Unnatural Wastage Read Online Free PDF Page B

relationships between neighbours,’ commented Rathbone, ‘but as she witnessed the spat between Tremaine and Ellerman we’d better pay her a visit. Needless to say, we’ll be having another talk to him as well.’ He drained his mug and stood up. ‘That’s all for now. See you tomorrow.’
    â€˜It’s turned out to be quite an interesting weekend after all,’ said Vicky drily as she and Sukey headed for their respective cars.
    First thing the following morning DCI Leach summoned Rathbone and his team to his office. ‘Right, troops,’ he began, ‘I’ll bring you up to date and then I’ll have your reports. The victim has been formally identified as Fenella Tremaine, aged forty-five, by her daughter, Nancy Brotherton, who lives in Bath. She hadn’t seen her mother for some time and it appears they weren’t on the best of terms – they fell out over Nancy’s choice of partner. She appeared shocked, but not particularly grieved by her mother’s death and we’ll certainly need to talk to her again. Any questions?’
    Penny Osborne put up her hand. ‘Did Nancy recognize the murder weapon, sir?
    â€˜She said she’d never seen it before, and so far as she knows her mother never had any interest in oriental gizmos. Not that we’ve any reason to think she was stabbed with her own knife. We’ve called a press conference for eleven o’clock tomorrow and I’d like to give them something to prove we haven’t been taking it easy just because it’s the weekend. I’ve gone through your initial reports and there are obviously a lot of questions we’ll want answers to. The first is, did the killer stab Tremaine as she was dumping a bag of rubbish and heave her body into Sycamore Park, or was she killed somewhere else and brought to the skip by car and her body thrown into the skip? Any thoughts on that, Greg?’
    â€˜Well sir, as the caretaker picks up the black bags of rubbish and takes them to the skips daily Monday to Friday, there doesn’t seem to be any reason why she should be taking stuff there. However, he told us that she was one of a number of people who sometimes take their own empty bottles, food cans, newspapers and so on to the recycling bins. CSIs will be checking the contents for fingerprints and also sifting through the contents of the bags she was lying on . . . after they’ve done all the necessary checks for blood and so on.’
    â€˜So she could have been there to dump her empties, the killer happened to be there at the same time, complete with knife, stuck it into her back, heaved her up into the skip and scarpered. That sounds a bit unlikely, don’t you think?’
    â€˜If the killer was a resident he might have seen her heading for the shed with a bag of stuff, seen his opportunity and followed her.’
    â€˜So we’re talking about a premeditated killing?’
    â€˜Things do seem to point in that direction, sir.’
    â€˜Has Doc Hanley given us an approximate time of death?’
    â€˜He thinks she’d been dead for eight to ten hours, so somewhere between ten and midnight on Friday.’
    â€˜What about lighting?’
    â€˜Sunset was just before nine, but the sky was clear so there’d have been some natural light for another hour or so. There are security lights, but all except a few at the entry and exit points to the estate are switched off at midnight. According to Sergeant Drury, there had been some arguments about this in the past. Some people wanted to keep them on all night while others were keen to see their electricity charges kept to a minimum.’
    â€˜I wonder if that was behind the spat between Tremaine and Ellerman that Miss Springfield mentioned,’ said Leach. ‘It seems you’ve got plenty there to be going on with, Greg. Has anyone anything else to add?’
    Vicky Armstrong put up her hand. ‘Excuse