The Little Village Christmas: The #1 Christmas bestseller returns with the most heartwarming romance of 2018. Sue Moorcroft

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СКАЧАТЬ had lessened, Gabe accessed the recent bank account transactions to show them that the money had disappeared in a series of withdrawals – cheques on Friday, when they’d all been preoccupied with preparing for the wrecking party, and the rest via Internet banking either side of midnight Saturday/Sunday.

      ‘You can see the name of the payees!’ crowed Jodie, hope dawning on her red and blotchy face. ‘Look, this one’s a company called Oatwood 2k Ltd. And this one’s —’

      But Gabe was already shaking his head. ‘Don’t get your hopes up. Whoever did this is clever. They’ll have hidden their tracks. It will lead to a dead end.’

      ‘But how can it?’ Jodie demanded, expression bewildered. ‘It’s there, the name of the company—’

      Gabe’s lips thinned. ‘If my experience is anything to go by the money will have been transferred out already and will have disappeared into a network of companies and individuals. The addresses of some will be rental properties and the current tenants will never have heard of Oatwood 2k or any of the others. Some will be legitimate entities, often blissfully unaware that their identities have been stolen and used to open bank accounts. Somewhere along the line the money will be drawn out in cash.’ Jumping up, he started to pace around the room. ‘There’s a very practised hand on the tiller during this voyage of deception, let me tell you. They knew precisely which gambles were worth taking. I, for one, was kept very busy on Friday and Saturday and had no reason to check the accounts.’

      ‘Same,’ said Alexia, picturing Shane ‘marshalling the troops’ as he called it while they’d all helped to get ready for the wrecking party. She curled up on the sofa as Jodie tried over and again to ring Shane. Alexia might not have Gabe’s banking experience but she was shrewd enough to know that whoever took the money must have had an in. ‘Jodie,’ she began gently. ‘Do you have an address for Shane?’

      Knuckles whitening around her phone, Jodie began to bluster, brown eyes furious. ‘Honestly, Alexia, I can’t imagine why you’d bring up such a random question now, when we’ve got this to worry about. He lives in Manor Road in Bettsbrough, but I’ve only been a couple of times and I didn’t exactly note down the door number.’

      Alexia glanced at Gabe. He gazed gravely back, compassion in the depths of his eyes. She tried again. ‘The police want to know. Someone has taken this money. Shane isn’t answering his phone so they need to find him—’

      ‘What?’ Jodie physically jumped away from Alexia. ‘Are you accusing my boyfriend? The bank accounts have been hacked. Obviously! It happens all the time. It’s random! Don’t you dare—!’

      Gabe interrupted, voice soft. ‘But slates and doors, fireplaces and tiles … how could a hacker remove those?’

      Jodie stared at him dumbly, horror written on her face.

      Alexia swallowed painfully. ‘Has Shane had access to your Internet banking app, Jodes?’

      With a wail, Jodie leapt up and fled from the room.

      Alexia covered her eyes. Could this day get any worse?

      That night, Alexia tossed and turned long after Jodie had shut herself in her room and Gabe had gone home. Though she was exhausted, her gritty eyes refused to stay closed and her brain wouldn’t sleep. It flipped from anxiety to disbelief to guilt. She was one of the people the village had trusted with the money they’d raised. And now the money was gone.

      With a need to do something constructive, she sat up and switched on the light, then balanced her laptop on her legs to type an exhaustive list of what had been stripped out of The Angel. Together with the ‘before’ and ‘during’ photos she’d taken of the building, the list would go to the police, and to every reclamation yard she knew of in Cambridgeshire.

      As she laboured on in the still hours, the phrase ‘All the money’s gone’ echoed through her mind, last heard fifteen years ago in her mother’s horrified whisper. They hadn’t needed the police on that occasion. The culprit had been well known to them. Alexia’s dad, Cliff, had run up debts faster than Heather, Alexia’s mum, could pay them off.

      To prevent his credit card companies taking the family home Alexia had had to stop attending uni and let her mum use her student loan. A debt Alexia was still repaying as Heather wasn’t well-off and Clifford was on to a whole new lot of debts, probably. Unless his current wife had him well in hand.

      Her parents’ marriage hadn’t made it past the crisis and Alexia and Reuben had been more relieved than distraught when Clifford had moved out. They’d all suffered by being hitched to the same financial wagon as him but at least he’d accepted Heather’s rejection, just at he’d later accepted Grandpop leaving his cottage to Alexia and Reuben, philosophically acknowledging his total lack of money management. It was an endless mystification to his children that he could apparently see the truth yet never mend his ways.

      Alexia and Reuben heard from him mainly on birthdays and at Christmas now.

      Last night had felt like a return to the old financial nightmare and as Alexia grimly tapped at her keyboard she made a series of fruitless wishes.

      That Jodie had never met Shane. Jodie might have been resolute in refusing to join the dots of the money and goods disappearing at the same time as Shane and Tim, but Alexia didn’t believe in that kind of coincidence.

      That Alexia had never agreed to Shane and Tim being the main contractors at The Angel. But once they’d shown her their work was good enough she’d decided to give them a chance. It hadn’t occurred to her to ask for evidence of their honesty.

      If she had access to unlimited wishing wells, fairy godmothers and wishbones, top of her wishiest wishlist would be the wish that she hadn’t spent Saturday night in Ben’s bed. On his rug. In his bath.

      She so wished that.

      But he’d seemed likeable in his offbeat way – what was it he’d called himself? An oddball? – and she’d been attracted to his dishevelled good looks and slightly brooding air. The tenderness he’d exhibited with Barney had made her feel all warm and fuzzy, as had his vulnerability over his divorce and bashful confession that he’d forgotten how the seduction game went – though he’d pretty quickly got the hang of it again.

      Alexia had been a prize fool. Carefree with singledom, she’d seen no reason for caution. She’d never before indulged in a one-night stand but, hey, they were adults.

      It had felt like a triumph every time she’d made him smile. He hadn’t looked at her then as if he didn’t know who she was. It had been a special connection! It had! Though new and exciting, they’d seemed to know each other in the private world they’d created in his cottage in the woods. It had even led her to assume there would prove to be a perfectly good reason for him leaving before she woke.

      That should have been a clue to what kind of man he was, because who did that?

      Benedict Hardaker. That was the name he’d provided to the police officer. His relationship to Gabe Piercy must be on his mother’s side. Fancy him being related at all to lovely warm Gabe, familiar to everyone as he clippity-clopped through the village with his blue cart and little black pony, Snobby.

      Benedict gitty shitty Hardaker, she typed into her list after 4 Victorian toilet cisterns, black, thumping the keys so hard it made her fingertips burn. Then she went back and deleted the words with slow, deliberate taps. Gone. She wished he’d go СКАЧАТЬ