Dying in the Dark Read Free Page B

it wouldn’t be true!
    Even if they moved in together after Maria had left him – even if they
married
once his divorce papers came through – the relationship would be poisoned, and, in the end, Bob would grow to hate her.
    So what good could be rescued from the whole sad business?
    None at all! Not one bloody thing!
    Her fingers had been getting hotter and hotter, but she hadn’t noticed it, and it was only now – when her cigarette had burned down so far that it had started to singe her flesh – that she cried out and dropped the bloody thing.
    She reached into her pocket, took out a handkerchief, and wrapped it around the burned fingers. This wasn’t pain, she told herself. Not real pain.
Real pain
was what she was feeling inside.
    Woodend had stood up again, and appeared to be talking to the constables. She supposed she’d better go and join him, she thought. The murder would at least give her something to do – would focus her mind on something
solvable
.

Two
    T he Woodends lived in an old, stone handloom-weaver’s cottage on the edge of the moors. Once there had been three of them, then Annie had grown up, and gone away to Manchester to study nursing.
    So now there were just two, Woodend thought – as he lay in bed studying the patterns made by the overnight frost on the window – a middle-aged couple already sliding down the gentle slope to retirement. Charlie and Joan, soon to become
Darby
and Joan.
    At least, he
hoped
that’s what they were bloody well doing! But he couldn’t be sure. The simple truth was that Joan’s heart attack in Spain had scared the crap out of him. The doctors had assured him it was only a mild one, but that was no consolation at all, because that seemed to be almost on a par with being only a
little bit
dead.
    He was doing all he could to ease the situation. He’d offered to employ a cleaner, but Joan had turned the idea down.
    â€˜
If you think I’m havin’ another woman doin’ my jobs an’ rummaging through my things, Charlie Woodend, you’ve got another think comin’
,’ she’d told him.
    He’d tried to do some of the work around the house himself, but by the time he got home, it had all been done.
    â€˜
What do you expect me to do all day, while you’re out catchin’ criminals? Sit here twiddlin’ my thumbs?
’ she’d demanded, when he’d remonstrated with her.
    Still, at least he’d persuaded her to go and stay at her sister’s house for a couple of weeks. At least she’d get some rest while she was there.
    It must be terrible to lose your wife, he thought, as he swung his legs out of bed and felt the soles of his bare feet make contact with the cold linoleum.
    Terrible?
    It must feel like the end of the bloody world!
    The frost had not come alone, but had brought ice with it for company, and the moorland roads which fed into Whitebridge were treacherous. Twice, Woodend was forced to slow to a virtual halt, and join the stream of traffic creeping past accidents caused by less prudent drivers. Once, he himself was nearly in a collision with some bloody idiot. The result of all this was, inevitably, that he arrived at the police car park a full twenty minutes later than he’d intended to.
    Another black mark against me, he thought as he walked across the car park towards the main entrance of the headquarters.
    Another entry for Mr Marlowe’s little black book, under the heading, ‘Things I’ve got against Charlie-bloody-Woodend’.
    Rutter and Paniatowski were where Woodend had expected them to be – sitting at their desks in what Chief Constable Marlowe liked, at press conferences, to refer to as ‘the very nerve centre of our murder investigation’.
    The reality of the ‘nerve centre’ fell far short of the rhetoric. But then it was bound to. A dusty basement was a dusty basement. However many desks were laid in