Sins of the Fathers Read Online Free PDF Page B

sand and the door closed. But when Mower opened it, he did not find what he expected. The previous day, when precedence had of necessity been given to the forensic examiners, he hadglanced briefly through the door and immediately taken on board the carefully ordered layout of the skilled craftsman: tools in racks, nuts and bolts and screws in their individual small cabinets, the workbenches tidy, the floor swept clear of debris, the rubbish binned and the small desk and filing cabinet in one corner clear of any sort of junk.
    Mower took a deep breath as he surveyed what was inside and held an arm across the doorway to prevent Sharif from following him inside.
    ‘Go and get that woodentop off the front door,’ he said angrily. ‘Someone’s been in here before us.’ The workshop was no longer tidy. Paperwork was strewn on the floor around the desk, the drawers had been pulled out and turned upside down and several of the cupboards along the back wall also appeared to have been ransacked. What, if anything, had been taken would be almost impossible to know, Mower thought, and he knew that his fury at the carelessness which had allowed this to happen overnight would be nothing to Michael Thackeray’s.
    Behind him he heard Sharif return and spun round to face the uniformed constable who followed him.
    ‘Were you on duty here overnight?’ he asked, his voice harsh. But the constable, his face boyish under the helmet, shook his head dumbly, his eyes anxious.
    ‘I came on at eight,’ he said. ‘I don’t think anyone was up here overnight, sarge. There was no one here when I was dropped off. The place was locked up, they told me. They just gave me the keys to the house.’ He dug into his trouser pocket and pulled out the bunch of keys which he had used earlier to open the front door for them.
    ‘Is there one for this door?’ Mower asked, gesturing at the workshop, but when they examined the keys carefully it was evident that there was not.
    ‘So this place was probably left unlocked all night?’ Mower curbed his anger, knowing it should be directed elsewhere. ‘Bloody marvellous. Why didn’t they put up a sign inviting the local burglars in? Did you check round here at all?’
    The constable nodded.
    ‘I had a walk right round when I arrived,’ he said. ‘It all looked in order to me.’
    ‘You didn’t think to try the doors?’
    The constable shook his head uncomfortably.
    ‘I didn’t think of that, sarge,’ he mumbled.
    Mower glanced around the still snowy yard which was just beginning to thaw, the tracks left by the previous day’s invasion beginning to darken and fill with water.
    ‘If they’ve left any signs out here they’ll be gone in half an hour,’ he said bitterly. ‘The same with car tracks in the lane. How did you say you got up here?’ He turned again to the uncomfortable constable who was stamping his feet to keep out the insidious cold.
    ‘The panda car dropped me off,’ he said.
    ‘Are you the community bobby for the village?’ Mower asked.
    ‘No, that’s Gav Hewitt. He brought me up, but he’s on the front desk at the nick this morning. It’s a bit of a laugh, this community stuff, when we’re so short staffed, to be honest. I don’t reckon they get round their patch more than once a week.’
    ‘How far away’s the nick,’ Mower asked, still caught out occasionally by Bradfield’s complicated and hilly geography. ‘Thornton Lane, is it?’
    ‘Aye, that’s right, three miles or so. Technically we’re still in Bradfield here, but in fact we’re out in the sticks. You can see that.’ He gestured with ill-concealed contemptat the open moorland which loomed darkly above them beyond the end of the track which led to the cottage. ‘Nowt out there but sheep and the odd tumbledown barn. Not for miles. They reckon you can walk to Scotland without getting to another bloody village from here if you just keep going north. Nowt but heather and sheep and grouse and the odd road