LITMIR.BIZ

       PROLOGUE

      Oxford, July 1955

      The body on the bed lay sedate and demurely silent as the middle-aged man looked slowly around the room. It was a lovely room – large, well proportioned and lavishly decorated in tones of blue and silver. One of two large sash windows was partly open, allowing a warm summer breeze to blow in, gently wafting the fine net curtains and bringing with it a faint scent of honeysuckle from the lush and well-tended gardens below.

      The man wandered slowly around the opulent bedroom, his eyes greedily taking in everything from the quality of the silk bedsheets to the bottles of expensive perfume on an ornate antique dresser, while being careful not to touch anything. Having been born into a working-class family, he knew nothing about the pedigree of the paintings that adorned the walls. But he would have been willing to bet a week’s wages that the sale of just one of them would be more than enough to set him and his family up for life.

      He’d never before had cause to visit any of the mansions that proliferated in the swanky streets that stretched between the Woodstock and Banbury Roads in the north of the city, or any of the leafy avenues in the area. So now he took his time, and a considerable amount of pleasure, in looking around him, luxuriating in the deep tread of the plush blue Axminster carpet beneath his feet, which was so reminiscent of walking on mossy lawns.

      His eyes turned wistfully to the jewellery box on a walnut bedside table, left carelessly open. Gold, pearls and a few sparkling gemstones winked in the summer sun, making his fingers positively itch.

      ‘Very nice,’ he muttered quietly to himself. But he knew better than to slip even a modest ring or two into his pocket. Not this time – and certainly not with these people. The man hadn’t reached his half century without learning there was one law for the rich, and one for everyone else.

      Thoughtfully, his eyes turned once more to the body on the bed. A pretty little thing she was. Young too. Just out of her teens, perhaps?

      What a damned shame, he thought vaguely.

      Then the breeze caused something on the bedside table to flutter slightly, the movement instantly catching his eye. He walked closer to the bed and the dead girl, again careful where he put his feet, and saw what it was that had been disturbed. It had clearly been deliberately propped up among the pots of face cream and powder compacts, lipsticks and boxes of pills.

      Bending ponderously at the waist, the man, who was definitely beginning to run to fat, squinted down at it and read some of the words written there.

      And slowly, a large, beaming smile spread over his not particularly attractive face. He gave a long, slow, near-silent whistle and then looked sharply over his shoulder to make sure nobody from the house had come upstairs behind him and could see what he was about to do. Confident he remained alone and unobserved, he reached out for the item and put it safely away in his large inside jacket pocket.

      Then he lovingly patted the place over his heart where it lay. For, unless he was very much mistaken, this precious little find was the best bit of luck he’d had for many a year – if not in his whole life. And it was certainly going to make his imminently approaching retirement years far more pleasant than he’d ever previously anticipated.

      He walked jauntily to the door, leaving the dead girl behind him without a second thought, and stepped out confidently onto the landing.

      Time, he rather thought, to tackle the man of the house.