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  ‘When can I see you again?’

  The question was quite unexpected and it caught her off balance. Before she could stop herself, she blurted a reply. ‘Well, you know where I live.’

  He smiled broadly. ‘And you know where I live, so why don’t you come over for dinner – say, Friday evening, eh? I’m quite a passable cook, though do I say so myself. Let’s say eight o’clock?’

  It was a skilful tactic on his part and Lynn felt she had been manoeuvred into a position where she could not refuse.

  ‘Thank you,’ she heard herself saying. ‘That’s very nice of you.’

  ‘Then it’s settled,’ he replied firmly. ‘Red or white wine?’

  ****

  Detective Inspector Maurice Morgan usually prided himself on having a strong stomach. Fifteen years in the Metropolitan Police, including service on the Drug and National Crime Squads and now a DI at Islington, should have equipped him for anything, but for some reason the stench from the partially decomposed corpse slumped in the chair in the morning sunlight now streaming through the window of the small bare room brought the bile racing up into his throat. Maybe he was getting old and past it. It was at times like this that he wished he’d stayed in his native Jamaica.

  ‘Looks like a single bullet in the head did the trick,’ the pathologist commented cheerfully from behind his face mask and straightened up from the body. ‘But I won’t be able to carry out a proper job until we get him out of the chair and down the morgue.’ He nodded towards the window. ‘At least I’ve had some light to work in since your people took down the damned blanket, but I still have only been able to do a preliminary examination.’

  ‘The morgue will have to wait until the evidence recovery unit has done its stuff, Doc,’ Morgan said heavily, adjusting his own mask and stepping away from the door to allow two figures in protective white overalls to enter the room. ‘My CSIs will need to complete a full crime scene examination, with the body in situ, and also take some detailed photographs before we move him out.’ He hesitated, running a hand through his thick, black curly hair. ‘No idea what sort of firearm was used, I suppose?’

  Doctor Julian Hake shook his head, using one gloved hand to swat a fly which had landed on his face. ‘Something for ballistics to determine, Maurice,’ he said, adding, ‘It is completely outside my field of expertise, as well you know.’

  The policeman cleared his throat noisily. ‘So what else can you tell me?’

  Hake turned to study the corpse again. ‘Well, he’s male—’

  ‘Yeah, I’d rather gathered that, thank you.’

  ‘Late 40s, I would say – some bad dental work to his upper teeth and it looks like a congenital deformity to his left hand.’

  ‘How long do you reckon he’s been dead?’

  ‘Difficult to say. Weeks certainly, couple of months or so probably, but the cadaver is remarkably well preserved under the circumstances. Possibly something to do with the ambient temperature of this room.’

  Morgan studied the ceiling. ‘Well, if this is a well-preserved stiff, I’d hate to see a badly preserved one, that’s all I’ve got to say.’

  The pathologist chuckled. ‘Who found him?’

  Morgan shrugged. ‘No idea. A dosser looking for somewhere to kip, we reckon. We got an anonymous three-nines.’

  Hake grunted. ‘Strange no one found him before?’

  The DI nodded. ‘Probably someone did, but dossers tend not to contact the police and I understand these places are due for demolition soon anyway, so no one would have had any other reason to pop in, would they?’

  Hake peeled off his surgical gloves and began unzipping his protective overalls as he turned for the stairs with Morgan in tow.

  The uniformed policewoman guarding the front door stepped aside when she heard them approach. The DI nodded to her perfunctorily as he followed Hake to his car, ignoring the army of press photographers snapping them both from the other side of the road.

  ‘I’ll let you know when we’ve scheduled the PM,’ Hake said and grinned. ‘Wouldn’t want you to miss your afternoon out at the morgue.’

  Morgan scowled. ‘I’ll look forward to it, Doc,’ he retorted drily and turned back towards the house as the pathologist drove away.

  The crime scene investigators were well into their work when he got to the top of the stairs again and he chose not to disturb them, taking a good look around the upper floor instead. He found nothing of interest, just a wrecked bathroom and toilet, and a couple more of what had probably once been bedrooms – bare except for piles of rugs, old clothes and in one case a stained mattress. His foot struck an empty wine bottle as he turned to leave the second room, sending it skating across the floor into a discarded carton of what had once been some sort of take-away meal. He grimaced. ‘Bloody dossers,’ he muttered. ‘Ought to be exterminated.’

