Necrocrip Read Online Free PDF Page A

murmured.
    Across the tiny back room the back door stood open, but Slider caught the smell well before he reached it. The sun had risen high enough to clear the surrounding buildings and shine into the tiny yard, which contained an outside lavatory and a number of bulgingly-full black plastic sacks, neatly stacked round the perimeter, their necks tied with string. The sickly stink of rotting fish was terrible, mitigated only now and then by the chemical odour rolling over the fence from the dry-cleaner’s next door. Cleaning fluid would not normally have been high on Slider’s list of Things to Smell Today, but it was still considerably ahead of rotting fish – if that’s what it was.
    Breathing shallowly Slider turned, and found thatSlaughter had wandered after them and was standing in his back shop, staring in a puzzled way at his equipment as if it might speak and obligingly solve the puzzle.
    ‘Mr Slaughter – does it always smell as bad as this out here?’ Slider asked.
    Slaughter started a little, plainly having been far away with his thoughts. ‘Well,’ he said apologetically, ‘it does get a bit – you know – whiffy, especially in the warm weather. It’s the fish trimmings and that. But the dustmen only come twice a week. I tie the sacks up – well you have to with the cats and everything – but the smell still gets out. You get sort of used to it after a while.’
    ‘You get used to
this
?’ Atherton said disbelievingly.
    Slaughter took another step or two to the door and sniffed cautiously. ‘Maybe it is a bit worse than usual,’ he admitted. ‘I dunno. I don’t think I’ve got all that much sense of smell, really. Working with fish all the time – and the frying smell gets in your clothes—’
    ‘These bags, sir,’ Slider said. He gestured to one at random. ‘That one there, for instance. What’s in that?’
    ‘Rubbish and that. You know, just the usual. Potato peelings, fish trimmings, left-overs and stuff. Just rubbish.’
    ‘Is that how you tied it up yourself?’
    ‘I suppose so,’ said Slaughter cautiously. A certain reluctance was coming into his expression, perhaps as the magnitude of the smell came home to him at last.
    ‘Would you mind opening it, sir?’
    He plainly would mind, but equally plainly didn’t feel he could refuse. He untied the string and parted the neck of the sack, pulling his head back out of the way as the smell rose up. On the top were some broken, soggy chips and several portions of battered fish.
    ‘Red herrings, I suppose?’ Atherton enquired.
    ‘Left-overs,’ Slaughter corrected him, with some relief.
    ‘The piece of cod which passeth understanding,’ said Atherton. ‘But what’s underneath, I wonder?’
    He looked round him, picked up a yard broom, turned it up the other way, and used the end of the handle to push aside the top layer of rubbish. Underneath theleft-overs was a left foot.
    ‘Bloody ‘ell,’ Slaughter said softly, transfixed with horror.
    ‘I thought it’d been too quiet lately,’ Slider murmured.
    ‘The game’s afoot, Guv,’ said Atherton.
    ‘I was afraid you were going to say that,’ said Slider.
    Slaughter burst surprisingly into tears.
    ‘I think we’re going to need help here,’ Atherton said under cover of the noise. He licked his lips, and Slider could see that his nostrils were flared with some emotion, distaste or excitement – either would have been appropriate.
    ‘We certainly will. I’m not looking through a sackful of dead fish for evidence,’ Slider agreed.
    ‘And that’s just one sack. There are enough of them out here to hold the whole body, assuming it’s in pieces.’
    ‘Right,’ said Slider. ‘Take Slaughter inside to the front shop and stay with him. I’ll call in. And be gentle with him. If there is a body out here, he must know about it.’
    ‘Okay,’ Atherton said. The colour was returning to his face, and with it the blood to his head. ‘If there is a body out here,’ he gave