gabe demand of his caller.
She paused to raise her eyebrows hopefully and mouth ‘Shane?’ at him. Gabe gave an abrupt shake of his head and held up a hand to indicate he needed to listen to the person on the other end of his line.
Desperately, she tried Jodie who did, at least, answer.
Alexia took a steadying breath. ‘Has Shane turned up?’
‘Not yet. I tried to ring him but—’
‘You got his voicemail,’ Alexia finished for her. ‘Does he have a landline number because—’
Then she dropped her phone, ending the call hastily as Gabe made a strangled noise and reached out to steady himself against the wall. Ben got to his uncle before Alexia could even begin to move and in an instant he’d lowered Gabe down to sit on the steps beside her.
Gabe was grey, clutching his phone with a shaking hand. ‘That was the bank. The money’s gone.’
The room seemed to do a huge swoop around Alexia’s head. She couldn’t force words past the lump of fear that had jumped into her throat at Gabe’s words.
‘What money?’ Ben crouched before his uncle, his expression granite-grim.
‘The money in the community account and the business account. It’s been moved out of the accounts in a series of transactions, raising a red flag with the bank.’ Gabe passed a shaking hand over his face. ‘It’s the money the village raised and the start-up money Jodie and I put into the partnership.’
Ben swung a grey gaze on Alexia before returning his attention to his uncle, his voice hard and rapid. ‘Who has access to the bank accounts?’
Gabe pressed his forehead as if forcing himself to think. ‘For the community account Alexia, Jodie, and Christopher Carlysle and me. Jodie and I for the business account.’
‘But it takes two of us to sign to get money out of the community account,’ Alexia croaked.
‘Not on Internet banking. We all signed that it was OK, if you remember.’
Ben’s face was a mask as he studied the evidence on Gabe’s phone. ‘The accounts are showing nil balances. And my uncle’s