The Cold Hand of Malice by Frank Smith Read Free Book Online

o’clock by the time he’d tumbled into bed, and he’d fallen asleep within minutes of his head touching the pillow. He hadn’t so much as moved when the alarm went off at six thirty, so she’d reset it for eight thirty before gathering up her clothes and slipping quietly out of the room. The morning traffic was hazardous enough if you were wide awake, so Grace was quite prepared to face Neil’s displeasure rather than have him fall asleep at the wheel on his way in to work.
    Inspector Charlie Dobbs was in his shirtsleeves, shaving, when she arrived. A tall, thin, gaunt-featured man at the best of times, he looked as if he’d been up all night.
    ‘Hardly seemed worth the effort to go home by the time I got back here this morning,’ he said in answer to her question, ‘but I’ll grab a couple of hours’ sleep at home later on this morning, and still be back by lunchtime. I assume Neil has filled you in?’
    ‘All I know is that there’s been another burglary, and a woman was killed,’ Grace told him. ‘Neil was dead tired when he came in somewhere about three thirty this morning, so I didn’t ask for details. He did say the murdered woman was the wife of Simon Holbrook of Holbrook Micro-Engineering, and the MO was the same as the others.’
    ‘That’s right,’ Charlie said, ‘at least as far as it goes. But I have an odd feeling about this one – apart from the murder itself, of course – so I’ve been going through the records of the previous burglaries, and I think I may be on to something. But I could be wrong, which is why I want you to go over to the house and take a look for yourself. See if anything strikes you the same way.’
    ‘What am I supposed to be looking for?’
    Charlie smiled and shook his head. ‘Just look,’ he said. ‘Do what you do best, then come back and tell me if anything strikes you as odd or different about this one – apart from the murder itself, of course.’
    It was nine thirty when Paget nosed the car into his parking slot in Charter Lane. He knew Grace had meant well by letting him sleep, but he still felt he should have been there earlier, regardless of how little sleep he’d had.
    To make matters worse, Tregalles was there ahead of him, looking as fresh and scrubbed as if he’d had a full night’s sleep, and it appeared that he and Sergeant Ormside already had matters well in hand. Paget had left instructions for Len Ormside to be called in early to set up the incident room and begin the task of calling people in to work on what was now a full-blown homicide investigation.
    ‘We’re pretty well up and running,’ Ormside told him. ‘We’ve got people knocking on doors throughout the neighbourhood, and we’re following up on the list of names of the people who were out there in the street last night.’ He pointed to the task board.
    Paget studied the board, and made a mental note of the assignments, then turned his attention to the large plan of the town, and the pins marking the location of the burglaries. He studied it for several minutes, but if there was a pattern there, he couldn’t see it.
    ‘Anything new this morning from SOCO?’ he asked.
    Ormside shook his head. ‘No, but they haven’t finished yet. Charlie said there’ll be someone in the house for the rest of the day at least. Also, we received a call from Holbrook’s insurance agent asking for permission to have one of their investigators go in to assess the damage, but I told him he would have to wait until we’d been through the house with Mr Holbrook ourselves, and it was no longer a crime scene.’
    Paget frowned. ‘I would have thought that would be the last thing on Simon Holbrook’s mind this morning, considering the state he was in when we left him earlier this morning,’ he said.
    ‘It wasn’t Holbrook who rang him,’ Tregalles said. ‘It was Ballantyne. Said he was acting for Holbrook.’
    ‘Interesting,’ Paget observed. ‘Which reminds me: get hold of Ballantyne