A Species of Revenge Read Online Free PDF

elephant.’
    Abigail laughed. ‘All the same ... Right, I’ll get back to the station now and report to the Super before he leaves.’ Mayo would want a full briefing on what was happening before his departure for the Police Staff College, where he was leading a three-day seminar on the treatment of young offenders, and a start must be made on establishing the identity of the man, finding his car.
    It was too early yet for anyone to have come forward to report him missing, but doubtless someone would, sooner or later. A thought enough to sober anyone: that on this bright and beautiful morning, among the dahlias and gladioli and all the fruitful produce of the earth, a young man, with all the expectancy of his life in front of him, should now lie mysteriously dead. While somewhere a wife, maybe children, waited for him.

3
    There were sixteen houses in the Close that dipped down from the brow of the hill, sixteen where previously one had stood, that one having been Heath Mount, a Victorian edifice much bigger than Simla, or even Edwina Lodge. Most of the houses in Albert Road had been of that ilk, built at the time when the Industrial Revolution which had made Britain prosperous had been at its height and made its masters rich. Here on the edge of Lavenstock, their foundries, brickworks, claypits and glass kilns, chainworks and nail shops, had grown and spread out towards the great sprawl of Birmingham, and here they had built their splendid houses high on the ridge of Holden Hill, from whence they could look down on their creations and see that they were good. Imposing once, monuments to Victorian self-help, the houses had enjoyed their moment of glory but by now they’d had their day; most had been either split up into flats, taken over for business enterprises or pulled down and the land sold for development.
    The houses that formed Ellington Close were mostly occupied by young families, childless couples and one or two retired people, though advertised as starter homes when they were built five years ago. It had begun to lose the raw look of a new housing development, to acquire some semblance of permanence, now that the flowering cherries were maturing and the rockeries flourishing ... almost every garden had a rockery, a practical solution to gardens built on a slope. The houses were stepped down the hill in a rough crescent, away from Albert Road, in a pleasantly irregular pattern. The builder, or the architect who designed the site, had, to do him credit, used his imagination and had staggered them so that most of them had a magnificent view across workaday Holden Hill, down to the flat band of the canal in the bottom and the silvery dance of the river running parallel with it, right across Lavenstock and then up to the blue, tree – crowned hills which rose on the far side and looked out over three counties.
    Everyone knew everyone else in the Close, although several of the houses had changed hands since they were built. They were three-bedroomed and detached – if only just – and in order to pack that number of houses on to a site of this size, they were dolls’ houses, their dimensions minute. For two young people, to whom proximity is more important than space, this had a certain advantage, but when children arrived, the picture changed. Number thirteen had been on the market for almost as long as Edwina Lodge. The number wasn’t regarded as a significant cause of their not being able to sell. It was generally thought that the occupants, Gail and Trevor Lawley, were asking too much, but what could they do when they owed more on their mortgage than the house was worth? Negative equity acquires a sharper edge when you find yourselves locked into it.
    Monday morning, and Stanley Loates was, as usual, stationed at the front bay window of number seven, where he lived with his horrible old mother, when Patti Ryman entered the Close and began delivering her newspapers. She loathed