The Salton Killings by Sally Spencer Read Free Book Online

only real difference between them and the generations of salt workers who had gone before them was that, thanks to the war, they were at least aware that there
was
a wider world outside.
    He smiled at the memory of himself, still in his demob suit, sitting in his local and being called a liar by one of his father’s friends.
    â€œWell, I’m not sayin’ tha’
weren’t
in Rome,” the old man had said, “only our Billy was there, and he never saw thee.”
    He wondered briefly what would have happened if there hadn’t been a war. Would he have ended up like Davenport, a village bobby in the North of England? And wouldn’t he have been happier doing that? There were times when he thought he would; times when his battles with bureaucracy weighed heavily on him, when his clashes with his superiors ceased to merely annoy and began to oppress him. And he was tired of being on perpetual probation, of knowing the Commander was looking over his shoulder, just waiting for him to make a mistake.
    But his Methodist conscience would never allow him to squander his talents in some country backwater. Whatever the Brass thought, he was bloody good at his job and, in a case like this one, he was absolutely the best man available.
    â€œDon’t get
too
big-headed, Charlie,” he said softly to himself.
    At eight o’clock, the women bag sewers arrived. They wore overalls and turbans; some had not even bothered to change out of their carpet slippers. Many of them were smoking, and waved their cigarettes about in hands that had varnished nails but were hard and strong from years of stitching. Just like mill girls.
    â€œThey may look like hags now,” Woodend said to the invisible companion he sometimes found it useful to have travel around with him, “but you just wait till they’re all dressed up for a night out at the Maltham Palais.”
    The men had walked separately, looking straight ahead or down at the ground, but the women were in pairs, chatting and glancing around them. Several noticed Woodend, and pointed him out to their friends. They knew who he was, all right. There were no secrets in a village.
    By twenty past eight, the school kids were lining up by the church, one queue for the juniors, another for the seniors. At half-past, the buses arrived, the neat files broke up in disorder, and the children pushed and shoved to get on the bus first.
    A few minutes later, the shrifters arrived – the old women and non-working wives with children in tow. They went straight to the waste ground by the side of the works, where the ashes from the previous day’s firing had been tipped. With their old rake-heads and grate-scrapers, they began to rummage through the clinker, looking for pieces of coal that the furnace had failed to combust. As they bent and scraped, picking up a lump here, another there, Woodend looked on with admiration.
    Half an hour of that would break my bloody back, he thought.
    By ten past nine, the women had salvaged all there was to be had and, their old shopping bags bulging with half-burnt fuel, made their way home.
    The village was silent. There was not a soul on the street.
    â€œIt must be the quietest time of the day,” the Chief Inspector mused.
    The pub was closed, the post office had only just opened. The workers at Brierley’s were panning the salt or sewing the bags; the housewives were washing the dishes or black-leading the grate. The village would have looked just like this when Diane Thorburn appeared over the humpbacked bridge and made her way towards the salt store. And who had been there to greet her? One of the men from the salt works, who had found an excuse for slipping away from the pan? Or someone else who was not a slave to regular working hours?
    Woodend strode up the bridge. The door to Number One Pan was open, and he could see the steam rising from the bubbling brine. He turned to face the double doors that led onto the