  There was a soft chuckle behind him. ‘That was a bit harsh, Maurice?’ the young woman in protective overalls exclaimed from the doorway. ‘Commissioner wouldn’t be too happy to hear you talk like that.’

  Morgan snorted derisively but ignored the censure, eyeing the Scenes of Crime manager narrowly instead. ‘Okay, Sheila, so what have you got for me?’

  Sheila Lambert shrugged. ‘Come and see.’

  Following her across the landing into the room with the corpse, Morgan stopped and stared at the large unzipped haversack on the floor beside the table.

  ‘Started going through it, then thought we’d leave it alone’ Lambert said, her eyes studying him fixedly over the top of her face mask. ‘At first we thought it contained just old clothes, but then we found something a lot more interesting further down. Obviously the clothes were put in there to conceal it.’

  Bending over the haversack, she carefully pulled back the flaps a little wider, inviting him to take a look. He moved closer and immediately glimpsed the transparent plastic wrapping tangled up inside a sweater.

  ‘Have a sniff,’ she said.

  He bent even closer, but at first all he could smell was the stench of the corpse.

  ‘You’ll have to get lower than that,’ Lambert commented.

  Casting her a sour look, he got down on to one knee and tried again, his face almost into the bag. At once he detected another much sweeter smell, faint but still discernible. ‘Marzipan,’ he declared, straightening up.

  She nodded. ‘Going by the condition of the corpse, he must have been here quite some time, yet you can still smell it off the plastic – probably because the bag was zipped up, holding the odour in.’

  ‘You’re suggesting gelignite?’ he queried incredulously, remembering his early forensic training on CID and picking up on her insinuation. ‘You’re saying the bag contained gelly?’

  She shrugged. ‘Either that or he had one hell of a sweet-tooth. The smell is quite distinctive. None of the stuff there now, as far as we can see without taking the lot out, just the wrappings. But in one of the compartments we found packets of batteries and several apparently new strapless wristwatches, suggesting that our man had been on a shopping spree. More importantly there were also a couple of what look like pencil detonators.’ She now straightened. ‘I’ve sent someone to call up for explosive support, just in case there’s anything else in this place likely to be a bit nasty.’

  ‘You’re saying the stiff was a bomb-maker?’ he said grimly.

  ‘Certainly looks like it.’

  ‘Bit behind the times, though, wasn’t he? I didn’t think people in his profession used gelly anymore.’

  ‘No idea, maybe he was an old safe-cracker – a Peterman I believe they called them. But in any event, one thing is clear, he liked to change his ID a fair bit.’ Picking up an as yet unsealed evidence bag off the table, she held the flap open in front of him so he could see the passports. ‘Found in another pocket,’ she said. ‘Three of the little buggers in a variety of names – all in pristine condition and undoubtedly recently produced. Another shopping trip, I would think. Seems he was gearing him
self up for more contracts and a bit of travel thrown in.’

  Morgan’s heart was racing. What at first had seemed like the random shooting of a nondescript vagrant had taken on a whole new meaning. ‘Problem is,’ he said, ‘if there’s no explosive in the haversack now, where the hell is it?’

  Lambert emitted a hard laugh. ‘That, Maurice, is the million dollar question – which is why I’m so happy to be just a humble crime scene manager.’

  It was then that Morgan felt something begin to crawl around his insides.

  CHAPTER 3

  The revelation by Alan Murray that, despite his blindness, he had managed to pursue a professional crime-writing career had enthralled Lynn and she couldn’t wait to check the internet for one of his novels the moment she got back home, even though she had no title to work with and didn’t know the name he was writing under. But to her annoyance, her laptop packed up within seconds of being switched on. There was no loud bang – not even a hiss – just a silent expiration as the screen went blank and the thing refused to function. She tried recharging the battery, plugging the computer into different mains sockets. When after an hour that didn’t produce a result, in her ignorance of such sophisticated technology, she even shook it several times in the hope that she could dislodge something and somehow shock it back into life. All to no avail. The six-year-old machine had finally bitten the dust.

