Silent Witness (A Dylan Scott Mystery) Read Online Free PDF Page A

studio flat. The whys and wherefores didn’t matter though. He was back in the marital home and, God willing, he’d stay there.
    He made a mental note to keep on the right side of Bev. He’d take flowers when he went home.
    “What about you, Lewis?” he asked. “You’re obviously married. Any children?”
    “Two boys. One’s in Scotland and the other’s in Canada. Why obviously? You said I was obviously married.” He glanced down at his left hand as if he expected to see a shining band of gold on his finger. It was bare. “How can you tell?”
    “You winced. When I was explaining how I missed Freya’s birth because of the Arsenal game, you winced.”
    “Christ, you must be a direct descendent of Sherlock Holmes.” He laughed loudly at his own joke.
    Dylan smiled, but they clearly didn’t share the same sense of humour. “How are you liking retirement? Do you manage to fill your days?”
    He knew a lot of coppers who were totally lost without the job.
    “Easily.” Lewis tapped the side of his nose. “I do some consultancy work. Security, you know? It has its perks.”
    “Lewis’s just back from a fortnight in New York,” Frank explained. “All expenses paid and a decent bonus.”
    Dylan tried to look suitably impressed. And failed.
    “I had a chat with Sue Kaminski this morning,” he said, keen to get to more important matters. “She’s adamant that as soon as I see her husband, I’ll know he’s innocent. Is that likely?”
    “No.” Lewis was firm on that. “Kaminski will tell you he’s innocent, but even he doesn’t sound terribly convincing. It was one of the most straightforward cases I’ve ever worked on.”
    “Tell me about it.” Dylan sat back, glass in hand.
    “Carly Walsingham was supposed to collect her children from school. They’re five years old. Twins.” Lewis pulled a face. “William and Harry.”
    “After the royal princes?” Frank asked.
    “Yes. Apparently, Carly was a huge fan of Princess Di. She even had the same hairstyle. She was obviously an impressionable teenager when Diana married her Prince.”
    “Wait a minute,” Dylan said. “How come the kids were at school? It was August.”
    “There was a series of activity days for anyone interested. It was supposed to benefit the working mothers but anyone could pay a fiver to dump their kids there. A poet visited, a drama society put on a show, that sort of stuff. Anyway, when Carly didn’t turn up to collect them, a teacher tried phoning the house. There was no response so she tried Carly’s and then Neil Walsingham’s mobile phones. She got hold of Neil and, as he couldn’t raise a response from his wife either, he left work, collected the children and took them home. He found her in a bath of blood. Her throat had been slit.”
    Dylan hated this. Instead of hearing stories second or third-hand, he liked to be at the scene. Failing that, he liked to see photographs. Cameras didn’t miss things.
    “Okay. No sign of a break-in?”
    “Nothing. The front door was locked but the back door wasn’t. She’d go to the garden via the back door and her husband said they rarely locked it when they were at home.”
    She’d been killed in early August when the warm weather tempted people into their gardens. “Did you find the murder weapon?”
    “No. And believe me, we searched every inch of the surrounding area. Fingertip search. Dogs. The lot.” Lewis ran a finger around the rim of his glass as if bringing the murder scene to mind. “She was in the bath. Her attacker had come at her from behind and put a pillow over her face. There was a large bruise on one wrist and, from that, we were able to get a print.” He looked incredibly pleased with himself. “Her other wrist had been cut, but not fatally. The same weapon—small, sharp and precise, like a surgical blade—cut into her carotid artery. She would have died in seconds.”
    At times like this, Dylan wished he was still a member of the police force. No