‘Which is why he will naturally wish to oil the wheels for us, Noakesy, and blind Sidney with statistics.’
‘Him and Burton.’ The DS rolled his eyes. ‘A match made in heaven.’
‘Just thank your lucky stars you’re not going on spreadsheet duty.’
‘What’s next then, guv?’ Wistfully sniffing the air, ‘Seeing as we missed out at lunchtime . . .’
‘An army marches on its stomach. No doubt that’s what they’ll inscribe on your tombstone, Sergeant. A uniquely fitting epitaph.’
‘No, guv.’ Noakes was determined to have the last word. ‘It’ll be like that Spike Wotsisface . . . I told you I was ill!’
* * *
While Markham and Noakes were refuelling in the station canteen, DS Burton and DC Doyle sat in their sliver of the incident room at the community centre. Around them all was quiet, with the subdued hum of a skeleton staff faintly audible in the background. The news of Peter Elford’s death seemed to have struck everyone dumb and an eerie hush prevailed. Now and again a telephone call rang shrilly through the building before being abruptly cut off as though strangled at its inception.
Burton had issued no details of how Elford’s body had been found. ‘Suicide’ was the shocked whisper that had spread through the building like wildfire following her announcement, and she was in no hurry to contradict the rumours. ‘Just routine,’ she’d repeated mechanically over and over before interviewing each staff member in turn.
‘Fancy a Hob Nob, sarge?’ Doyle waved the packet in his colleague’s direction.
‘Better not. I’ve got the PM on Elford later.’
‘Glutton for punishment, you are.’
‘I see it more as professional development,’ came the huffy response.
Jeez, this was going to be a long afternoon, reflected the young DC glumly. Better start talking shop. A dissection of last night’s footie could wait till he and Noakes were in the pub.
‘The statements from this lot,’ he waved a hand languidly towards the corridor, ‘don’t get us much further forward.’
Burton brightened. Small talk had never been her forte, at least not the kind favoured by Doyle and Noakes.
‘Well, at least they’re all accounted for,’ she said looking at the sheaf of papers in front of her. ‘All present and correct, doing whatever they were supposed to be doing.’
‘Lemme see.’ Doyle began ticking them off. ‘Most of them were in the centre except for the midwife woman—’
‘Loraine Thornley.’
‘That’s the one. She was out with the healthcare assistant . . . Jayne something or other.’
‘Jayne Pickering,’ Burton chimed in without even having to look at the papers. Maddening really.
‘Right. Well, those two were doing home visits in Medway. So, they’re each other’s alibi for the time Elford was murdered.’
‘Assuming he was killed this morning,’ Burton added punctiliously. ‘Unofficially, Dimples puts it some time between eight and ten thirty.’
‘Yeah, well, Thornley and Pickering were out till eleven thirty. Then the two witches—’
‘Thelma Macdonald and Shirley Bolton,’ the DS corrected him firmly.
‘What a pair.’ Doyle’s eye-roll was worthy of Noakes at his satirical best. ‘I mean, what happened to “Don’t speak ill of the dead” and all that? Sounded like those two had a wax model of Shawcross stashed away somewhere . . . y’know, for sticking pins in . . . like some kind of sodding voodoo.’
‘She’d got a few people’s backs up alright,’ Burton conceded.
‘If you believe them, she was giving poor old Elford the eye.’ Doyle chuckled mirthlessly. ‘Him and half the sixth form.’
Burton grimaced. A fragment of schoolgirl history suddenly came back to her. Tricoteuses. That’s what they called the cackling crones who sat at the foot of the guillotine during the French Revolution, knitting and watching the heads of the aristos being chopped off. The community centre had its very own gruesome twosome. Best not to encourage Doyle, though.
‘They were in reception and the study centre. In plain sight the whole time,’ she sighed.
‘Then there’s Doctor Troughton and Maureen Stanley . . . the sister or whatever she is—’
‘ANP. Advanced nurse practitioner.’ There was no catching Burton out.
‘Right, well, those two were either with patients or,’ Doyle simulated a Noakesian leer, ‘“consulting”.’
Another gusty sigh from Burton. ‘It’s not unheard of for doctors and nurses to fraternize professionally,’ she said frostily, clearly averse to any kind of Carry On innuendo.
‘That’s also what Jenni Harte and the nice Asian bloke were doing, sarge,’ Doyle riposted cheekily, quite unabashed. ‘Fraternizing professionally.’
Trust him to remember the name of the pretty one, Burton thought acidly. Aloud she contented herself with, ‘Tariq Azhar. That’s the name of the other counsellor.’
‘Yup, as I say, nice fella. Think I’ve seen him down the squash courts at the sports centre.’
‘Oh well then,’ his colleague said with heavy sarcasm, ‘a sportsman . . . he must be beyond reproach.’
Doyle hated it when she took that get-back-in-your-box snippy tone. Where was Noakes when you needed him?
‘So those two were working on that research paper thingummy jig.’
‘Oppositional Defiance Disorder in Adolescents.’ Burton reeled it off breezily.
Whatever the fuck that was. God, he’d forgotten how she got off on all that psychiatric mumbo jumbo when they were on the Newman Hospital case. Poring over those creepy manuals till he and Noakes wanted to brain her with them!
‘Whatever.’ He sounded like a sulky teenager himself, but that was the problem with Burton — she always brought out the stroppy git in him.
‘What about Lurch?’ he said.
‘Lurch?’ The frost was back.
‘The caretaker.’
‘You mean Chris Burt.’
‘That’s him.’ Doyle tried and failed to repress a yawn. ‘He doesn’t have an alibi. Mooching around on various “errands”, wasn’t he?’
‘True,’ Burton conceded with a weary frown, riffling through her papers. ‘There was the odd sighting, but no one seems to have had eyes on
