Still Waters Read Online Free PDF Page B

musty.
    ‘Unusual, those, aren’t they?’ Fran said quietly. Even after all these years, it always seemed natural to speak in lowered tones in the house of the dead. Reverence was hard, however, if you were padding round in protective gear, to avoid contaminating the scene.
    Pete didn’t share her sensibility. ‘Smells like a polecat’s boudoir, doesn’t it?’
    ‘As if – and I’m only thinking out loud here, Pete – he might have expected his body to be found here, and wanted to overcome the smells of mortality? Though the fresheners would have to be pretty pungent to do that for long.’
    ‘And he’d have needed automatic fly-sprays too. Unless he meant to pack his own cadaver with ice.’
    She laughed as she had to at the gallows humour. ‘No sign of a bath full of ice cubes? You’d need industrial quantities.’
    ‘More than for your average party, all right.’ He stopped short. ‘Guv – er, Fran – what you saw on Saturday, it wasn’t like it seemed.’
    She gave a snort of dry laughter. ‘It’s no business of mine who you shag, so long as it’s not in police time.’
    ‘But I’m not shagging her, Fran. Not with Elaine and the twins at home. Honestly. We’re friends, that’s all,’ he pleaded.
    Since he’d raised the topic, she’d let him have it. ‘If you ask me, friendship that
close
’, she leant on the word, ‘can be just as hurtful as a full-blown affair if you’re a woman at home whose life is dominated by two kids. How old? Four? Three! God, nervous breakdown time! But as I said, it’s none of my business. And Alec’s kitchen is. Shall we have a look?’
    It had the same unused look as her own before Mark came on the scene. But the cupboards were stocked with china and glass and there was a set of good saucepans. But when it came to food, the cupboard – together with the fridge-freezer – was bare. The pedal bin had been emptied.
    Back to the living room. It was dominated by a state-of-the-art TV and hi-fi system, with very few books. A stack of DVDs suggested, at a quick glance, a fairly conventional taste in both music and film.
    ‘Those newspapers – how do they correlate with the date of his death?’
    He peered with the air of a man who ought to be wearing glasses. ‘The
Telegraph
for the day before. The local rag – the previous weekend.
Radio Times
…’ He flipped it down.
    ‘Can I look? Is he the sort of man to mark the programmes he means to see?’
    ‘So we’d know if he meant to go on living beyond the day he seems to have topped himself?’
    ‘Exactly. And here we are. He dies on a Tuesday and he wanted to watch
The Bill
on Wednesday and Thursday. What’s that?’ She picked up an A5 magazine. It looked strangely familiar.
    ‘A freebie from another part of the county, up your way.
Lenham Focus
. God knows how he got hold of that. And why.’
    ‘Have you got a really junior kid you could put on to finding out? Just out of interest.’ She gave it a quick glance. She never got round to reading it at home, always consigning it to the paper collection in her scullery and wishing she could intercept the person delivering it to tell him or her to omit her cottage from their round. She bagged it for him, watching himjot down the details. Come to think of it, she might have a copy for a more recent week still in the recycling sack at home.
    ‘The bedroom next?’
    ‘There are two. This one seems to be the spare – overlooking the road, no balcony, rather small.’
    ‘And as tidy as if he never used it.’
    ‘He did, as a matter of fact. He used it as his office. That cupboard opens to reveal a desk.’ He pointed but didn’t open the door.
    ‘How clever. And you’ve checked his computer?’
    ‘Not yet. I’ll get one of the lads on to it.’ He made a note, then realised her eyebrow was raised. ‘Or one of the g—
women
.’
    She nodded. Everything seemed to be pointing to a suicide, except for that business with the newspapers, which slightly