A Room Swept White by Sophie Hannah Read Free Book Online

careful owner over a lifetime. Yes?’
    ‘I suppose so, sir,’ said Leckenby.
    ‘Good. Make sure you have a full resumé of the M9 Beretta, complete with colour pictures, by tomorrow morning, to distribute to everybody,’ the Snowman ordered. ‘Assuming you haven’t changed your mind by then and decided the murder weapon was a turbo-charged pea-shooter from the shores of Lake Windermere. Interview teams – you’ll need to start from scratch. Everyone you’ve already spoken to, Helen Yardley’s friends, family, neighbours, etc – you’ll need to speak to them again and find the military connection if it’s there to be found. CCTV teams – you’re looking for any cars with number plates that are either American or armed forces or both. Or – and I hope this goes without saying – anyone known personally to the Yardleys. CCTV could have been a sizeable headache for us, given that the two cameras nearest to Bengeo Street are on the busiest stretch of the Rawndesley Road, but thankfully we’ve done well with witnesses – moreof which in a moment – so for the time being we’re prioritising Monday morning between 7.45 and 8.15 a.m. and Monday afternoon between 5 and 6.10 p.m. for the camera outside the Picture House. For the one by the entrance to Market Place, the times we’re looking at are slightly different: 7.30 to 8 a.m. and 5.15 to 6.25 p.m. Of particular interest is any car going in the direction of Bengeo Street during one of the earlier time slots and away from it in the later ones.’
    The DS with overall charge of the CCTV team, David Prescott from Rawndesley, raised his hand and said, ‘A lot of people driving down the Rawndesley Road at rush hour are going to be people Helen Yardley knew. She was a childminder. How many children did she mind whose parents lived in Spilling or Silsford and worked in Rawndesley?’
    ‘I’m not asking your team to red-flag anybody on the basis of CCTV footage alone, Sergeant. I’m simply suggesting that it’s an avenue of enquiry.’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘We don’t even know if the killer drove to Bengeo Street or walked, not for certain,’ said Proust. ‘If he walked, he might have come from Turton Street or Hopelea Street.’
    ‘He could have cycled,’ said DC Colin Sellers.
    ‘Or perhaps he fell out of the sky and landed in the Yardleys’ front garden,’ the Snowman snapped. ‘DS Prescott, instruct your officers not to bother with the CCTV footage until we’ve contacted all the hot-air-balloon suppliers in the Culver Valley.’
    The silence in the room was as thick as glue.
    Another one for the archive, thought Simon. The killer might have driven or walked, but the idea that he could have cycled to the murder scene was laughable and far-fetched,because cycling wasn’t something Giles Proust ever did. Therefore it was contemptible and not worth mentioning.
    ‘Moving on to witnesses, then,’ said the inspector glacially. ‘Mrs Stella White of 16 Bengeo Street – that’s the house directly opposite number 9, the Yardley house – saw a man walking up the Yardleys’ path to the front door at 8.20 on Monday morning. She didn’t see if he got out of a car – her first sighting of him was on the Yardleys’ property. Mrs White was strapping her son Dillon into the car to drive him to school, not paying much attention to what was happening on the other side of the road, but she was able to give us a general description: a man between the ages of thirty-five and fifty with dark hair, wearing darkish clothes including a coat, smartly dressed, though not in a suit. He wasn’t carrying anything, she said, though an M9 Beretta 9 millimetre gun would easily fit in a large coat pocket.’
    A description like that was about as useful as no description at all, thought Simon. By tomorrow Mrs White, if she was anything like most witnesses, would be saying that maybe the dark hair wasn’t so dark, and maybe the coat was a dressing-gown.
    ‘By the time Mrs