Dying Fall Read Free

in this street, being ex-mill-workers’ cottages, were empty and boarded up. She had first tried the front door, then, when it wouldn’t open, had walked over to the window and tested the boarding to see if it was really as fixed as it appeared to be. Satisfied it was, she had moved along to the next house, and repeated the procedure. Within a few minutes, she had checked half the other side of the street, in the same slow, methodical way.
    Pogo didn’t ask himself
why
she was doing it. He had long ago stopped asking himself why people in the ‘normal’ world did things. They had their rules, and he had his, and the two rarely crossed.
    But though he did not wonder about her motives, he did find himself wondering about
her
.
    She was somewhere around twenty-nine or thirty, he guessed. She was wearing a red sweater which hugged her rounded breasts and a black-and-white check skirt which was short enough to reveal a pair of very good legs. Her nose was a little larger than those normally issued locally, but it was still an attractive one, and it reminded him of a Ukrainian girl he had known in Berlin, shortly after the War. The woman’s hair was blonde and wavy, and looked like it might feel silky to the touch. Pogo did not ‘fancy’ her – it was years since he had felt emotional desire for a woman, and doubted that, even if he ever did again, his equipment would be up to the job – but looking at her still left him with a slight tinge of regret that he had fallen through a crack in society’s floor and now floated in the sewer of its – and his own – disgust.
    As the woman moved further up the street, she went out of his range of vision, and with nothing left to watch, he decided he might as well close his eyes for a moment.
    He was awoken from his unintended sleep by a crashing sound. He was not instantly alert, as he would have been in the old days, but within a few seconds he was ready for whatever piece of shit fate had decided to throw at him now, and as he rose – a little creakily – to his feet, he was already reaching into his pocket for his knife.
    There was the sound of footsteps downstairs – the clicking of a woman’s high heels – and then the sound got closer and he realized that she was climbing the stairs. He slipped the knife back in his pocket – even in the state he was in, he didn’t need a weapon to handle a woman! – and patiently awaited her inevitable arrival.
    He did not have to wait long. Just a few seconds passed before she pushed open the door and saw him. He was expecting her to be scared – the sight that he caught of himself, on the rare occasions he glanced at his reflection in a shop window, was enough to scare any woman – but if she felt any fear, she didn’t show it. Instead, she reached into her pocket, produced a small leather-bound document, and held it out for him to see.
    â€˜Detective Sergeant Monika Paniatowski,’ she announced.
    At the sound of a rank, Pogo found himself stiffening. ‘What can I do for you, Sergeant?’ he asked.
    â€˜If you don’t mind, sir, we’d like you to come down to police headquarters for a while,’ Paniatowski said.
    â€˜What is it I’m supposed to have done?’ Pogo demanded.
    â€˜Nothing at all, sir. We’d just like you to help us with our inquiries.’
    â€˜And what could I possibly know that might be of any use to you?’
    â€˜You may not have heard about it yet, but a tramp was murdered last night,’ Paniatowski explained.
    â€˜Didn’t know the man,’ Pogo shot back at her.
    â€˜How can you be so sure of that, before I’ve given you any of the details?’ Paniatowski wondered.
    â€˜Don’t know
any
tramps,’ Pogo told her. ‘Why would I?’
    â€˜Well, because you’re a …’ Paniatowski began.
    â€˜I’m a what? A tramp myself?’
    â€˜Well,