A Killing Resurrected Read Online Free PDF

was Bergman’s habit to leave the shop by the back door, which, he said, his wife always bolted after him, and walk down the lane to the café on the corner, where he would join a number of other businessmen for their morning chat before starting business for the day. At ten o’clock, he would return to the shop, entering by the back door. When asked how he would do that if the door was bolted on the inside, he said he always gave a coded knock so his wife would know it was him, and she would let him in. It was a simple system that had worked for years, he said. As for the burglar alarm, he’d told the inspector that he always switched it off when he and his wife arrived each morning, and he didn’t switch the CCTV camera on until opening time at ten.
    Idiot! Rogers had pencilled in beside this statement.
    Sam Bergman told Rogers that he had seen nothing untoward in the lane when he had left the shop, and knew nothing about what had taken place until he returned at ten o’clock and saw his wife and George Taylor lying on the floor in a pool of blood. One of the display cases had been smashed, the safe was open, someone had been sick on the floor, and there was a scattering of rings and other items of jewellery trodden into the carpet.
    In answer to Rogers’ question as to why George Taylor would have been in the shop, Bergman told him that Taylor sometimes called in and they would walk down to the café on the corner together. He said no one was particularly concerned when Taylor failed to appear for coffee that morning; they simply assumed that the demands of his business wouldn’t allow him to get away, which was sometimes the case.
    It was at that point, according to Rogers’ notes, that Bergman had collapsed. Fearing delayed shock, Rogers had called an ambulance and had the jeweller taken to hospital. But Bergman had refused to go until he’d made sure that Loretta Thompson, his part-time assistant, could be contacted and brought in to help determine exactly what had been taken by the thieves. ‘She keeps the records, so she’ll know,’ he told Rogers.
    Tregalles flipped through the pages to the formal interview that had taken place in Charter Lane the following Tuesday.
    Loretta Thompson and her husband, both chartered accountants, had run a small but successful business from their home for a number of years, but when her husband was killed in a road accident, business had fallen off to the point where Loretta had been forced to look for work to supplement her income.
    â€˜It seems that some of our clients were quite happy with my work while Ted was there,’ she explained, ‘but they weren’t willing to trust a mere woman on her own. My father was a jeweller, so I had some knowledge of the business, and when Emily mentioned that they were spending far too much time on paperwork and keeping track of inventory, I offered my services on a part-time basis, and I’ve been working for the Bergmans now for five years.’
    She’d estimated the loss to be about £42,000. About £12,000 of that was in cash, but both Bergman and his wife were goldsmiths by trade, and the rest was made up of sheet gold, gold wire, wafers, and settings, as well as silver bars, rings, bracelets, earrings, pendants, and miscellan-eous precious stones.
    â€˜It is only an estimate,’ she told Rogers, ‘but I’ve been over it carefully, and I don’t think it will be far out. I can give you a more accurate figure when I do a complete inventory, which will have to be done for insurance purposes anyway. It’s a lot of money, but it could have been worse, because they missed some very valuable pieces.’
    The gold and silver, Loretta explained, were used by Bergman and his wife in repair and custom work. ‘Mr Bergman does most of the custom-made rings, although he’ll do special orders such as crosses and settings for pendants and brooches from