End in Tears by Ruth Rendell Read Free Book Online

computer. Gwenda didn’t quite know what. She had never been able to get the hang of computers herself.
    â€œAll butterfingers,” she said to Hannah’s disgust. “I expect I’m dyslexic. That’s always the excuse, isn’t it?”
    Hannah put it in her report. If the Marshalsons had a computer, why did Amber want to know how to use it? Couldn’t her stepmother have taught her? Anyway, it was inconceivable that someone of eighteen had no computer skills. They all did, from the age of five at least. Maybe John Brooks was having a secret relationship with Amber. This would be worth looking into.
    Lydia Burton at number three was altogether better and more rewarding, though when Hannah thought about it she realized she might only be thinking this way because Ms. Burton was her kind of woman, single, independent, and with a highly responsible job. Amber Marshalson had attended the school, of which she was head teacher, for several years after her father and by then seriously ill mother had moved to Mill Lane. The first Mrs. Marshalson had died when Amber was seven and her father had married a fellow director of his interior decorating company a year afterward.
    â€œPoor Amber became very difficult. She never really became reconciled to her stepmother, and that’s a shame because Diana is a very nice woman. She’s been wonderful with the baby.”
    A small West Highland dog came into the room and jumped into Ms. Burton’s lap. Bal asked her again about walking her dog at half-past midnight and she repeated her story of seeing the man in the hooded jacket standing among the trees. No, she didn’t think he was holding anything, though perhaps he had a backpack. Yes, she was sure he had a backpack. If she closed her eyes she could see the bulge on his back.
    â€œIt might have been a sack or a bag slung over his shoulder. I was a bit frightened, you see. It was getting on for one by then and I was out alone with my dog. He obviously isn’t much of a guard dog, as you can see, poor little chap. I crossed the road and let myself in here as fast as I could. I should have called the police, shouldn’t I? One always thinks of these things when it’s too late…”
    Â 
    In the great heat that continued the next day they went on searching for the weapon, knowing only that they were looking for a brick, a lump of concrete, a breeze block, or even an iron bar. Though he knew not to expect it yet, Wexford grew impatient waiting for the plinthologist’s verdict.
    Leaving her report on his desk, Hannah told him why she thought they hadn’t found the weapon. By then they knew that Carina Laxton had fixed the time of death as nearer to two A.M. than one.
    â€œBecause whatever it was was inside his backpack, guv. The guy Lydia Burton saw had a backpack. What else could he have had in it but the brick or concrete block he used to kill Amber?”
    â€œMaybe. I’m not calling off the search until the brick man comes up with something definite. He has a specimen from the wound to examine—poor devil.”
    Hannah thought it unbecoming in someone of Wexford’s rank—or indeed any rank—to make remarks with such an undercurrent of emotion running through them. This was the brick person’s
job.
She was used to it, for God’s sake. It was her career. Hannah deplored Wexford’s use of the word “man.” How did he know this expert wasn’t a woman? The pathologist was, after all, as was the coroner who would open the inquest on Amber’s body tomorrow.
    â€œHe brought the brick or whatever with him, guv,” she said, “and when he’d…used it, he took it away with him.”
    â€œOr maybe ‘she,’ Sergeant,” said Wexford in a neutral tone.

CHAPTER 6
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    G ated estates were not common in this part of Sussex, but it seemed to Wexford that each time a new enclave of middle- to high-income houses