Bright Spark Read Online Free PDF

measure curtains, with no books, clothes
or other domestic clutter in sight. A colossal family portrait dominated the
room, a soft-focus, textured print of a stocky, well-groomed man, flashing his
teeth in glee while his doting family looked up at him with studied smiles.
    For
half a second Harkness believed a hand was crawling from the shadow left by the
king-sized bed which had been flung onto its side. He picked his way across the
floor and swept his own torch across the square of cleaner carpet, chasing the
shadow into another corner then breathing again. He couldn’t see the writhing
ghouls of his imagination but for a moment heard them scream and retch and
plead. Blood daubed the weave of the carpet, an imprecise rendering of the
fingers of a right hand clutching at life, a few feet from a drying burst of
vomit. A teddy bear sat on its haunches, arms outspread, as if hoping to be
found and needed again, one cream leg dark and musky with what might have been
urine.
    Harkness
moved through the upper story of the house, trailing soot and crystals of
broken glass from the heavy boots, looking intensely at each window then moving
on to the next. When he reached the rear bedroom window, overlooking the roof
of the conservatory, he paused.
    “I
think if there were window keys anywhere handy,” he said, motioning McKay to
look more closely, “she’d have found them.”
    On
the locked handle, and printed and smeared elsewhere on the glass, could just
be discerned the delicate whorls and ribbons of fingerprints, picked out in
red.
     
     
     
    Slowey
left Braxton reminiscing with PC Jones about town-centre punch-ups. He seemed genuinely
concerned that the old cell block at Beaumont Fee was to be relocated, as if he
were an old soldier learning that the British Legion were to be turned into a
supermarket. Braxton offered his new friend a cigarette, which Jones declined
with visible pride.
    Slowey
underlined the name of Dale Murphy in his notebook. He’d established that there
was no record of him on PNC and put out his basic description on the radio,
although he doubted anyone would stumble across him.
    Morse
was helping an ambulance to extricate itself from the narrow street, so far
with the loss of only one wing mirror. From another, a green-suited paramedic
toting a clipboard emerged, followed by the slight figure of a woman draped in
a red blanket and clutching it to her chin with trembling fingers. Slowey would
gladly have shared some of the night’s heat with her.
    “Morning.
You the police, then?”
    “It’s
the suit and the stubble, isn’t it? And I bet you think we’re all getting
younger.”
    “This
is Marjorie from number twelve. Husband and son have gone to County to be
checked over. They’ve all breathed in a bit of smoke but Marjorie declined to
come with us. Wanted to talk to you instead.”
    Slowey
glimpsed at the paramedic’s clipboard with its duplicate sheets of disclaimers
underscored by the woman’s feathery signature. She seemed to be staring at her
home, its façade almost unchanged but for the bruises of scorched plasterwork,
a corruption inherited from its conjoined and leprous twin.
    “Marjorie,”
announced Slowey, striding forwards and finding his pantomime voice, every
syllable flung out with painstaking cheer. He ducked and pursed his lips,
seeking out her eyes between the blanket and her tangled bob of grey hair. “I’m
DC Slowey. Why don’t you and I find a nice spot for a cup of tea and a chat?”
    The
woman raised her chin above the blanket and turned her eyes to Slowey, taking
long, shallow breaths and swallowing as if in search of her voice. Slowey was
reminded of a tortoise venturing from its shell after a long and bitter winter.
    “Now
Marjorie, are you sure you won’t go to the hospital with this gentleman here.
We’ll make sure your house is looked after.”
    “Young
man,” she said, flint now in her eyes, “I’m a trained nurse so I know there’s
nothing whatever