Winding Up the Serpent Read Online Free PDF Page A

frenzied barking, and she drew back as the dog’s black muzzle pushed against the letterbox. She looked at the vet. ‘Over to you.’
    Roderick Beeston nodded and he pulled a canister out of his pocket. ‘I’d better give him a puffer,’ he said, ‘before you bang much more on that door. It’s going to send him mad and I know Ben. He’s a big, bad dog.’
    He winked at Mike, and Joanna could feel the empathy between the two men which seemed to extend to the uniformed officers standing behind them and which excluded her.
    â€˜Well, get on with it, please,’ she said crisply. ‘Something’s wrong and the sooner we get inside that house the better. The woman might be ill.’
    The vet took a canister from the back of the Landrover and a pair of thick leather gauntlets. Then he propped open the letterbox while the four police watched him. He gave a few short puffs to the excited dog and the barking softened then stopped and they heard a thud as the heavy dog hit the floor. The vet looked pleased. ‘General anaesthetic,’ he said. ‘Lasts an hour.’ He stuffed the canister back into his pocket. ‘Haven’t used it before,’ he said. ‘New on the market. Good stuff.’
    â€˜Very interesting.’ Joanna tried to ignore Mike’s amused face. ‘Just the thing for a burglar faced with an aggressive dog.’
    The vet looked at her. ‘It’s on the market to reduce the number of dog bites to vets,’ he said. ‘They can be a big problem and if; God forbid, rabies ever creeps along the Chunnel into Britain dog bites would be potentially lethal.’ He frowned at her. ‘Even the police might be glad of a whiff of this stuff aimed in the right direction then. It isn’t specifically targeted against the police force and for the house burglar. Don’t be paranoid, Inspector,’ he mocked. ‘There are plenty of good things on the market that can be put to bad use. Look at glue.’
    Joanna ignored the comment and the irritation that pricked her. Instead she spoke to the two uniformed officers. ‘Well, what are you waiting for? We’d better break in.’
    It wasn’t difficult. Marilyn Smith had relied on the dog for security, and a quick tap on the glass in the door, followed by a loop of an arm through to open the Yale and they were inside, leaving the vet to care for the prostrate animal.
    Inside, the house was a riot of colour: florid petunia wallpaper in the hall, violent magenta paintwork and vividly patterned carpets. They stepped into their first room.
    It took less than three minutes for them to find the source of the smell. Mike stepped in the heap that Ben had deposited in desperation behind the chintz-covered sofa in the sitting room.
    Leaving the three policemen downstairs, Joanna walked up the short staircase towards the threat of the first floor. She drew a blank in the bathroom: dropped clothes scattered on the floor and an oily tide-mark in the bath. There was a faint scent of musk as though the occupant had had an exotic douse a few hours before. She found it a disturbing presence.
    The first bedroom was small, neat and yellow and it appeared unused; the second was a turquoise room set out specially for visitors.
    It was in the third bedroom that she found the missing nurse. Again the room was brightly decorated. The curtains were drawn but gusts of wind billowed them aside so the light alternated between dappled sunshine and the rather dingy pink blush shed by two shaded lamps. The effect was seedy, artificial. But it was one of movement. Not so the woman lying on the bed.
    Joanna stared at her, appalled by the theatrical, brothel-like backdrop of the room with its main figure, the whore, lying on the bed. She had expected to find something different in the nurse’s house. Not this.
    â€˜Oh, God,’ she said softly. ‘Oh, God.’
    Marilyn Smith was lying