Murder of a Dead Man by Katherine John Read Free Book Online

been too mesmerised by her body to see them. But it was a magnificent body.
    Worth enduring a little squalor for.
    ‘How about right now?’ he suggested.
    ‘Why not? I’m sure the super won’t mind us missing the briefing.’
    ‘Cars break down all the time.’
    ‘Even new BMWs.’
    ‘Tyres blow out on BMWs same as Fords.’
    ‘Seeing as how you disapprove of my housekeeping, sure you wouldn’t prefer the blow out to happen outside your place? That way you could enjoy a tussle on guaranteed clean sheets’
    There was a peculiar glint in her green eyes. He cursed softly under his breath. Was she or wasn’t she leading him on?
    ‘Bill’s waiting.’ He cut his losses. For the first time in his life he’d didn’t quite know where he was with a woman.
    ‘Excuses, excuses. That’s what I always get when I make a man an honest proposition. Seems to me that in spite of all your promises you’re terrified of a female getting on top of you, Peter. In more ways than one. Well, we going to this meeting, or not?’ She pulled her keys out of her shoulder bag, walked down the stairs and out through the door leaving him feeling like an adolescent who’d just failed an initiation rite.
     
    ‘Sam Mayberry identified the shoes,’ Bill informed Trevor and Dan. ‘They belonged to a vagrant known as Tony. And any minute now we’re going to get a good look at him.’
    ‘There are photographs?’ Dan dipped a plastic stick into a polystyrene cup of coffee.
    ‘Sam mentioned that a team from the local television station were poking around Jubilee Street last month. They filmed a documentary on the council’s plans for the redevelopment of the area.
    They interviewed Sam, Tom Morris and Captain Arkwright, and most of the vagrants who weren’t camera shy, including our Tony.’
    ‘You’ve the film they took?’ Dan made a wry face as he sipped the bitter brew.
    ‘Producer said the film wasn’t finished. I told him we weren’t critics, just needed to see whatever footage he took of Tony. Andrew’s picking him, the film and Sam up.’
    ‘What about Tom Morris and Captain Arkwright?’ Trevor asked.
    ‘They knew of this Tony. But Sam knew him better, which is why Sam is coming and they’re not.
    Good evening,’ Bill greeted Peter and Anna. ‘Nice of you to join us.’
    ‘Peter?’ Trevor raised an eyebrow.
    ‘Our victim was a junkie, hence the Drug Squad presence,’ Dan explained.
    ‘And every time Serious Crimes digs itself into a hole it can’t get out of, it requisitions my help.’
    Peter smiled as he sat next to Anna.

CHAPTER THREE
    ‘That’s all there is. Fix, then oblivion. Drink or fix, sleep. Always looking for the next fix or drink. And living in hope that we’ll get it.’ The voice was educated, flat, diluted by futility. The speaker was tall, painfully thin and filthy. The pupils of his eyes were dilated. He glanced uneasily from side to side nervously searching – for the next drink? The next fix?
    ‘What happens when you haven’t the money to buy a drink or a fix, Tony?’ The voice was female, professional.
    ‘You go out and look. You have to walk around. Look –’
    The camera panned down the filthy clothes that hung loosely on the emaciated body. A long, black overcoat, threadbare, torn and stained. A crumpled, horizontally-striped shirt that must have cost someone money before it had been pushed into a charity sack. Jeans, scabrous and broken. Feet in oversized red baseball boots with blue laces. The camera climbed again, focusing on a pair of skeletal, fidgety hands; the fingers encrusted with brown scum, the nails split and blackened. Someone out of camera sight handed over a cigarette. Clean hands passing swiftly over grimy ones, careful not to touch.
    The lens followed the cigarette being carried to the man’s mouth. Cracked, dry lips opened to display the yellowed chipped edges of neglected teeth. The face contorted, and the eyes closed as smoke was drawn deeply into lungs. The