The Skeleton Room Read Online Free PDF Page B

million pounds’ worth of computer equipment onto a lorry which is stopped by masked men on its
     way to the M5. The driver’s knocked out, the lorry’s pinched, then it’s found abandoned near Exeter with all the valuable
     stuff nicked.’
    ‘Which points to the hijackers having inside knowledge.’
    ‘And if they want to keep their man on the inside from talking, what better way than to hold his wife . . .’
    ‘His estranged wife.’
    ‘Perhaps they didn’t know that. Or maybe he still has a soft spot for her – that’s what Lisa Marriott implied, anyway. She
     might have been kidnapped and held until the job was over.’
    Wesley looked sceptical. ‘It’s possible, I suppose.’
    Gerry Heffernan’s office door crashed open and he emerged with a mug of steaming tea in his hand, sleeves rolled up ready
     for business.
    ‘Right, you lot. Some poor woman’s been found in the sea near Millicombe and we’ve got to find out who she is. I want details
     of any women reported missing on our patch. Aged between twenty-five and forty-five. Come on. Look lively.’
    There was a flurry of activity. Trish Walton made for the filing cabinets, beating her colleagues to it.
    Wesley reached for the sheet of paper lying on Rachel’s desk.
    ‘Right age,’ she said.
    Wesley didn’t reply. He was reading the description of Sally Gilbert. When Rachel had spoken of her, mentioning the probability
     that she had run off with a lover or was involved somehow in the hijack, he hadn’t associated her with the mutilated corpse
     that had been pulled from the water. But now, as he read her description in Rachel’s small, neat handwriting, he knew that
     they might have a name for the dead woman – the lady from the sea.
    ‘Short dark hair. Last seen wearing a red T-shirt and cream trousers,’ he said softly. With a bit of imagination that could
     describe the sea-sodden garments that had draped themselves around the woman’s drowned flesh. ‘It could be her.’
    ‘The woman who was found in the sea?’
    ‘I think we should pay this Trevor Gilbert a visit.’
    Wesley stood up and made for Gerry Heffernan’s office, clutching Rachel’s report.
    Detective Constable Steve Carstairs sat at his desk behind a pile of paperwork and watched at Wesley Peterson left the office
     with Rachel.
    They were on their way to see Trevor Gilbert, the warehouse manager at Nestec. As soon as Steve had heard about the lorry
     hijacking, he had thought it smelt like an inside job – or at least a job that needed inside knowledge. Gilbert might be involved,
     the man on the inside. Or, in view of recent developments, perhaps he’d done away with his missus. But whatever it was, it
     was a shame that Peterson was going to get the credit . . . as usual.
    Steve jabbed his ballpoint pen into the sheet of paper before him on the desk and twisted.
    His telephone began to ring, making him jump. Hepicked up the receiver and barked his name.
    ‘Steve?’
    ‘Yeah. Who’s that?’
    The voice sounded familiar yet he couldn’t place it. Probably one of his grasses.
    ‘You free tonight?’
    ‘Who is that?’
    He wished the speaker would give him a clue . . . or a name.
    ‘Meet me in the Tradmouth Arms . . . No, you’d better make it the Star. I don’t fancy bumping into Scouse Gerry. Eight o’clock.’
    A grin spread across Steve Carstairs’ face. ‘Harry, mate. What are you doing down this way, my old son?’ He unconsciously
     adopted a cockney twang when speaking to Harry Marchbank – he always had. Harry had been a detect ive sergeant in Tradmouth
     CID before transferring to the Met, and when Steve had joined the department as a raw young detective constable he had thought
     the sun shone out of Harry Marchbank’s nether regions.
    ‘Scouse Gerry still about, is he?’ Marchbank’s accent was now so firmly anchored in the Thames that nobody would have guessed
     at his Newton Abbot roots.
    Steve lowered his voice. ‘He’s DCI