Read Online Death's Dark Shadow--A novel of murder in 1970's Yorkshire by Sally Spencer - Free Book Online Page A

girl said.
    â€˜Who?’
    â€˜Doña Elena. I don’t know her other name. I met her at Tía Pilar’s lunch party.’
    â€˜Remind me when that party was,’ Paniatowski said.
    Louisa counted back on her fingers. ‘It was eleven days ago.’
    â€˜And so you’re asking me to believe that seven days after you see this woman at a party on the Costa Blanca, she turns up dead – under the ice – in a Whitebridge canal?’ Paniatowski asked.
    â€˜It doesn’t seem likely,’ Louisa admitted.
    â€˜No, it doesn’t.’
    â€˜But it’s her. I know it’s her. I paid special attention to her at the party, because Tía Pilar said she was a true heroine.’
    Dr Shastri had said the dead woman hadn’t been living on a typical northern diet – no chip butties or steak and kidney pies. In fact, she’d gone so far as to suggest that the woman might have been following a ‘Mediterranean diet’, Paniatowski thought. And Shastri had also said that she appeared to have had more exposure to the sun than most people in Lancashire would have.
    So maybe it was just possible that …
    â€˜You’re starting to think that I just might be right, aren’t you?’ Louisa asked gleefully.
    â€˜We’re trained not to overlook any possibility, however unlikely it might seem,’ Paniatowski replied.
    Louisa grinned. ‘And now you’re going to ring Uncle Colin and ask him to check it out,’ she said.
    Paniatowski stood up. ‘Smart arse!’ she said.
    And then she walked into the hallway, dialled the number of Whitebridge CID, and asked to be put through to DCI Beresford.
    â€˜I thought you were making an early night of it, boss,’ Beresford said, when he came on the line.
    â€˜I was,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘Have you checked the railway station and bus station?’
    â€˜I’m sorry, boss?’
    â€˜Have you shown the sketch to everyone who works at the railway station and the bus station?’
    â€˜Well, no,’ Beresford admitted. ‘There didn’t seem much point in that, since we’d established that our victim lived in Whitebridge.’
    But they hadn’t established that at all, Paniatowski now realized.
    What they had established was that she probably knew her murderer, and that he probably had reasons for not wanting her to be identified – and that wasn’t the same thing at all.
    â€˜We’ve probably spoken to some of the railway and bus staff in the course of the door-to-door inquiries,’ Beresford continued. ‘I can check through the records, if you like.’
    â€˜Bugger that for a game of soldiers,’ Paniatowski said. ‘I want your lads to interview all railway and bus station employees – and I want it done now! Have you got that?’
    â€˜Got it,’ Beresford agreed.
    The row of cottages behind the railway station was – accurately, if a little prosaically – called Railway Row. They were solid, two-up, two-down houses, and each one had a small garden at the front, and backed on to an alley at the rear.
    The gardens of the houses were neat and tidy, the paintwork on the windows and doors bright and fresh, Beresford noted, as he walked along the row. If he had to guess, he would say that most of the people who lived there were young couples who planned eventually to move up the housing ladder, but in the meantime were determined to show pride in their modest little homes.
    Number Eleven, Railway Row, was a marked contrast to the other houses – the garden overgrown, the dark brown paintwork cracked and peeling, and when Beresford opened the gate, it squeaked an exhausted protest.
    The man who answered his knock was in his mid-fifties, and had a pencil-thin moustache, a weak jaw and resentful eyes.
    â€˜Mr Higgins?’ Beresford asked. ‘Mr Ben Higgins?’
    â€˜Who’s asking?’ the other man