This Thing of Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page A

puzzles.
    Presumably inflicted.
    Not conclusively .
    Evasive words. Snaky.
    I stare up at the cliff, trying to imagine the line of flight, until I realise that the tide is still coming in, washing at sands that had been dry when I arrived.
    I struggle back. I’m soaked already, but the parts that were thigh-deep before are waist-deep now and, when a bigger than normal wave comes in, I find myself lifted off the bottom and don’t recover my footing until the backwash drops me.
    But I make it back. Crawl up the slope I descended earlier and hurry back to my Alfa Romeo and the beauty of heated seats.
    Putting my now-sodden boots in the back of the car, I notice that my Blackstone’s Policing manuals are still sliding around in there. I’d put them there, intending to do some more revision at home one evening, but it seems like I might have forgotten to do that. Ah well.
    I wish I’d brought some dry clothes with me. Or not have got the ones I’m wearing completely soaked. But I have to live with the person I am, not the one I might prefer to be.
    I whack the heating up and shiver my way home.
    The day ends. And I think I’ve got my murder.

 
    4
     
    That first day with Ifor. The dungeons of CID.
    The exhibits rooms are downstairs in the basement. Each room is locked via a keypad to which only the relevant exhibits officer has the code. There are three exhibits rooms, of which only two are in general use. They’re largish, but mostly taken up by racks of metal shelving. Boxes of evidence bags, latex gloves, desiccants, sticky labels. A drying machine, for use with any exhibits that need to be preserved dry.
    The clutter, especially the shelving, dominates the room. Ifor’s own desk seems huddled away somehow. Marginal. He has a chair, a desk, a lamp, a computer, a phone, a printer, a desk set with lots of biros, a spidery pot plant, a desk calendar, and a poster of sun shining on a waterfall.
    My own table is like an afterthought to an afterthought. A bare table, on which a HOLMES terminal squats, the toad from a fairy tale.
    He is a nice man, Ifor. Good at his job. Patient. Doesn’t obviously dislike me. But he is slow. And repetitive. And keeps treating me like an apprentice wanting to learn at her master’s feet.
    ‘I’ll go on down to Splott now. Pick up the next load.’
    ‘Not Splott. Tremorfa.’
    ‘Oh yes. My last job was in Splott. This one’s in Tremorfa.’
    ‘Yes, you said.’
    Twice, in fact.
    ‘And you’ll get on with the cataloguing?’
    ‘Yes.’
    As we’ve already discussed.
    ‘And you’re sure you’re OK with the labels?’
    ‘Yes.’
    Ifor looks at me like he can’t quite credit me with that precocious degree of labelling skill. I can see he’s about to ask me again, so I pre-empt him by typing up a label and sending it to the printer. The label says, ‘I’m fine with the labels.’ I stick it, still warm, to my forehead.
    Ifor leans in to look, then laughs.
    ‘You’re very fast on the . . .’ He gestures downwards. ‘The . . .’
    ‘Keyboard.’
    ‘Yes.’
    Ifor looks like he wants to continue this conversation, which I certainly don’t. I say, ‘I can touch-type. Eighty words a minute when I’m blitzing.’ When that doesn’t achieve an end to the discussion, I add, ‘Which I’ll start doing now.’
    I sit at my little table and start work.
    Ifor says, ‘Good. OK. And you’re all fine, so I’ll go on down to the scene.’
    He looks for the keys to his van, finds them in his pocket, leaves.
    I start to catalogue exhibits.
     
Item description.
Time and date of collection.
Location code of collection.
Cross-reference to pre-collection photographs (if any).
Notes on condition.
Name of forensics officer.
Time and date of pick-up from crime scene.
Officer in charge of transport.
Signature collected?
Signature scanned?
     
 
     
    A whole heap of further data covering any forensics activity. Signatures collected and scanned for each chain-of-custody movement.