The Sound of Broken Glass Read Online Free PDF Page A

a good start with the team’s detective constable, Shara MacNicols, although that had not been Melody’s doing.
    Shara was a young single mum and a good copper, but possessive of what she felt was her patch. Gemma didn’t like the friction on her team, but knew the situation needed both time and delicate handling. She sympathized with Shara—she’d been on her own with a small child, trying to make it in the job in a system that had seemed weighted against her—and she knew that to Shara it looked as if Melody had been brought in over her head because she was white and came from an obviously privileged background.
    In truth, it was the chip on Shara’s shoulder that was holding her back, but the young woman would never believe that. And then, Gemma thought with a glance at her partner and a suppressed smile, there were Melody’s suits. She supposed she couldn’t blame Shara for marking Melody out as a highflier.
    â€œDo we have an ID on the victim?” she asked, putting aside the problem of her team’s dynamics.
    Melody had no need to consult notes. “A Mr. Vincent Arnott. At least according to the driving license in his wallet. The hotel clerk told uniform that he always signed in as Mr. Smith.”
    â€œHow original,” said Gemma, then frowned. “Always? He was a regular? What sort of hotel is this?”
    â€œI don’t know it.” Melody glanced at the car’s sat nav. “It’s the other side of Crystal Palace from the park. Church Road.”
    â€œThe only thing I know about Crystal Palace is the football team,” said Gemma. In the light Saturday traffic, they’d reached the Battersea Bridge. Looking down as they crossed the Thames, she saw that the water was as gunmetal gray as the sky.
    As they drove through Battersea, she thought of her friend Hazel, who lived in a tiny walled bungalow just off the Battersea Road, and felt a pang of regret. She’d hoped to squeeze in a weekend visit with her, but now that looked unlikely.
    â€œI went once,” said Melody, and when Gemma looked at her blankly, added, “To Crystal Palace. The park. A school trip. Was it the beginning of year three or year four?” she mused, frowning. “Anyway, it was early in term, September, I think. We’d studied pictures in class, and I remember I walked along the empty terraces, trying to imagine what it must have been like, that great glass palace. And I couldn’t comprehend how there could be so little left of something so grand and marvelous.”
    â€œIt burned, didn’t it?”
    Melody nodded. “A few years before the war. I suppose it was unlikely to have escaped the bombing, in any case, a target like that.” She gestured upwards, towards the rise of Clapham Common and the wall of fog above it. “You could see it from the City, you know.”
    â€œIt was that big?”
    â€œHuge. And plunked right on top of Sydenham Hill, the highest point between London and the south coast.”
    â€œWhat’s it like, Crystal Palace? The area, I mean.” Having grown up in North London, and until this new posting, having worked mostly in West London, Gemma was still learning her new patch.
    â€œGoing upmarket a bit, I think, but I don’t know it well myself. Look.” Melody pointed at the blue patches appearing in the fog, and Gemma glimpsed one of the Crystal Palace television masts before cloud shrouded it once again.
    Melody concentrated on her sat nav as they looped round the elegant buildings of Dulwich College, then wound up through bare trees until the road leveled again at the top of Gipsy Hill.
    Gemma glimpsed pubs and shops as they looped around a triangle of streets at the hill’s summit, following the one-way system. Then as they began a gentle descent down a tree-lined road, she saw the familiar strobe of blue lights. The journey had taken them less than forty-five minutes, door to