Witchmoor Edge by Mike Crowson Read Free Book Online

makeshift meal of
mushroom omelette and chips, Millicent settled back in an armchair
to think. Tobias NDibe had unsettled her and Ana's phone call
reinforced the mood of self examination.
    N'Dibe had been both right and wrong: she did
drive herself hard but it was not so much her job as her personal
demons. She had married young but been very happy with Carlos and
had been driven slightly insane by his murder. Her time in the bomb
squad combined an urge for revenge with an urge to come to terms
with the facts. She had moved into the police to find refuge from
her demons, but they had followed her. Perhaps the meeting with
N'Dibe was some kind of turning point. She might try to track him
down and contact him again.
    Millicent became DI Hampshire again and put
on a CD of the music of 11th century composer, Hildegard von
Bingen. She turned down the volume and began to consider possible
connections between the fire, the drownings and the murder. She
also thought over Shirley Hunter's story, about which she was still
mildly uneasy, and how it might be verified or otherwise!
     
     
     

Chapter 4: Tuesday 14th August (am)
     
    Tuesday morning might well have been a
country and western music morning for the drive to work, but
Millicent wasn't really in the mood for music of any kind. She had
work uppermost in her mind. Her first job was to instruct DS Gibbs,
who was back today, that he was to establish an incident room
devoted to the case. Feeling sure that the three cases were related
in some way she could see no point in delay.
    Millicent parked her car in the walled car
park and went straight to her office to see whether anything more
had landed on the desk, before going to see Chief Inspector Cooke
to get his approval for her decision. Waiting for her when she
walked in her office was a preliminary report by the scene of crime
team staff on the picnic area, Joe Davis's statement already signed
and DC Goss's report, Mrs. Evans's statement (not yet actually
signed) and DC Hammond's report.
    She read Tommy's report with interest and
agreed that Wayne Sansom had probably died in the fire. She had
encountered Koswinski before. He was a young thug who was well
known to be behind a lot of trouble - a knifing, a gang rape,
several muggings and burglaries and some car thefts. The trouble
was finding proof that would stick in court - so far he had just
managed to stay uncharged, mainly by intimidating potential
witnesses.
    Millicent drummed her fingers absently on the
desk. There was little point in going to Koswinski's house, or
talking to him on his own territory. He clearly hadn't murdered
Hunter, but if he was picked up on a pretended suspicion of
murdering both Hunter and Musworth there was just the slimmest
chance he could be shaken into talking and giving the details about
what had really happened. Tommy was quite good at bluffing he knew
more than he did, so he could see to picking him up for questioning
later in the day. She had something else for him first.
    There wasn't an autopsy report on the body
from the fire yet, so that could wait, and Gary Goss could check up
with the East Witchmoor Youth Centre and see if Koswinski, Musworth
and Sansom had been there Saturday night. Hampshire had a feeling
they must have been somewhere else between the Centre and the
burned out building at Cartwright's Wharf, unless they'd been in
the building for two or three hours before the fire started, and
that seemed unlikely.
    Millicent got up and went in search of Cooke.
She found him in his office, as she hoped to do first thing.
    "The fire, the bodies in the canal and the
murder of Hunter all seem to be connected somehow," she said. "It
looks like being a substantial investigation, so I'd like to use
the Incident Suite."
    Cooke nodded. "I glanced through a copy of
the autopsy report on the main victim," he said, "Blows to the
head, various injuries, an overdose of morphine, then thrown in the
canal for good measure. You think its related to