Embroidering Shrouds Read Free Page A

seemed to wait for an elderly widow to be in for their attack. Cecily Marlowe had been out shopping all afternoon, ample opportunity for burglars to break, enter, steal and get away. But they had made themselves a cup of tea, turned the television on and awaited her return, then slashed her across the face with a Stanley knife and stolen a few trifles, including her pension book. And the police still hadn’t caught the gang.
    Finding her rhythm now Joanna pedalled along the Ashbourne Road, the Peak District National Park rising to her right, the small farming valley to the left. A few sheep were dotted around on pale grass, a tractor climbed towards the ridge, its engine spluttering noisily. The town loomed ahead, its landmarks already discernible, the spire of St Mary’s, the green dome of the Nicholson Institute, tall square mills. She returned to her thoughts. Fear of the crimes had spread throughout the small town, the flames fanned by the front page of the local paper which had been devoted to the pathetic picture of Cecily Marlowe, aged seventy-five, scarred by a Stanley knife. The paper had spared none of the details, its description was graphic enough without the picture that took up half of page one. It had been clear enough to pick out every one of the twenty-five sutures which had criss-crossed her right cheek. Worse still when she had tried to save herself, putting her hands up to protect her face, one of her fingers had been slashed to the bone and almost severed. The headlines had reported nothing but facts, and they were enough to spread panic through the elderly population of the quiet, moorlands town.
    The article had had its inevitable spin-offs. Police investigations had been hampered by a disproportionate increase in reported incidents by elderly citizens where there had been no crime, just another old person who thought they had seen or heard something suspicious. The call-out rate had more than quadrupled. Fear had crept, like a draught, under every door where people felt vulnerable. And as the police constantly admitted, they could offer no solution, only repeated advice not to let strangers through doors.
    A bare ten days after the Stanley knife assault – and before the newspaper had finished commenting on the crime – another old lady had been threatened and the panic had spread further. Locksmiths and burglar alarm suppliers had had a field day fitting out homes like fortresses. But however many precautions they took the elderly folk of Leek no longer felt safe in their own homes.
    For the police it had been a nightmare. Each reported incident had to be followed up by an investigating team, lest one of the elderly victims who cried wolf should be a real target. But every moment Joanna and Mike spent chasing up ‘incidents’ was time lost from the real investigation. Frustratingly, they were getting nowhere. Neighbouring police forces had been of little help either, having few reported incidents of attacks on elderly women in their own homes that had not been solved. And this led the police to deduce that this gang had only struck here in Leek.
    Joanna had almost reached the town. As she approached the outskirts she breathed a silent prayer, that peace would reign again both in the town she thought of so affectionately and in her own home. Miss Eloise Levin she shoved roughly to the back of her mind.
    She turned right into the station car park, locked her bike against the railings and stood for a moment, her mind still wrestling with the problem. Gangs who robbed old people had their own modus operandi, they didn’t wait for old ladies to return but took advantage of an empty house. They stole videos, cash, jewellery: small, valuable objects. Joanna tramped towards the glass doors. Not a pair of brass candlesticks of no great value and a pension book which was too risky to use. Joanna felt a prickling of apprehension. The violence was roller-coasting; they would attack one