Stuart Pawson - Deadly Friends

"That's probably the best I could expect," I said, tucking into a huge salad sandwich in home-made bread. Don't ask me how she does it.

"So," I said, when I'd finished. "How did you get on with Zorba the Greek?"

Her cheeks flushed slightly and she frowned. For a moment I thought it was from an unpleasant memory, but I quickly realised I was wrong.

"He's called Xav," she told me. "Short for Xavier Audish, and he's Iranian, not Greek."

"Oops, sorry," I said. "I didn't realise you were on such good terms.

Did he show you his… design sT I lingered over the final word.

"Yes. We spent quite a bit of time together, and with the architect.

One day we went to a fabric supplier. It was wonderful. I never imagined you could buy such exotic materials. It looks as if they might use my ideas, which is very exciting, don't you think?" Her face was animated as she spoke.

"Wonderful," I agreed. "I'm really pleased for you. Tell me about Xav. I'm a little worried that I may have a rival."

A little smile flickered across her eyes. I hoped it was mischievous, but I wasn't sure. "Well," she began, 'he's tall, and handsome…"

"Taller than me?"

"Umm, as tall as you. Well, nearly."

"Handsomer than me?"

"He's older than I thought he'd be."

"And rich?"

"He's a very charming man, Charles. He was very proper and appeared to value my opinions. If you must know, I like him. He has offered to pay me a consultancy fee and I am grateful, but that is as far as it goes."

After a silence I said: "I was only teasing you."

"I'm sorry, Charles," she said, taking my hand. "It has been a long day and I'm tired. Xav is very nice, but for all I know he has four wives and twenty children. I think you are safe."

Somehow, I didn't find her words reassuring. We played a CD and I told her about the rape and how I'd been lumbered with the murder. I try to involve her as much as possible, so she might understand when I'm late for our appointment or fall asleep over dinner.

At eleven thirty I said: "Are you sending me home to my cold and lonely house?"

She nodded. "If you don't mind, Charles. I just want to curl up in my own bed and sleep for ten hours."

"I mind like hell," I said.

"You will get over it."

As we said our good nights I put my arms around her. "I missed having you to myself over Christmas," I told her.

"Me too."

"Friday night," I said. "How about if I book a table at the Wool Exchange? And then let's spend all weekend together, just the two of us. How does that sound?"

"What about the enquiries?"

"Nigel can handle them."

She snuggled closer and said it sounded very nice.

The incident room at City HQ had been taken over by a fraud enquiry, so we held our meeting in their small lecture theatre. Nigel had rallied the original team and the room slowly filled with uniformed and plain clothes officers wondering what the fuss was about.

At dead on nine I told them the news about Makinson and introduced myself as the new officer in charge of the murder enquiry. '"What about Ged Skinner?" you are all wondering," I said. "Sadly for us, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Skinner's alibi is as watertight as a coot's rectum. More importantly, he convinced me that he didn't do it, which leaves us with an unsolved murder and twelve wasted days." I made it pretty plain that I wasn't impressed. "I know that you have all been reassigned to other duties, and I have your reports, but I want you all to give some more thought to what you saw and heard while making your enquiries. If you have anything at all to offer please see me or DS Newley."

I told them that operations would be conducted from Heckley and dismissed them all except the ones who'd had special tasks.

"Tell me about the gun," I said to a DS who'd taken the bullet to our firearms people at Huntingdon.

"It was very interesting," he began. "According to them the bullet was a thirty-eight, fired from a revolver with seven right-handed grooves.

That made it a service issue Webley, or an Enfield, probably a relic from World War Two."

"Mmm. Anything else?"

"Yes sir. The bullet was lead, and not jacketed."

"So what can we deduce from that?"

"It was pre-war vintage. We started making them jacketed in about 1938, but they were only gradually introduced."

"Somebody must have decided that shooting Germans with un jacketed bullets wasn't very sporting."

"Probably. The doctor was shot in the side of the head, at very close range. According to the powder marks the barrel must have been in contact with his head. Analysis of the residue confirms that the bullet was pre-war, with the original powder in it."

"So now we're looking for an old soldier who kept his ammunition dry."

"Unless he got rid of it or it was stolen."

"Don't make it difficult," I sighed. People rarely report losing an illegally held gun.

The SOCO had a full catalogue of prints and fibres, but nothing to match them to. The best the only piece of information we had was that the doctor almost certainly knew his killer. There were security doors on the block of apartments where he lived, with a speaker system for visitors to ask admittance. He must have let him, or he ring There aren't too many blocks of flats like that in Heckley. I said:

"Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Where exactly did the doctor live?"

"Canalside Mews," the SOCO replied. "Number eight, top floor."

"Really!" I said, sitting back with a jolt. Darryl Buxton lived at number one, ground floor.

There were two messages on my desk when I arrived back at Heckley. The first one read:

Boss,

The towels are white. Buxton saw Janet wrapped in one when he went into the bathroom. The street lamp is right outside the house. The number is marked on the door but it would still be difficult to read after dark.

Sorry. Maggie.

The next one was slightly briefer:

Dear Inspector,

Will you please stop leaving used tea bags in your wastepaper bin.

And oblige, the Cleaners.

I screwed one up and threw it into the aforementioned bin and put the other in my drawer just as Sparky and Nigel wandered in, carrying a cardboard box each.

"More reports," Sparky explained, placing his box on the end of my desk.

"Associated property," Nigel told me.

"Why," I began, 'did nobody think it worthwhile to bring to my notice the fact that our dead doctor and our serial rapist lived in the same block of flats?"

"Do they?" Nigel answered, wide-eyed.

"We didn't know," Sparky replied, on the defensive.

"I thought Mr. Makinson kept you fully informed," I told them. "I thought he was very professional."

"Oh, we knew where the doctor lived," Nigel countered. "It was where your rapist lived that we had no idea."

I felt my cheeks pull back into my sickly grin. "Love — forty," I conceded, deciding to change the subject. "What's in here?"

Nigel flicked open the lid of his box and read from the inventory that was inside. "Not much worth talking about: contents of his pockets; his mail, diary, address book; one bullet, used; and his door keys."

I turned to Sparky. "Any photographs of the body?" I asked. "We might as well start again, from the beginning."

He spread the ten-by-eights on my desk. The doctor was laid more or less in the recovery position, with a halo of blood around his head, soaking into the pale carpet. I pulled a close-up towards me.

"He was a good looking so-and-so," I said, quietly. With a good brain, too, until someone drilled a hole through it. I pushed the pictures around, re-arranging them, absorbing their message.

"There's the SOCO's video of the flat here," Sparky said. "Do you want to watch it?"

"Umm, no, I don't think so. Did you mention the keys to the flat, Nigel?"