No Smoke Without Fire - Paul Gitsham

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her ears. Her legs weakened and before she knew it she was slumping downwards as if trying to sit on the kerb.

      The world was now turning a fuzzy light grey, like an old-fashioned TV set when you pulled the aerial lead out, followed by a dark grey, then finally black. Her last memory was the clatter of plastic on concrete as her mobile phone hit the pavement.

       Three Days Later

       Monday 5th December

      The strident ring of a mobile phone sang out in the silenced hall. Three hundred pairs of eyes swivelled immediately towards the back row and Susan Jones cringed in embarrassment, trying to disappear from view. Beside her, her husband, Detective Chief Inspector Warren Jones, fumbled frantically for the offending gadget, trying in vain to silence it. On stage, the earnest fourteen-year-old girl started to sing the opening notes of ‘Silent Night’, before stumbling and losing her place as the phone rang for a second time. The teacher accompanying her on the piano stopped playing and turned around, glaring at the audience.

      A chorus of tuts and hisses sounded from around the auditorium as Jones got to his feet and tried to leave the darkened room as unobtrusively as a six-foot man holding a ringing, glowing mobile phone, seated in the middle of a row of interlocked school chairs, could manage.

      Mumbling his apologies, Warren stumbled into the centre aisle, knocking over at least two handbags and a pair of precariously balanced crutches. Resisting the urge to break into a run, he strode with as much dignity as he could muster to the rear exit. As he slipped through the double doors into the hallway outside he heard the piano start up again and the opening notes of the young soloist. The phone continued to ring. Giving up on trying to silence the damned thing using its touchscreen, Warren simply answered it.

      “One moment, Tony, I can’t talk now.” Although he had whispered into the handset, his voice seemed to echo down the hallway. The two white-haired ladies setting up the coffee urn and interval biscuits scowled at him. As he hurried towards the front of the school he prayed that nobody had recognised him. The last thing he wanted was for the school’s new Head of Biology to become known to the Parent Teacher Association and other gossips as ‘that science teacher with the really rude husband’.

      Finally finding himself alone in the school’s reception area, he was able to answer the call. “OK, Tony, what have you got?”

      The booming Essex voice on the end of the phone sounded amused. “Caught you at a bad time, guv?”

      “You could say that. Let’s just say that ‘Silent Night’ was suddenly no longer silent. What’s happened?”

      All traces of humour immediately left the other man’s voice. “You’d better get over here, boss. We’ve got a body.”

      * * *

      Less than thirty minutes later, Warren carefully manoeuvred his dark blue Ford Mondeo up a sodden dirt track. The cold December night was pitch black, the dark and threatening rain clouds blotting out the nearly full moon and stars. The only lights visible were the flashing blue strobe from the police patrol car blocking the road and the interior lights of the empty ambulance parked next to it.

      To his left, Warren saw several parked vehicles. He made out the familiar white outline of Detective Inspector Tony Sutton’s sports car, a Scenes of Crime incident van and a few others that he didn’t recognise.

      A middle-aged uniformed sergeant with a clipboard stepped out to greet him.

      “DCI Jones?”

      He scribbled Warren’s name and time of arrival on the scene log and directed Warren to park up next to Sutton’s Audi.

      “DI Sutton is at the scene, sir, along with the paramedics and the members of the public that found the body. A Scenes of Crime manager is on site and others are on their way; should be here within the hour.”

      “Thank you, Sergeant. Where is the body?”

      The officer pointed ahead, up the dirt track.

      “A couple of hundred yards up there. Apparently it was found by a group of dog-walkers. They were pretty on the ball, by the sounds of it. They stood still and phoned for us; didn’t trample all over the scene. They swear that they only walked on the footpath, so we’ve made that the main access route.”

      Warren nodded his approval; the sergeant seemed pretty on the ball himself. It never ceased to amaze him the way that despite all of the pleas and warnings from the crime scene specialists, many police officers — detectives included — insisted on poking around the site of a suspicious death, potentially destroying any evidence before it could be collected. By designating the already forensically compromised footpath as the only access route to the crime scene, the sergeant had ensured that any evidence in the surrounding area would be left undisturbed.

      Pulling out his mobile again, Warren called Tony Sutton. The detective inspector answered immediately.

      “I’m down at the main gate,” Warren informed him. “I have a paper suit in the boot of the car. I’ll come and join you.”

      With the aid of the sergeant’s powerful Maglite torch, Warren perched on the edge of his open car boot as he squirmed into a white ‘Teletubby’ suit made out of plastic-coated paper. The last thing he wanted to do was contaminate the scene with any trace evidence from his own clothes; he could destroy valuable clues, or, worse, he could give the murderer’s legal team the tools necessary to raise reasonable doubt and secure an acquittal.

      Finally, suited and booted and feeling faintly ridiculous, he clumsily started up the path. Even without the large torch, he could have found his way; the designated path was wide and well-established and somebody had stuck metre-high sticks in the ground with police tape around them to act as a guideline.

      As he walked Warren felt himself shiver, and not just because of the crisp air. The path cut through a small stretch of woodland and the trees loomed forbiddingly on either side of him. The rustle of his paper suit and the sound of his breathing weren’t quite enough to hide the haunting hoot of an owl, hunting in the distance. A sudden rustle to his right betrayed the presence of some small animal, spooked by the powerful beam of his torch. It was at times like this that Warren was reminded of the fact that, despite enjoying a country walk on a summer’s afternoon as much as the next man — especially if it involved a pub or two — he really was a city dweller.

      Continuing his slow trudge, he became more accustomed to his surroundings: the damp smell of the woodland, the faint pull against each footstep from the muddy path. It had rained a bit the day before, he recalled. Depending on when the body had been dumped the scene was either preserved with nice footprints in the damp soil and the victim covered in fibres and other forensic gifts, or nature had done her best to cleanse the area and make the Scenes of Crime team’s job harder.

      Finally a glow started to appear through the trees. The shiny, plastic crime tape that led the way curved sharply to the right. Warren was grudgingly impressed; the spot was well hidden from the road, suggesting that the killer — assuming the victim was murdered — knew the area and had probably chosen the site with some care. He filed that away for future consideration.

      Ahead a small clearing was brightly lit with a bank of powerful battery lights and criss-crossed with blue and white tape, designating which areas had already been walked upon and which might still yield some clues.

      Standing huddled together against the night air were four late-middle-aged people; two men and two women, comprising two couples, judging by the way they were paired off. A chocolate-brown Labrador sat alert at the feet of the shorter of the two men, watching everything going on with great interest; a fat, golden lump of indeterminate breed lay slumped as if dead next to the other.

      A rather less-well-wrapped police constable looked as if he would dearly love to swap the ramblers’ Gore-Tex and fleeces for his own fluorescent police jacket. On his feet, he wore

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