Dusty Death Read Online Free PDF Page A

‘You must have known the area like the back of your hand, Billy! I bet there’s no one knows more than you about what went on there at that time.’
    Bedford enjoyed flattery: indeed, he had met so little of it that he found it irresistible. ‘That’s right, Mr Peach. You’d win your bet, all right. I was up there’most every night, like I said.’
    â€˜I’ll tell you what, Billy. When I can pinpoint the actual house I’m talking about, I’ll come back and see you. Find out if you can tell me anything about what went on in there.’
    He didn’t really think he would get much more from the man. But with what they got from forensic added to Billy Bedford’s recollections, they could begin to get a picture of the time and the place where this death had occurred. He said, ‘I’ll be back, when I can pinpoint the time we’re interested in. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, Billy!’
    Bedford laughed as if this was the most original joke in the world. ‘I won’t, Mr Peach!’ He glanced down at the full and the empty bottles of stout beside his mother. ‘I’m not a Guinness-drinker myself.’
    Peach took the hint. ‘I dare say there might be half a bottle of whisky in this for you, Billy Bedford, if you can provide something really useful for us.’
    The wretchedly thin man saw him off at the door of the old terraced house. His face was grey and fleshless. Peach had a sudden apprehension that he might die before the frail but feisty mother within the house. In a life that had offered little but hardship, that would be the worst thing of all for old Lizzy Bedford.

Four
    The post-mortem report yielded more than it might have done. Percy Peach announced that firmly to his team. It was important for morale that they felt progress was being made. Whether consciously or unconsciously, it was all too easy for an old crime like this to be written off as insoluble.
    There were multiple fractures in the bones of this female corpse, but they were probably all recent. In other words, the body had been considerably damaged by the heavy machinery brought in for the demolition of the houses. Had it not been for the crane-driver’s keen eyesight and his glimpse of that gaunt forearm rearing itself so dramatically from the rubble, the body might never have been discovered, might have been anonymously interred for ever beneath the concrete foundations of the new office block which was to rise on the site.
    The blood group was confirmed as the same as that of the patch discovered by the observant Jack Chadwick at the scene of the crime. That made it likely but not certain that the corpse had lain for years against that wood, which was confirmed as the lower part of what had originally been a substantial door, belonging either to a large cupboard or perhaps even to a room. A cluster of fibres found in the grime of that wood, six inches from the dark brown smear of blood, matched those from the sweater, parts of which still clung to the torso of the body even after its years of entombment.
    That was the next detail in the emerging picture. The partially mummified state of the body suggested that it had been enclosed after death in some relatively airless place.
    DC Brendan Murphy looked up from his notes. ‘Hidden away, you mean, sir?’
    Peach nodded. ‘Almost certainly yes. Possibly beneath floorboards. But the presence of blood and fibres on what’s left of that door suggests that the body rested tight against it for quite some time. The probability is that she was locked away in a cupboard. Or that the wood from a door was used to hide her somewhere else, like a chimney breast where fires were no longer lit. The body is too damaged for us to be certain, but we’re not talking evidence in court here. We’re simply trying to build up for ourselves a picture of how this woman might have died.’
    Lucy Blake said,