Read Online Scared to Live by Stephen Booth - Free Book Online Page A

witnesses yet. 'Surely we can send FSU home?' said Hitchens. 'Whoever did the shooting will be long gone.' 'Not until we've completed a sweep of the area and done
    door-to-door in the village,' said Kessen. 'For all we know, he might be holed up somewhere nearby.' 'Yes, understood. It just seems to be making the residents a bit jittery, seeing armed police officers on the street. They're not used to it around here.' Kessen shrugged. 'Point of entry, Wayne?' he said. 'On the face of it, this open window looks like the way the assailant came into the house.' 'Perhaps. But it wasn't forced - there are no tool marks on the frame. We lifted several latents, though. I should get results on those within the hour.' 'The first officers to arrive came in through a side window,' said Hitchens. 'But they had to smash it themselves, which set off the intruder alarms - Control got a call from a monitoring room somewhere, but we were already on the scene by then. The alarms were still going like crazy when I got here.' 'Our officers set off the alarms? They weren't activated by the assailant?' 'No, sir.' Kessen walked out on to the landing and looked down the stairs. A SOCO was crouched over something in the hallway. 'What have you got there?' 'A video intercom system. It must be connected to the unit on the front gate.' Hitchens came over to look. 'I don't even have a gate at my house, let alone an intercom. I live on one of those open plan estates. Any bugger can run across my front lawn, or up my drive.' 'They call that community living,' said Abbott. 'I know what I'd call it. So how does that thing work?' The SOCO picked up the handset. 'When someone presses the button at the gate, there's a tiny camera in the unit on the gatepost that shows their image on the screen here.' 'So the householder can see the postman in the flesh, and know he's not an impostor.'
    'That's it.' Cooper looked down at the body again as the exchange went backwards and forwards around him. Voices echoed strangely in the house, as if it wasn't fully furnished. Actually, the furniture was fairly sparse. Nothing unnecessary or frivolous cluttered the rooms that he'd seen. It made him think of his flat in Welbeck Street when he'd first viewed it. Furnished, but empty. Empty because no one lived there. He felt uncomfortable for the victim, lying there on the floor. He knew nothing about Rose Shepherd, but he was sure she'd have hated anyone to see her like this. Her grey hair was dishevelled and fell in loose strands across her face. Her mouth had fallen open, and a trail of saliva had dried on her lips. Crime-scene photographs would show up a small rip in the victim's nightdress and the white, crinkled flesh on the back of her thighs. The flash would cruelly expose the crow's feet around her eyes, the loose skin at her neck, the beginning of liver spots on the back of her hand where it clutched the rug. Death did nothing for the appearance. But this was the way Miss Shepherd would be immortalized. Kessen walked back to the bedroom and looked out on to the garden. 'Correct me if I'm wrong,' he said, 'but there's quite a bit of money tied up here, isn't there?' Abbott nodded. 'A few hundred pounds for that intercom unit alone, I'd say. Probably double that for the installation of the gates.' 'So it looks as though the victim really needed to know who was calling on her, doesn't it?' 'We've got house-to-house under way. But so far, everyone we've talked to is in agreement on one thing: Miss Shepherd never got any visitors. Apart from the postman - and even he didn't get past the gates.' 'No visitors at all?' 'So they say.'
    'No. We just haven't talked to the right people, yet,' said Kessen. 'Why?' 'Well, that can't be true, can it, Paul? You're a property owner. What about all those folk who come to your address? The refuse men to collect your wheelie bin, the tanker driver to deliver your central heating fuel, the man who reads your electricity meter? No one can build a