Chill Factor by Stuart Pawson

over my feet. I wasn’t sure if it was necessary, but I was playing safe. Sometimes I cut corners, occasionally I’m reckless, but never where forensics are concerned. Hunches are no good in this game. A hunch never swayed a jury or earned the sympathy of a judge. Motive, opportunity, witnesses , forensic. They’re what convict criminals, with the emphasis on the forensic. You can fudge the other three, but not the forensic. That’s what I’d always believed, and, so far, it had done well for me. That was the received wisdom, as taught at Staff College.
    We had a lot to learn.
    “Close the door,” I said, and Dave pushed it shut with an elbow. We pulled latex gloves on to our hands and eased our feet into over-socks. We didn’t bother to pull the hoods over our heads. My mouth was dry and I could feel my heart banging against my ribs. The thrill of the chase had long since degenerated into the drudgery of killing, the sordidness of death. It always does. Apart from the occasional gangland shooting there’s no such thing as a good murder. This wasn’t a straightforward, cut-and-dried jealous husband killing any more; it was something squalid. A clock was ticking somewhere in the room, measuring each second with well-oiled precision.
    “OK?”
    “OK.”
    “C’mon, then.”
    The interior door opened on to a hallway. I wasn’t there to admire the furnishings and look at the pictures – thatwould come later – but I couldn’t help doing it. I switched the light on and absorbed the scene.
    The Axminster carpet was covered in swirly patterns and felt as heavy as leaf mould under the feet. Facing us was an oil painting of a vaguely European city scene on a rainy day, churned out on a production line in Taiwan, hanging over an antique captain’s desk that I’d have accepted as a week’s salary anytime. The wallpaper was red, cream and gold stripes and a grandfather clock modelled on Westminster stood in a corner. Here, I thought, lived a man who knew what he liked. I found another switch and illuminated the staircase.
    It’s the boss’s prerogative to lead the way. I climbed the stairs slowly, keeping well over to the left in case we needed to do a footprint check on them, and Dave followed. “Silkstone said first door on the right,” he reminded me.
    The door was open, and we could already see what we’d expected by the glow from the landing lights. I reached around the doorframe and found the bedroom switch, just to do the job properly.
    She was lying face down on the bed and appeared to be naked below the waist. I stepped forward into the room and stooped beside her, looking into my second dead face that night. There was a pair of tights knotted round her neck, and the bulging eyes and pig’s liver of a tongue lolling from her mouth confirmed that she’d died by throttling. I’d have preferred the knife in the heart, anytime. I scanned her body feeling like the worst sort of voyeur and noticed that she was, in fact, wearing a short skirt that had been pulled up around her waist. My eyes went into the routine, as they had done too many times in the past, and the questions popped up one by one like the indicators on an old-fashioned cash register: Signs of a struggle? Anything under the fingernails? Bruising or bleeding? Is this where the attack took place?
    Dave was standing just outside the room, to one side, and I rejoined him. “Seen enough?” I asked, and he nodded. Westepped carefully down the stairs and retraced our path back out to my car. I rang Gilbert and told him the news. He’d contact the coroner and the pathologist and off we’d go again. We decided to get the SOCOs on the job immediately and leave everything else until after the morning meeting. Which was, I noticed, looking at the car clock, just six hours away.
    “You didn’t really want to live here, did you?” Dave asked as we sat waiting.
    “It was just a thought,” I replied.
    “You wouldn’t have been happy.”
    “I’m