Damned by Logic by Jeffrey Ashford Read Free Book Online Page B

of cash and the dealer caught up with her ... Is there any contact evidence?’
    â€˜Not so much as a stray hair.’
    â€˜Then we have no clothes, birth marks, deformities, contact traces or jewellery. A professional dumped her in the woods, leaving only her prints. I wouldn’t bet they’ll take us anywhere or he’d have hacked the fingers off.’
    As if on cue, one of the SOCOs walked to where they stood and showed Glover several forms on each one of which was a finger or thumb print, taken with the customary difficulty from the dead body.
    Late Monday morning, his colleague Betterley slapped a folder down on Ansell’s desk. ‘Message from on high. More zing. Emphasis on luxurious cabins, gourmet feasts, exotic destinations, the opportunity – tinged with sex – to make new friends. And much less on the benefit and pleasure of learning about the lives of peoples in foreign lands ... Doesn’t do to make a prospective passenger think he might learn something.’ He left.
    Salter, who worked at the other desk in the room, spoke sardonically. ‘You must have made the mistake of painting things as they are, not as the punters must be made to believe they will be.’ He gave Ansell a sympathetic raise of the eyebrows and promptly went back to whatever facts he was exaggerating for his own press release on a newly opened businessman’s hotel in some generic, dull city.
    Ansell took a deep breath and turned back to his own copy. He spent another fruitless forty minutes trying to produce a zingier picture of life on a cruise ship, but remembered too much other detail as he did so, detail not normally relevant to the prospective customers of the Rex Cruising Company.
A barque is named for her sails, not her size. Square rigged for’d ...
Are you waiting for an engraved invitation?
    The phone interrupted now bitter memories. ‘David?’
    His brain, still with the past, traitorously identified Melanie’s voice. ‘It’s you!’
    â€˜Why’s that surprising?’ A suspicious tinge to the voice.
    Eileen. ‘Oh, sorry, I’ve been waiting for a call from a client and I thought you were she.’ He tried to explain his way out of his sudden outburst, certain that the disappointment in his voice was all too evident.
    â€˜I should have expected you to recognize my voice after all these years. I need you to go to the homeware outlet on the outskirts of town and pick up the material I’ve been waiting to have delivered for weeks. As you may remember, I need it to replace those cushions in our front room.’
    â€˜Will do.’
    â€˜And we’ve hardly any butter. You almost finished it and forgot to put it down on the list.’
    â€˜One pack?’
    â€˜Yes. And this time take the trouble to make certain it’s salted.’
    â€˜I’ll examine the packaging very carefully.’
    She rang off.
    His colleague Salter said, ‘Are you expecting a client’s phone call or was that domestic cotton wool?’
    â€˜Why ask?’
    â€˜I was born inquisitive.’
    â€˜In spades. It’s lunch time. A half at the local?’ Ansell suggested, the bitter disappointment still evident in his tone.
    â€˜For you, laced with wormwood?’

EIGHT
    G lover, seated at his desk, belched. He should not have encouraged the civilian worker in the canteen to place a few more chips on his plate. He looked down at the notes he had written regarding the murdered woman – known facts, conjectured possibilities. The sheet of paper should have accommodated many more words.
    The switchboard called him to say the chief superintendent wanted to speak to him; as always, ‘detective’ had been left out, but he accepted from whom the call would be.
    â€˜Any news from DABS or Forensics?’ Abbotts asked.
    â€˜Nothing on the fingerprints yet, sir.’
    â€˜Anything to report?
    â€˜Very little, I’m