Read Online Wages of Sin by J. M. Gregson - Free Book Online

to that lad in uniform. Get me into trouble, you will.’
    â€˜Trouble with whom, Karen?’
    The girl shook her head. She was not out of her teens yet, possibly even younger than she looked. ‘People like me can’t afford to be seen talking to the police. I don’t want to go the same way as Sarah.’
    â€˜And why should you do that, Karen?’
    A shake of the head, agitating the dark, straight hair. It was a refusal to co-operate, not a denial of knowledge. ‘You shouldn’t have come. You’re wasting your time and mine.’
    Lucy wondered how she could get this brittle girl to relax. She sat down on the battered sofa, felt Pickering follow her lead, held her peace until Karen Jones reluctantly sat down on an upright chair. Then she said, ‘No one will know that you have helped us. The uniformed officers called at every residence in this street. We get together a big team and they ask questions of everyone in the area. It’s routine procedure, after a murder.’
    The girl started at the introduction of the word, in the way people once reacted to the mention of cancer. She considered Blake’s argument, then nodded very sharply, two or three times. ‘That’s all right, then. But that doesn’t apply to you, does it? You’re not calling at every house in the street.’
    â€˜No. It’s our job to follow up anything which might be of interest. We study what the uniformed officers doing the house-to-house enquiries bring in. You were able to tell us who the dead girl was. We’re grateful for that.’
    â€˜I didn’t say I was sure it was her. I just said I thought it might be.’
    Lucy went on as smoothly as if the girl had never spoken. ‘And naturally we want every scrap of information you can give us. Sarah isn’t here to help us herself, is she?’
    â€˜No. She’s gone. So I can’t help her any more, can I?’
    Gordon Pickering said gently, ‘But I think you might want to help us catch whoever killed her like that, once you think about it.’
    He was a gangling, fresh-faced young man, not very much older than Karen Jones, and she appeared to give some thought to these first words from him. She said grudgingly, ‘I’d like to see that bastard put away, yes.’ Then, immediately defensive, ‘But I don’t know who did it, so I can’t help, can I?’ The Welshness she had striven to put behind her when she left the valleys came out suddenly and strongly in the inflection of the last phrase.
    Gordon Pickering was persistent as well as surprisingly perceptive: they were among the qualities which had secured him an early transfer from uniform to CID. He smiled into the anxious features and said, ‘Sometimes people can help us more than they realize, once we put together what they tell us with what comes in from other sources. And you really won’t be putting yourself in any danger by talking to us, Karen.’
    Lucy saw the girl responding to his youth and sincerity. It made her feel forty-eight instead of twenty-eight as Karen Jones’s face lightened and she said, ‘I hardly knew her, really. What is it you wanted to know?’
    â€˜Anything you can tell us. We don’t even know for certain that Sarah is the dead girl yet.’
    Karen’s face was suddenly full of a childish terror. ‘You don’t want me to identify her? I don’t want to do that. I’ve never had to look at a dead body, see, and I don’t want to start with this one. Is she badly—’
    â€˜We won’t be asking you for an identification, Karen,’ Lucy Blake intervened firmly. ‘We’ll need the next of kin to do that: probably one of the parents, when we find them. But you’ll understand that we don’t want to put any parents through that ordeal unless we’ve good reason to think this is their daughter.’
    Relief flooded into the