Read Online Golden Mile to Murder by Sally Spencer - Free Book Online Page A

head. ‘He’s walking back.’
    â€˜All the way from Stanley Park?’
    â€˜No, he came most of the way by car. It’s only the last bit he’s doing on foot.’
    Hanson remembered his conversation with DCI Turner earlier in the day, and felt his stomach churn over. ‘Where did you drop him off?’ he asked.
    â€˜Just near the Tower.’
    At the northern end of the Golden Mile, Hanson thought – right in the middle of the area on which the rumours about Punch Davies had been centred. Bloody hell fire!
    It had been towards the end of the nineteenth century that Blackpool Borough Council had passed legislation to ban most traders from the beach, thus leaving more room for holidaymakers. But the traders had not wanted to lose their lucrative businesses, and the holidaymakers – while appreciating the extra lounging space – still wanted the services the traders offered. The solution had been simple. The traders had hauled their barrows and stalls off the sands, crossed the promenade, and set up shop again in the front gardens of sea-front hotels. The traders were happy their businesses continued, the buyers were happy to still be able to buy, the hotel owners were happy with the unexpected extra source of revenue – and the Golden Mile was born.
    The Mile ran from the Tower to the Central Pier and was rightly considered by just about everyone to be the heart of the town. There were garishly painted amusement arcades here, full of one-armed bandits which greedily gobbled up the pennies and occasionally condescended to spit out a shilling’s worth of change in return. There were bright-red ‘What the Butler Saw’ machines, over which pimpled youths bent, licking their lips as they cranked the handles and their eyes devoured flickering black-and-white pictures of half-naked women. A dozen or more small shops offered cartoon postcards of huge women in bathing costumes with crabs firmly affixed to the rears, and blondes with improbable bosoms and silk-stocking legs. Photographs could be developed here, and all the equipment necessary for making sandcastles purchased. Anyone with a shilling in his pocket could go and see ‘The Sensational Severed Living Hands of Patma’ or ‘Tanya, the Tattooed Girl’. Anyone with an urge to gamble could sit in for a game of bingo.
    Grand, Woodend thought, as he weaved his way through the crowd, sniffing the fried onion at hamburger stalls and the tart smell of vinegar which drifted over from the whelks. Absolutely grand! Yet something was missing – something which would have enhanced his pleasure was simply not there. And then he realised what that something was. He felt incomplete working on a case without Bob Rutter by his side.
    He imagined the conversation they would have had:
    â€˜Now this is what you call a holiday resort, Bob,’ he could hear himself saying. ‘Take Brighton, which all you southerners seem to think is so bloody marvellous. It’s only got one buggerin’ little pier, hasn’t it – whereas Blackpool now, Blackpool’s got
three
.’
    And no doubt Rutter would have smiled in his slightly superior grammar-school-boy way and replied, ‘But it hasn’t quite got the
style
of somewhere like Brighton, has it, sir?’
    No, it bloody hadn’t! But it had got a style all of its own, and he would have made quite sure Rutter understood that.
    He couldn’t imagine ever talking to Monika Paniatowski in the same light-hearted way. Perhaps that was his failure – or perhaps it was hers – but whatever the reason, he felt he had lost something valuable when he had lost Bob Rutter as his bagman.
    Woodend came to a halt in front of a small, open-fronted shop which was sandwiched between two gaudy amusement arcades and had a sign over it announcing that it sold ‘The World Famous Blackpool Rock’.
    The chief inspector ran his eyes over shelf upon shelf