LITMIR.BIZ

       2

      Detective Sergeant Diane Fry knew she was going to die buried under an avalanche one day – an avalanche of pointless paperwork. It would be a tragic accident, resulting from the collapse of a single unstable box file under the weight of witness statements piled on top of it. The landslide would carry away her desk and swivel chair and smash them against the wall of the CID room like matchsticks. It would take days for the rescue teams to locate her body. When they did, she would be crushed beyond recognition, her bones flattened in the same way that the reports on her desk were even now pressing down on her brain.

      The piles of paper reminded her of something. She turned her head and looked out of the window, squinting to see past the condensation that had streaked the panes. Oh yes. Snow. Outside, the stuff was piled as high and as white as the paperwork. She couldn’t decide which was worse.

      Then she felt the touch of warm air. It came from the noisy fan heater that she had stolen from the scenes of crime department that morning before the SOCOs arrived for work. The paperwork was just about preferable. At least it meant she could stay in the warmth for a while. Only masochists and obsessives chose to wander the streets of Edendale on a morning like this. Ben Cooper, for example. No doubt Cooper was somewhere out there even now, conducting a one-man crusade to clean up crime, despite the icicles hanging off his ears.

      Soon, scenes of crime officers would be scouring the building for their missing heater. Eventually, she would have to give it up, unless she could find somewhere to hide it when she heard them coming. You could always tell when the SOCOs were coming by the sound of their grumbling. But the heater was the only source of warmth in the room. Fry put a hand to the radiator on the wall. It was warm, but only faintly. It felt like a body that hadn’t quite cooled but had already gone into rigor mortis. No need to call in the pathologist for a verdict on that one. Dead for two hours, at least.

      She sniffed. A whiff of sausages and tomato sauce trickled down the room and settled on a burglary file that lay open on her desk. It was the sort of smell that was responsible for turning the walls that strange shade of green and for killing the flies whose bodies had lain grilling for months inside the covers of the fluorescent lights.

      ‘Gavin,’ she said.

      ‘Mmm?’

      ‘Where are you?’

      ‘Mmm-mmph-mm.’

      ‘I know you’re there somewhere – I can smell you.’

      A head appeared above a desk. It had sandy hair, a pink face, and dabs of tomato sauce on its lower lip. DC Gavin Murfin was the current bane of Diane Fry’s life – less temperamental than Ben Cooper, but far more prone to dripping curry sauce on the floor of her car. Murfin was overweight, too, and a man in his forties really ought to think about what he was doing to his heart.

      ‘I was having some breakfast, like,’ he said.

      ‘Can’t you do it in the canteen, Gavin?’

      ‘No.’

      Fry sighed. ‘Oh, I forgot –’

      ‘We don’t have a canteen any more. We have to make our own arrangements. It says so on all the noticeboards. Twenty-two years I’ve been stationed here, and now they take the canteen away.’

      ‘So where did you get the sausage bap?’

      ‘The baker’s on West Street,’ said Murfin. ‘You should have said if you wanted one.’

      ‘Not likely. Do you realize how much cholesterol there is in that thing? Enough to turn your arteries solid. In another five minutes, you’ll be dead.’

      ‘Aye, with a bit of luck.’

      The smell of fried meat was doing strange things to Fry’s stomach. It was clenching and twitching in revulsion, as if food were something alien and disgusting to it.

      ‘There’s garlic in that sausage, too,’ she said.

      ‘Yes, it’s their special.’

      Detective Inspector Paul Hitchens opened the door and seemed to be about to speak to Fry. He paused, came in, and looked around. He sniffed.

      ‘Tomato sauce? Garlic sausage?’

      ‘Mmm,’ said Murfin, wiping his mouth with a sheet from a message pad. ‘Breakfast, sir.’

      ‘Mind you don’t drop any on those files, that’s all, Gavin. Last time you did that, the CPS thought we were sending them real bloodstains, just to make a point that we had sweated blood over the case.’

      Fry looked at Murfin. He was smiling. He was happy. She had noticed that food did that for some people. Also DI Hitchens was looking a little less smartly dressed these days, a little heavier around the waist. It was four or five months since Hitchens had set up home with his girlfriend, the nurse. It was depressingly predictable how soon a man let himself go once he got a whiff of domestic life.

      ‘I only wanted to tell you Ben Cooper has called in,’ said the DI.

      ‘Oh, don’t tell me,’ said Fry. ‘He’s joining the sick brigade.’ She looked at the empty desks in front of her. With leave, courses, abstractions and sickness, the CID office was starting to look like the home stand at Edendale Football Club. ‘What is it with Ben? Foot and mouth? Bubonic plague?’

      ‘No. To be honest, I don’t remember Ben ever having a day off sick in his life.’

      ‘He can’t get into work because of the snow, then. Well, it’s his own fault for living in the back of beyond.’

      ‘That’s why he bought that four-wheel drive jeep thing,’ said Hitchens. ‘It gets him through where other people get stuck, he says.’

      ‘So what’s the problem?’ said Fry impatiently.

      ‘No problem. He’s made an arrest on the way in.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘He collared one of the double assault suspects. Apparently, Cooper came into town early and called in for the morning bulletins on the way. He was intending to stop for a coffee and found Kemp in the Starlight Café, so he made the arrest. Good work, eh? That’s the way to start the day.’

      ‘That’s Ben, all right,’ said Murfin. ‘Never off

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