  Resigned to the situation, rather than angry about it – after all, she had been warned by her ex months before that the laptop was on the blink – she exchanged her white shorts for a pair of faded blue jeans and boaters and drove to Helston instead, parking in a car park close to the centre of town. Helston was only half an hour’s journey from The Lizard and she liked the town, which had a nice library with good internet facilities, so she felt sure the trip would be worth the effort.

  There was hardly anyone in the library when she arrived and she was immediately able to settle in front of one of the computers provided for public use. But she was not really surprised to find that there was no record on the net of any crime-writer by the name of Alan Murray. Well, there was unlikely to be if he was using a pseudonym, was there? It had been just a long-shot on her part. She had thought, though, that as many other writers who used pseudonyms were still known to the public by their real names – Ruth Rendell, for example, who also wrote under the name Barbara Vine and Jack Higgins whose real name was Harry Patterson – there was a chance that Alan Murray’s name might throw up his own pseudonym. But no such luck. Maybe his novels were a lot more risqué than she had imagined, which might explain his reluctance to lay them open to scrutiny.

  Feeling disappointed, frustrated and not a little mystified by it all, she finally gave up looking altogether and headed for the car park – only to be stopped in her tracks a few yards from the library by a loud shout: ‘Lynn? Lynn Giles?’

  Spinning round, she saw a red-haired woman in her 30s, dressed in jeans and a floppy white sweater, crossing the street towards her at a half-run. Her heart sank. She recognised the woman immediately – Cate Meadows, New Light’s publicity and advertising manager. Known in the agency as the “Sidewinder” – after the poisonous pit viper – because of her vicious tongue and back-stabbing reputation, she had been one of Freddie Baxter’s earlier “bits on the side” before he had snared Felicity Dubois, and she was the very last person Lynn wanted to meet.

  ‘Sweetie,’ Cate exclaimed, grasping Lynn by both arms and planting an indelible kiss on each cheek, ‘fancy meeting you down here.’

  Still holding on to her arms, she stepped back a little and studied Lynn’s face with a disapproving frown. ‘What have you done to your hair? Dreadful, my dear, absolutely dreadful.’ She peered at her more closely again. ‘Scars have healed, I see, after that awful business at The Philanderer’s Club, but really, dear, you should use more foundation. Girl’s best friend, you know.’

  Her high-pitched OTT delivery seemed to be attracting looks from passers-by and Lynn gently extricated herself. ‘Nice to see you again, Cate,’ she said, forcing a smile and edging back towards a shop front. ‘But why are you in Cornwall?’

  ‘Hols, sweetie,’ the other replied. ‘Two weeks away from that horrible agency and that equally horrible fat man. Bliss, absolute bliss. But what are you doing here?’ She glanced quickly around her and lowered her voice a fraction. ‘This where you’ve gone to ground, is it? Mum’s the word, dear. You know you can trust me.’ Another frown. ‘Er … so, where are you living now? Near here, is it?’

  The question was put in a casual, off-hand way but there was no disguising the sharpness of the blue eyes and the business-like set of the thin, slightly crooked mouth and Lynn had no intention of enlightening her anyway.

  ‘You’ve picked up a tan already, Cate, I see,’ she said, quickly changing the subject. ‘Obviously you chose the right weather for it.’

  Meadows blinked, seemingly taken aback by the abrupt put-off. ‘Er … yes, thank you, but look …’ and her voice suddenly dripped enthusiasm ‘… we must find somewhere to have a coffee and a chat about old times.’

  There was no way out of it and inwardly cursing her misfortune, Lynn guided her to a teashop she knew in one of the backstreets of the town. The place was busy, with every table occupied, but there was another smaller room at the rear and they were lucky enough to find a corner table on their own. The coffee and pastries were good, but the promised chat was more like an interrogation. Meadows virtually hogged the next half hour as she quizzed Lynn relentlessly about her situation and where she was now living.

