An Air That Kills by Andrew Taylor Read Free Book Online

the back,’ Evans said. ‘When there were stables, they used to take the horses out to pasture that way.’
    A moment later, they reached the front yard. Evans collected his bag and they went outside on to the road.
    â€˜I’m going up to the High Street now.’ Thornhill said as Evans was locking up. ‘Can I give you a lift?’
    Evans looked at him. ‘Thanks.’
    â€˜Where do you want to go?’ Thornhill asked driving up to the centre of the town.
    â€˜The library. If it’s not out of your way.’
    Neither of them said anything else until they had reached the High Street. Thornhill stopped outside the building which housed the town’s museum and library. He kept the engine running.
    â€˜By the way – just for the record – who was with you when you found the bones?’
    â€˜Frank Thomas. Emrys Hughes.’ Evans yanked his door handle; the door swung open, letting in a blast of icy air. ‘Charlie Meague.’
    Evans got out of the car. ‘Thanks for the lift.’ He shut the door and walked unhurriedly through the rain up the steps to the library.
    Thornhill kneaded his gloved fingers together in an attempt to squeeze the cold out of them. The rain slid diagonally down the windscreen from left to right. Cars, a bus and two lorries swished past.
    Charlie Meague again, he thought. In his job. Thornhill had long ago learned to respect the power of coincidence. Williamson was right, at least in this: Lydmouth was a small world.
    Several people came in and out of the library. Almost everyone was in a hurry because of the weather. There was one exception – a man in a billowing raincoat. He was hatless and had a nautical beard which in profile gave him a resemblance to the head of King George V on prewar coins.
    The man sauntered down the steps from the library and glanced about him. He raised his face and sniffed the air as though it brought him a bracing sea breeze rather than the foggy vapours of a cold November evening. Thornhill watched him crossing the road and strolling into the pillared entrance of the Bull Hotel.
    None of the passers-by gave the Austin or Thornhill a second glance. From a purely professional viewpoint, this was, if anything, an advantage, but it also made him feel anonymous and insignificant. It reminded him yet again that he was a stranger here.
    In his previous job, he had been based in an area he had known since boyhood. He had not been sentimentally attached to the Fens, but they had a stark simplicity which he had appreciated – not at the time, but since the move to Lydmouth. In the Fens of north Cambridgeshire, the flatness, the huge fields, the ruler-straight dykes, the scarcity of trees – everything made concealment difficult. Here, in this land of trees, rivers, hills and unexpected valleys, it was the reverse. He looked at the people who flowed along the pavements, their faces dark and closed. Most of them were swathed against the winter cold and he felt that they were hugging secrets to themselves.
    Thornhill glanced over his shoulder at the box on the back seat. There was another secret – and one which in all probability would remain a secret for ever. He had gone to Templefields as a matter of routine, mainly to avoid giving Williamson further grounds for criticism. But the contents of the box had caught his imagination and he wished that they hadn’t. A handful of bones, perhaps from a baby. A scrap of newspaper, probably from the last century. The silver brooch that might or might not have something to do with the other items. Weren’t knots in jewellery often designed to be given and received as tokens of true love?
    There was something pathetic about the cluster of grubby objects. ‘Someone’s by-blow,’ Dr Bayswater had said with an implicit sneer attached to the verdict: silly girls shouldn’t get themselves pregnant, and if they did, they had to cope with the