Chill Factor by Stuart Pawson Page B

rocky field that the estate agent called a paddock. It had a double garage that dominated the front aspect, with an archway over the path and a wrought iron gate. Inside were four bedrooms, two with en suite bathrooms, and a study. The downstairs rooms had dado rails and patio doors, and the next door neighbours were members of the National Trust. They introduced themselves, saying we’d be very happy there, and gave us some membership forms. Annabelle said they were sussing us out.
    We could have been happy there. The house was warm and dry and airy, with decent views over the fells; and pissing -off the neighbours would have been no problem. We could have locked the doors and closed the curtains, and played her Mozart and my Dylan to our hearts’ content. I’m sure we’d have been very happy there if we both hadn’t been such bloody reverse snobs.
    Today – no, yesterday – I pulled a carving knife out of a dead body, standing astride it as if I were harvesting carrots. Play the film in reverse and you’d see the knife going in, feeling its way between rib and cartilage, following the line of least resistance as it severed vein, nerve and muscle. A dagger in the heart doesn’t kill you. It’s not like an electrical short circuit that immediately blows a fuse and cuts off thepower. Blood stops flowing, or pumps out into the body’s cavities instead of following its normal well-ordered path, and the brain dies of starvation.
    Today it was strangulation. A pair of tights knotted around the neck, stopping the flow of air and blood until, again, the brain dies. A pair of tights: aid to beauty; method of concealing identity favoured by blaggers; murder weapon. She had black hair and white skin, and may have been attractive , once. Before fear twisted her features and the ligature tightened, building up the pressure in her skull until her eyeballs and tongue tried to escape from it.
    Murder doesn’t come stalking its victim at night, skulking from shadow to shadow, whispering unheard threats. It comes in the afternoon, with the sun casting shadows on the wall and the curtains blowing in the breeze. It comes from familiar hands, that once were loving.
    The collared doves that live in next door’s apple tree were tuning up like a couple of novice viola players, and my blackbird was doing his scales prior to the morning concert. I got out of bed and staggered to the bathroom for a shower. I put on the clean clothes, brushed my hair and opened the curtains .
    The sky was light, with Venus the palest speck on the horizon, not quite drained of its glow by the advancing sun. Above it was the disc of the moon, a duller blue than the sky, one edge dipped in cream. They hovered there like the last two reluctant guests to leave a party. I picked up the alarm clock and went downstairs to grab an hour’s rest on the settee .
    The night tec’ was sitting at my desk when I arrived in the office, reading the morning paper. “Hi, Rodge, anything in about us?” I asked, slipping my jacket off.
    “Morning, Charlie. No, not yet,” he replied, moving out of my chair.
    “Pity. I was hoping they’d have it sorted for us.”
    “You’ve had a busy night.”
    “Oh, just two murders,” I replied. “Nothing special. And you?”
    “Sex or money?”
    “Sex. Sex all the way.”
    We only have one detective on duty through the night, in case the uniformed boys come across anything that requires a CID presence. He slid a typed report across to me, saying: “Jamie Walker. He was out causing grief again but we’ve got some dabs – I had to borrow a SOCO from City because ours were otherwise engaged. Hopefully, we’ll pick him up today.”
    “And as soon as we put him in front of the mags they’ll give him bail,” I said. “God, I could do without him.”
    I told him to carry on looking after the stuff outside the murder enquiries, adding that we’d have them sorted as soon as the PM results came through to confirm what we already