Smoke and Mirrors by Elly Griffiths Read Free Book Online

and red. What sort of a Christmas would the Webster and Francis families have? Come to that, what sort of Christmas would he have?
    He was nearly at the pier when a figure appeared suddenly out of the gloom. A tall shape in a trilby hat and voluminous overcoat. There was something incredibly familiar about it.
    ‘Max?’ said Edgar.
    ‘Bloody hell. Is that you, Ed?’ Max approached the streetlight. As ever, he looked as if he’d just stepped out from a London club, elegant and debonair, hat at an angle. Edgar looked downwards.
    ‘You’re wearing gumboots.’
    ‘A present from my landlady. Apparently they belonged to her dead husband. What are you doing, tramping along in the snow?’
    ‘I’ve been searching for some missing children.’
    ‘I know,’ said Max. ‘I read about it.’
    Edgar was surprised. He never thought of Max as reading anything beyond his own notices. It touched him somehow.
    ‘Any news?’ Max asked.
    ‘No. I’m on my way back to the station.’
    ‘I’ve got digs at Upper Rock Gardens.’
    There was a tiny, awkward pause. Edgar wanted to ask Max to walk back with him, wanted to enjoy a few moments talking to someone who wasn’t involved with the case. But it was a filthy night, he ought to let Max get back to his digs. Besides, he didn’t want to get onto the subject of Ruby.
    He realised that Max was holding out a silver flask. ‘Brandy,’ he said. ‘All the St Bernards carry it.’
    ‘I can’t,’ said Edgar. ‘I’m on duty. I’ll probably be on duty all night.’
    ‘Oh, go on.’
    Edgar took a sip and felt the warmth flooding through his body. Those dogs knew a thing or two.
    ‘Have you been rehearsing?’ he asked.
    ‘Yes,’ said Max. ‘We open at the weekend.’
    Edgar thought of Brian telling him that he’d planned to take Annie and Mark to the pantomime. She would have enjoyed that, the stage-struck Annie. He imagined her sitting wide-eyed in the front row, watching Max conjuring genies from thin air.
    ‘I’ve got a free morning tomorrow,’ said Max. ‘Why don’t we meet for a drink?’
    ‘I’ll be working,’ said Edgar.
    ‘Coffee then. Midday. I’ll come to the station.’
    This was a definite concession. Max hated the police and, indeed, authority of all kinds.
    ‘That would be great. See you then.’
    ‘Bye, Ed.’
    He looked back once and saw Max still standing under the lamppost, the cigarette in his mouth glowing like a burning ember.

Chapter 5
    Edgar stayed at his desk all night. The search was called off when the light faded but Edgar knew that the parents would not sleep while their children were still lost, and neither would he. He sat in the CID room in his little circle of light reading through all the notes on the case. Somewhere, he knew, there would be a clue that led him to Annie and Mark.
    Who’d do something like that to a kiddie?
    Sometimes she says she doesn’t want to go home.
    Children, children, say your prayers. Children, children, stay upstairs.
    He heard Annie say that Mark should ‘go back to primary school’.
    It was called
The Stolen Children.
    I was going to take them to the pantomime next week.
    The room was deathly cold in the early hours of the morning. Edgar was wearing his coat and fur hat but he was still freezing. He remembered seeing a two-bar electric fire somewhere. Was it in the reception area? He decided to go and look. It would do him good to get some circulation going in his legs.
    The police station at Bartholomew Square was over a hundred years old, but the solid Victorian edifice squatted on top of something much older. There had once been a monastery on the site and, on rainy nights, you could still hear the water rushing into the well below the cellars. There were ghosts too – the usual monks and bricked-up nuns but also the spectre of Henry Solomon, a former chief constable, killed as he interrogated a suspect in one of the upper rooms. Edgar, hurrying along the dark corridors, thought of these former