  Lynn was a match for her, however, giving nothing away and constantly batting off awkward probes with questions of her own about the agency and the people she had once worked with. That proved to be the perfect tactic and eventually Meadows warmed to the opportunity of providing some malicious gossip – she just couldn’t help herself. In fact, she managed to dismember the characters of at least half a dozen senior staff, including Freddie Baxter, for whom she reserved the worst vitriol, before she finally seemed to accept that she was not going to get anything of value out of her former colleague. Glancing at her watch, she made the excuse that she had to get back somewhere and planted two more kisses on Lynn’s cheeks before heading for the street, leaving her “long lost friend” to pay the bill.

  Lynn thought a lot about her chance encounter with Cate Meadows as she headed for the car park. Of all the people to run into right out of the blue, it would have to be the Sidewinder herself, wouldn’t it, she mused? What were the odds on something like that happening, she wondered? Probably 100-1 – a safe bet even for the most cautious bookie. Just her luck.

  She was surprised that New Light’s publicity and advertising manager had chosen Cornwall for a holiday destination too. Especially as she knew that as a single divorcee with more money than she knew what to do with, Cate Meadows tended to favour continental resorts, like Benidorm, Ibiza, and the Algarve, with plenty of male action. Maybe she had actually run out of money now or just wanted somewhere quiet for a change?

  Whatever the reason, as someone who didn’t believe in coincidences, Lynn couldn’t help feeling strangely uneasy about the encounter. It was almost as if it had been contrived. But why would that be and how would Meadows have known she was living on The Lizard? Unless she had been keeping tabs on her movements, of course, which was most unlikely since she obviously had no idea where Lynn’s home actually was. And anyway, what possible ulterior motive could the Sidewinder have had? No, the whole thing had to have been down to chance, but Lynn knew she would have to keep her wits about her in future to ensure she didn’t run into the woman again or inadvertently lead her to her bungalow. The thought of sitting on her decking, sipping gin and tonics with a bitch like that was not something she would ever want to contemplate.

  She was still turning things over in her mind when she got to the car park and flicking the button on her remote control, had the satisfaction of seeing the lights of her Mercedes flash in welcome
from a bay in the far corner. But hand on the door, she froze for a second, sensing that she was being watched. It didn’t take her long to spot the watcher either. The beige Volvo XC90 was parked about 30 yards away and she glimpsed the thin face and red hair a second before the figure behind the wheel ducked out of sight. Damn it! Cate Meadows again. What the hell was the woman up to and why was she so interested in her? Okay, so she could have just returned to her car as Lynn had or was adjusting her sat-nav to take her back to where she was staying, but it was all mighty suspicious.

  Climbing into the driving seat, her mouth set in a thin hard line, Lynn started the engine and pulled away, cutting across the car park diagonally the wrong way and ignoring the blast of a horn as she narrowly missed another car dutifully following the directional arrows. Out in the street beyond, she glimpsed the XC90 lumbering after her, maybe 100 yards away, and put her foot down.

  Fortunately the town was not that busy and she was able to get clear of the place remarkably quickly, but as she headed towards the big naval air station at Culdrose, she glanced in her mirror and saw that the XC90 was still on her tail, though holding back as if to avoid detection. ‘Persistent cow!’ she muttered, but increasing her speed, she found that the Volvo easily matched it.

  She was left with no other option but to resort to diversionary tactics and after leaving the base behind, she turned left at the next roundabout, towards Truro instead of Lizard town. At the same moment providence came to her aid. A slow-moving articulated lorry pulled out just behind her at the roundabout directly in front of the Volvo, obstructing Cate Meadows’ view and enabling Lynn to increase the distance between them as a stream of cars heading past in the opposite direction put paid to any chance of an overtake.

  Then the sign for Gweek village was there and without a signal, Lynn swung across the carriageway into the turning, heedless of the flashing headlights and blaring horn of an oncoming van. Shortly afterwards she was threading her way through the lattice-work of narrow lanes, so typical of Cornwall, that opened up before her. The Volvo did not materialise again and she took comfort from the fact that she appeared to have shaken off her tail at last, which meant that Cate Meadows would likely end up following the artic all the way to Truro before she realised her mistake.