The Dead Hand of History by Sally Spencer Read Free Book Online Page A

her live to tell the tale?
    â€˜Are there any other phone boxes in the immediate vicinity?’ she asked DS Walker, who she’d already briefed on her conversation with the obnoxious Mike Traynor.
    Walker thought about it. ‘None that you’d call really close, ma’am,’ he said finally. ‘The nearest is outside a pub four or five streets further into the estate. It’s called the . . . the . . .’
    â€˜The Black Bull,’ Paniatowski supplied.
    â€˜Oh, so you know the place yourself, do you, ma’am?’ Walker asked slyly.
    â€˜Yes, I know it,’ Paniatowski replied.
    Know it all too well , she thought.
    It was in the Black Bull that her stepfather had regularly got drunk, before coming home and doing those unspeakable things to her which still gave her nightmares.
    â€˜Do you think this is the phone box the killer made his calls from?’ Paniatowski asked.
    â€˜Undoubtedly, ma’am,’ Walker said, without hesitation.
    â€˜He couldn’t have just dumped the hand and gone somewhere else to place the calls?’
    â€˜No, ma’am.’
    â€˜How can you be so sure?’
    â€˜Because there were two rounds of calls.’
    â€˜Go on,’ Paniatowski encouraged.
    â€˜If there’d only been one round of calls to the press, he could have made them from anywhere. But it’s the second round – the ones he made twenty minutes later, just after our lads arrived – which give him away. Because if he’d been making the calls from somewhere else, he wouldn’t have known the police had arrived, would he?’ Walker paused, and smiled. ‘You’d already worked all that out yourself, hadn’t you, ma’am?’
    â€˜Yes, I had,’ Paniatowski agreed.
    â€˜So why ask me?’
    â€˜I wanted to see if our minds ran along the same lines – and it seems as if they do.’
    â€˜So he leaves the hand in the bushes, phones the press and then just waits,’ Walker said. ‘That takes a lot of balls, don’t you think?’ He paused, as if he’d suddenly realized that he’d said the wrong thing. ‘Sorry, ma’am, didn’t mean to use bad language.’
    â€˜I’m a working bobby,’ Paniatowski told him. ‘I’m used to bad language. And you’re right – it did take a lot of balls.’
    â€˜And even when the police arrive – which he can’t have been expecting – he doesn’t panic,’ Walker continued. ‘Instead, he uses the same phone box he’s used previously, to call the press again. And it must have been the same box, because he simply wouldn’t have had time to reach another one.’
    â€˜It must also have been the box that Mr Harper used to make his call, once his dog had discovered the hand,’ Paniatowski mused. ‘Did Harper report seeing anyone else hanging around?’
    â€˜Sorry, ma’am, I didn’t ask him about that,’ Walker said. ‘Well,’ he added apologetically, ‘it never actually occurred to me the killer would hang around once he’d got rid of the hand.’
    â€˜No, in all fairness, I don’t suppose it would have occurred to me, either,’ Paniatowski conceded. ‘But I still want him questioned again – more thoroughly, this time.’
    â€˜I’ll get right on to it,’ Walker told her. He paused again, as if weighing his words very carefully. ‘I think that we’re looking for a man with military training, ma’am.’
    â€˜And just what’s made you reach that conclusion, Sergeant?’ Paniatowski wondered.
    â€˜It’s hard to pin it down exactly,’ Walker admitted. ‘But there’s something about the precision behind the planning – and the fact he knew how to improvise when that plan of his unexpectedly went wrong – which definitely suggests a military man to