Separated at Death (The Lakeland Murders) by J J Salkeld Read Free Book Online

of leaving a jacket on the back of your chair when you went home.
     
    Hall spent the next hour reading statements and reports, and by the time he realised that he was hungry it was almost seven. So he left the building and drove to a cafe that opened early. He treated himself to a fry up, safe in the knowledge that he probably wouldn’t eat again for many hours, and was still back at his desk by the time the team started to come in.
     
    Ian Mann stuck his head round the office door before he’d even taken his padded jacket off. ‘Doc Beech is ready for us. I suppose there’s no point me taking my coat off?
     
    They were round at the hospital in ten minutes, mainly because the school run hadn’t started yet. Hall remembered that when he’d first moved to Kendal, newly married and living in a brand new house on a fresh-as-paint housing estate, that cyclists still poured over the bridges on the way to and from the shoe factory, the carpet factory and the dairy processing plant. But now they’d all either gone completely or down-sized their workforce radically. And, since the big new hospital had opened soon after Hall had arrived, the town had increasingly lived up to its ‘auld grey town’ tag in more ways than one. But fortunately for Mann and Hall all those retired accountants and local government workers from Manchester and Leeds, who had spent 40 years dreaming of a retirement in the Lakes, were still actually dreaming at that time of day.
     
    Hall didn’t like the mortuary, and since he’d been in Kendal he could count on the fingers of two hands the number of times that he’d been. He found himself thinking about his wife as Mann drove them carefully round town, and that just made Hall feel more uneasy.
     
    Mann didn’t seem remotely concerned about paying a visit to the mortuary. But Hall thought that he’d probably seen plenty of bodies, and had almost certainly killed people himself. It wasn’t something that they ever discussed. He knew that Mann had been married as a very young man, to a local girl Hall seemed to remember, but it hadn’t worked out. They never talked about that either, and even when they went walking together, usually up on to High Street from Patterdale and then right along the line of the old Roman Road, Mann never talked about about his life before he joined Cumbria Constabulary. He seemed determined to live in a perpetual present, and increasingly Hall found himself envious of that.
     
    Doctor Beech was waiting in his office. He’d already emailed over a copy of his initial findings, which Hall had just had time to skim-read through as they drove, and now he was ready to go through it, and to show them the body. Hall knew that Amy would be naked under the thin sheet on the slab, and that made him feel even more uneasy.
     
    Beech offered them both a coffee, pointing to the machine outside in the open office area adjoining the mortuary. Hall couldn’t think of anything he wanted less, but Mann said that he could go a cup.
     
    ‘Was everything clear in the report?’ asked Beech. ‘Manual strangulation, but we’ll do more work today on the neck. I’m pretty certain it’s going to be a man, wearing gloves, and he just had one go to get the job done. Exactly what I said when we first saw Amy in fact. Grabbed her from in front and just held on, so he was very certain about what he was doing. Very decisive in fact. Would you like to have a look, or are the pictures enough for you?’
    ‘The pictures are fine’ said Hall quickly. ‘So you’re very confident that we’re looking for a man?’
    ‘I’d say yes, you’re after a man. The chances of a woman having that large a span are very small, certainly under 10%. He was wearing thin gloves, leather perhaps, so we can be very clear about his span.’
    ‘Known to the victim?’ asked Mann.
    ‘Yes, certainly that’s likely too. The poor kid didn’t have a chance to put up much of a fight. We’ve been looking for DNA