The Fireman by Stephen Leather Read Free Book Online Page B

time,’ Hall said, wearily. ‘We don’t have the facilities, or the manpower, that you have back in the UK. We’ve just lost two pathologists to Canada, part of the brain drain. I’m afraid your sister has got caught in the backlog. I’ll do everything I can to speed things up, but . . .’ He left the sentence unfinished.
    ‘Well why bother with an autopsy, if you are so sure it was suicide? Are you telling me that there’s some doubt about the cause of death?’
    Hall shook his head. ‘No, but an autopsy might tell us why she killed herself. She might have been drinking, or on drugs.’
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m the drinker of the family, and she never took drugs.’
    ‘She might have been ill.’
    ‘So ill that she’d throw herself through a window to end it all sooner rather than later? Christ man, you seem to be doing nothing more than trying to come up with reasons she would kill herself. I wish you’d put the same amount of effort into finding out what happened. Have you spoken to her friends? Her colleagues? Was she alone in the pool when it happened?’
    ‘There were no witnesses. The pool was closed, locked up for the night.’
    ‘So how did she get in?’
    ‘We don’t know.’
    ‘The pool was just for guests of the hotel?’
    ‘No. Members of the health club could use it as well. Your sister was a member, but that doesn’t explain what she was doing there after the place had closed.’
    ‘And what was she doing there?’
    ‘Swimming, it appears. Naked. We didn’t find a swimming costume.’
    ‘And what are you doing now?’ I said.
    ‘Doing?’
    ‘About finding her killer?’
    ‘At the moment we don’t know if we are looking for a killer.’
    ‘What sort of investigation is this?’ I asked him. ‘You haven’t even searched her flat, for God’s sake. By the sound of it you couldn’t organize a piss-up in a brewery, never mind investigate a murder. Where the fuck is your boss? Perhaps I can get some sense out of him.’
    ‘I am Inspector Hall’s superior officer,’ said the Chinese, quietly. ‘And I can assure you that everything that can be done, will be done. It is less than three days since your sister died. You cannot expect miracles.’
    ‘Maybe not,’ I said. ‘But I know enough about police work to know that if you don’t have a suspect within forty-eight hours then the chances are that you’re never going to have one. Come on, Howard, we’re wasting our time here.’
    I walked out with Howard behind me, past the spitter and back into the scorching sunshine, swinging the plastic bag by my side. A bag full of Sally.
    This time I was the one walking fast, the anger burning through my system, and Howard had to jog a little to keep up.
    ‘You must let me borrow that book some time,’ he panted as we made our way towards a taxi rank.
    ‘Which book?’
    ‘The one about winning friends and influencing people . . .’
    ‘Fuck off, Howard.’
    We flagged down another cab and joined a line of traffic waiting to enter the tunnel that linked the island to Kowloon. It took the best part of fifteen minutes to travel the one hundred yards to the tunnel entrance and less than five to drive through it. We had to stop at the rank of pay booths to hand over the toll and then we were into the traffic of Kowloon once more, and on our way to the morgue.
    ‘There’s no need for you to identify . . .’ Howard began to say, but I cut him short with an angry look. ‘It’s definitely her,’ he finished lamely. ‘One of her friends has already done the paperwork.’
    I didn’t bother even trying to explain to Howard why I had to see Sally one last time, to touch her and feel the cold flesh that would show me that she was dead. I would have had to have told him about a frightened little girl with a tear-stained face who’d climbed into my bed a week after our father had died. It was three o’clock in the morning and she was seven years old. Her hair was unkempt and her