Read Online Strike a Match (Book 1): Serious Crimes by Frank Tayell - Free Book Online Page A

followed his example, and craned her head around the side of the train. There was a tap on her arm.
    “You better hold onto your hat,” the stoker said. “This is going to get fast.”
    And it did. Ruth let the wind whip through her hair as the train kept accelerating. As they hurtled back towards the junction, she couldn’t imagine even that wrecked plane ever moving at such a speed.
     
    By the time the train pulled into a siding at Twynham Central, Ruth’s face and uniform were covered in soot, but her earlier gloom was gone.
    “The coroner has the body, sir,” she said when she returned to the cabin in the yard behind Police House. The clock on the wall said it was four o’clock. She was surprised it wasn’t far later.
    Mitchell raised his head from the map he’d been peering at and looked at the clock. “It’s unlikely they’ll start the autopsy before tomorrow morning, which means we won’t get the bullet until the evening.” He glanced over at her, and his lips curled in an attempt not to smile. “That’s an interesting look for you. Do you have a mirror?”
    “No, sir,” she said, looking around the cabin in the hope of seeing one.
    “If you’re going to ride in the cab of a steam train, you need a mirror.” He returned his gaze to the map.
    Not sure what she should do, Ruth dragged the crime-kit back to where it had been at the beginning of the day.
    “Should I take these to the evidence room?” she asked, picking up the evidence bags containing the victim’s meagre possessions.
    “No, leave them with me for now,” Mitchell replied.
    “And the tweezers? Shouldn’t they be washed?”
    “I’ll deal with that.”
    “Oh. Right. Um… were there any robberies of large sums of money last night?”
    “Hmm? No. Not that have been reported. Or there weren’t an hour ago. You might as well go home. There’ll be more than enough work tomorrow.”
    “Thank you, sir,” Ruth said. Her eyes caught sight of the desk, and the pile of statements she’d been wading through that morning. “I, um, I’ll finish these first.”
    “The shift’s over, cadet, be grateful for it.”
    “What I don’t do today,” she said, “I’ll have to do tomorrow.”
    “Ah, the young,” Mitchell said. “When you get a bit older you’ll learn that what you put off today is someone else’s problem when you retire. And I can’t do that, even if it’s only for the night, until I’ve locked up. Go home, and then I can do the same.”
    “Good night sir,” she said, and headed out the door.
     
    She collected her bicycle from the rack on the other side of the stables and began the long ride home. The trains didn’t run to where Ruth lived. The Acre wasn’t a slum, not quite, and it was far larger than an acre. Situated on the site of an old refugee camp, it was next door to the newer immigration centre. Other than the name, Ruth couldn’t see any difference between the two. Nothing but a wide road separated the two old-world housing developments once occupied by retirees seeking the warmer weather of southern England. Nor was there much difference between the refugees with whom Ruth had shared Maggie’s classroom and the immigrants who filled it now. Some came from Ireland, but most had found a way of making the perilous crossing from continental Europe.
    The Acre and the new centre next to it were very different from the camp in which Maggie had rescued Ruth. That was a place of tents, scant rations, and growing demand as every day brought a flood of new refugees through the Channel Tunnel. As Ruth understood it, after the great die-off, small groups had banded together throughout Europe. They’d lived off old-world stores of food as much as from farming. When ships began surveying the European coast, they’d made landfall to collect water. News of Britain’s recovery began to spread by word of mouth. After successive waves of disease cut through the barely coping communities, the survivors headed