For Whom The Willow Weeps

For Whom The Willow Weeps A Valentine Investigation First Published in Great Britain 2023 by Mirador Publishing Copyright © 2023 by Joe Talon All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission of the publishers or author. Excepting brief quotes used in reviews. First edition: 2023 Any reference to real names and places are purely fictional and are constructs of the author. Any offence the references produce is unintentional and in no way reflects the reality of any locations or people involved. For Whom The Willow Weeps A Valentine Investigation JOE TALON Also By The Author The Lorne Turner Mysteries Counting Crows Money for Old Bones Dead of the Winter Sun Salt for the Devil’s Eye Bad Waters Run Deep The Alchemist’s Corpse Novellas Forgotten Homeland A Meeting of Terrors A Dale Valentine Investigation For Whom the Willow Weeps Novella A Prison of the Mind Coming Soon The Spirit Glass – Lorne Turner And Seven Tears of Heaven – Dale Valentine Your Free Book Is Waiting When the police offer you a deal to escape prison, you take it. Right? Dale Valentine, understands the system, he once wore the uniform, carried the warrant card. Now, he’s just a tool for the police as they hunt the worst criminal gang that London has seen in a long time. It’s Dale’s job to infiltrate, manipulate, and report back to his handler, Lauren Kennedy. Only this job might just end up with him dead, and sixteen girls sold into slavery if he can’t figure out how to save them. Impossible odds become normal as Dale earns his freedom and the future he craves away from the dark streets of London. Get a free copy of the prequel Here: A Prison of the Mind on Story Origin ~ Prologue ~ Together they walked down the old drove, beside the dull and slinking water of the rhyne. The soft light of a mid-summer evening made the twilight sky wide and deep over their heads. The scent of the damp earth rose after a day of blessed sunlight. Now the damn festival was over, the rain released its hold on the low-lying moors around Glastonbury. “Water’s high,” stated Backman. A man built from the strictest verses in the Bible. He had mouse coloured hair, cut short by his wife, who didn’t know what a straight line looked like, and eyes that mirrored the ditch water they trudged alongside. “Arr, it’s too high for good drainage in the winter. We’ll both need to keep the heavy cattle out of these fields, or the banks will fold,” said Douglas. He stood over six feet, his frame made from freshly mowed hay bales and too many of his wife’s scones. His hair shone white and stuck out in tufts from under his ever-present flat cap, and his eyes mirrored the sky during a bright dawn in the moments just after the pink has gone. He didn’t want to trudge. His natural gait would see him bounce through the farmland, sometimes picking flowers for his family to enjoy at the kitchen table. Duty bound him to Backman and therefore to these quarterly walks along their borders to check hedges, fences and most especially the rhynes. Too full of summer water, they’d never flow quickly enough into the rivers to drain the land after the inevitable storms of the next three seasons. These peaty soils might raise good, fat stock, but if they became waterlogged… Well, you only had to see what happened to the land over Pilton way to know the damage that could be done. Backman stirred himself enough to speak again, “How you doin’ with them travellers?” Douglas sighed. “It’s not easy, right enough. I knows we all have to find a place and way to live, but they ain’t like the gypsies we used to get down this way when we was nippers. It’s the kiddies my missus worries about.” “Godless folk to be sure,” Backman pronounced. Douglas eyed him. The temptation to take the mickey out of the old sod rose strongly, but he resisted the urge. The thought of Backman praying for his sarcastic soul and offering him forgiveness for his sin of—well, anything really—proved to be enough to still Douglas’s tongue. “Now the festival’s over there seems to be more than ever. I guess they want to be here for the solstice.” He realised his mistake the moment the words hit the warm summer air and bounced into his ears. Backman inhaled heavily through his large and hairy nose. “It is not a Christian festival and the Church in that heathen town should not allow it. St Michael’s was once consecrated ground…” The rant continued. Douglas listened with half an ear, alright, a quarter of an ear so he could nod in the right places. As far as he knew, hanging a bishop from the tor’s summit probably de-consecrated the hilltop, but it didn’t do to dwell on history, especially old history. He peered along the drove, the soil heavy and thick on his boots, to the old willow tree that marked the official border between his land and Backman’s. Randel Cottage stood between the rhyne, the tree and Folly Farm, a sizeable plot. Douglas frowned, puzzled by the flash of red among the tall grass. The willow’s undulating branches parted for a moment, the breeze fluttering them away. Red and white. Dark red, bright white. “Oh shit,” he said unthinkingly. “Profanity is the solace of the untutored mind—” “Bugger the untutored mind, some bastard’s had one of my sheep,” Douglas said, breaking into a run. He gathered speed like a steam train, trying to see beyond the thick, deep screen of green leaves. The tree, for its part, seemed to want to keep its secrets from the observer until the moment Douglas reached out for their whip-like branches. Not a sheep. “Oh my God,” he whispered. “Oh, have mercy. Jesus