Murder in Bare Feet Read Free

Turkey?’
    ‘Ankara,’ he said almost without thinking.
    ‘That’s it,’ she whooped.
    He looked up at her with a frown.
    She smiled at him. ‘It’s for a competition.’ She made the entry on the magazine page.
    He wrinkled his nose. She was always doing pointless competitions.
    Then she went on: ‘Mmm. Name three soft cheeses.’
    ‘Brie,’ he said. He might have known another two, but there was the intruding sound of a mobile phone.
    Mary sighed, looked at him and pulled a disagreeable face.
    He frowned. ‘Might be nothing,’ he said as he dipped into his shirt pocket, found the phone, opened it and pressed a button.
    ‘Angel.’
    It was Inspector Asquith, duty officer at Bromersley police station. ‘Sorry to bother you, Michael. There’s a triple nine. Man shot dead on Sebastopol Terrace. In a car. Slumped over the wheel. Outside a scrapmetal dealer’s.’
    Angel leaned forward in the deck chair. ‘Right, Alan.’
    ‘I’ve informed SOCO and Mac. There’s patrol car Foxtrot Tango One attending.’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘Have you informed the super?’
    ‘He doesn’t want to know. He said direct any CID emergencies to you. He’s gone to a champagne reception to mark the opening of new offices of Councillor Potts of Potts Security.’
    Angel nodded. ‘Hope he enjoys himself,’ he said unconvincingly. ‘Who rang in?’
    ‘Didn’t leave his name. The usual.’
    Mary knew from her husband’s side of the conversation what the call was about and what was going to happen to the rest of their afternoon. She pulled a face and said, ‘Oh really!’
    Angel waved a hand at her not to speak.
    ‘Yes, right. I’ll deal with it,’ he said and closed the phone.

CHAPTER 2
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    S EBASTOPOL T ERRACE , B ROMERSLEY , S OUTH Y ORKSHIRE , UK. 4.50 P.M. , S UNDAY, 5 A UGUST 2007
    S ebastopol Terrace was one of four dark, parallel streets consisting of small Victorian terraced houses of identical design, to provide cheap rented accommodation for worker’s at the town’s coalmine. Today they were mostly owned by the occupiers and their building societies, and provided convenient accommodation for those who wanted to be near employment in the town or close to the bus station from where they could be conveyed to jobs at factories on the outskirts of the town.
    The burning August Sunday sun had tempted many of the cramped residents to the parks and countryside; the poorer and older residents stayed inside the tiny rooms to keep cool behind lace curtains and shades, leaving the gloomy quiet streets unusually deserted.
    Disturbing the quiet and peace, an ice cream van came rattling round the street corner playing its inane chime of ‘half a pound of two-penny rice, half a pound of treacle’, unsettling those who had settled into a warm sweaty snooze. It stopped a while, served a small queue of customers then dashed off to another street where the electronic chime was heard again.
    Sebastopol Terrace was a cul-de-sac, and at the end on the site where two houses had been demolished after a gas explosion in the seventies, was a scrapdealer’s yard enclosed by high steel railings with big iron gates with barbed wire stretched across the top. There was a big sign in white paint on black, attached to the gate. It read: ‘Charles Pleasant, scrapmetal dealer. Buyer of ferrous and non-ferrous metals. Best prices paid.’
    Crowding the open gates of the scrapyard was an assortment of police vehicles. Some of them had blue lights rotating on top of them. A big black Bentley car was positioned across the pavement facing the entrance to the yard. Six police personnel, four in white disposable paper suits, boots and hats, and two in patrol car uniforms, were assembling a small white marquee around it.
    Edging ever closer to the scene were about thirty men, women and boys; they stood there, muttering. The men and boys were mostly white, hands in pockets and naked from the waist up, some with blue tattoos. Several wore grubby vests.