The Salton Killings Read Online Free PDF

new,” Davenport explained, speaking over his shoulder as he drove. “There was subsidence on the old one. Undermined by all the old salt workin’s.”
    â€œAnd it’s called . . .?”
    â€œMaltham Road, sir.”
    Woodend turned to Rutter, who was sitting next to him.
    â€œMaltham Road,” he scoffed. “Not got much imagination ‘Up North’, have they, Sergeant?”
    Rutter made a gruff sound that could have been a laugh or an apology. He wished he could travel back in time a few hours and start again. He was sure that every unwise comment he had made to the Chief Inspector had been taken down and
would
be used in evidence against him.
    â€œSo this is the route the school bus takes, is it?” Woodend asked.
    â€œYes, sir. That’s how Diane Thorburn left the village, but it isn’t how she got back.”
    â€œIsn’t it?” Woodend asked, sounding interested. “Why do you say that?”
    Davenport overtook a bubble car that was crawling along the road like a sluggish beetle.
    â€œI did some checkin’ at the bus terminus. The village is the quickest route from Maltham to Ashburton – that’s the nearest big town – but the buses don’t go through it because the bridge over the canal can’t take the weight. So they do a sort of loop instead, through Claxon and up the Ashburton Road. It meets Maltham Road about a mile north of the village, at a place we call Four Lane Ends.”
    â€œAnd?” Woodend asked.
    â€œWell, that’s how she got back, sir. Caught the five past nine outside her school, got off at Four Lane Ends and walked back down to Salton. The conductor remembers her well. Wondered why she wasn’t in school. Said she seemed very nervous – sort of jumpy, like.”
    A railway line crossed the road at the edge of the village, and as they approached it a solidly built woman wearing an apron was pushing one of the heavy gates along its metal groove to close off the track.
    â€œShouldn’t have to wait long, sir,” Davenport said. “This is only a spur up the salt works.”
    â€œThis bus that Diane Thorburn took,” Woodend said. “It would reach Four Lane Ends at . . .?”
    â€œNine thirty, sir.”
    â€œSo,” Woodend mused, “if we estimate half an hour for her to walk back to the village – an’ that’s bein’ generous – she’d have been back here by ten.”
    â€œThat’s right, sir.”
    The engine, puffing, and pulling a line of goods wagons behind it, crossed the road. The woman in the pinny emerged from the small cottage next to the line and began to swing the gates open again.
    â€œYou’ve done a good job, Constable,” Woodend said.
    He could see Davenport’s shoulders rise as his chest swelled, and caught a glimpse of a self-congratulatory smile in the rearview mirror.
    â€œNow would you mind tellin’ me what the bloody hell the girl was doin’ comin’ back to the village in the first place?”
    The shoulders drooped, the smile disappeared. Davenport edged the car forward.
    They passed a small black and white sign announcing Salton and a larger one warning motorists of the danger of steam vapour for the next half mile. To the left, Woodend saw a neat square building that could only be the police house.
    â€œPark here,” he instructed Davenport.
    â€œDI Holland’s waitin’ for you at the salt store, sir.”
    â€œAye,” Woodend said. “Well it won’t do him any harm to wait another ten minutes. I feel like stretchin’ me legs.”
    The Wolseley pulled into the kerb. Woodend stepped out and looked around him. Across from the police house stood the church, a nondescript nineteenth century edifice. At the other end of the village the huge black chimney of Brierley’s Salt Works belched out smoke like an angry dragon.
    Salton wasn’t a pretty place by